I’ve reached that age where I understand how short our lifetimes really are. Sure, I may live for another 20 years or so, but it’s just as likely I’ll shut my eyes for the last time within a year or two. Who knows? No one, of course, but I feel the end more keenly than all the moments that have come before. I’m not fearful, but I am cognizant, and that awareness puts me into preparation mode. 

It’s Time to Prepare for the Just in Case Moment

“Get your affairs in order”. No, I haven’t been told that. I haven’t been diagnosed with anything that might kill me. Despite that, I personally feel the need to make sure things are taken care of. “Just in case…”

Of course, I found some will-making software online and filled out the form. Now I have to grab a couple of people who aren’t related to me and drag them over to a notary to make it legal. I can almost check that one off the list.

Honestly, there’s not much else on the list. But as I was thinking about these things, I started thinking about how much I wish I had more from my parents that I could hold onto. More photos. Some audio or video. That sort of thing. They died before the smart phone existed. People didn’t take endless selfies back then. No one thought to record themselves or share the details of their time here with live video stories.

I thought, well, at least future generations will have those things to look back on. They’ll be able to see and hear and watch their parents or grandparents via all the things they’ve shared on social media or their websites. 

For a quick moment, I felt good about this blog. It is a pretty clear reflection of me. Or at least it’s a reflection of who I believe I am. Others may not see my reflection in the same way I do. But when I look in the mirror, the words I write on this blog reflect that. So, that’s good, I thought. The people who care, in the future, can read my blog posts, and they’ll feel a slight connection to me. For those who might wonder who I am, 200 years from now? Maybe they saw my name listed somewhere and wondered, who is she? Will my words here reach them?

I Am Not a Drama Queen. Okay, I Am.

And then I panicked. Well, panic is far too dramatic, although I do love being a drama queen from time to time. Okay, so I didn’t panic. But I did come to the hard realization that this website won’t live forever. Websites have to live somewhere, and that somewhere isn’t free. When someone stops paying for a website to exist, it stops existing. Sure, there are places like archive.org that try to keep records of all things online, perhaps forever, but I’d imagine the entire internet as we know it today may not exist very far into the future. Other technologies will come along, and this version of things will fade away, like geocities or myspace once did.

Vanity, Be Thy Name

So, what then? Am I destined to just be a name that is unknowable in the future? Maybe. And is it vain to even care? Possibly. But I think my mom would have wanted me to have more of her, if she’d known how much I wish I had that. I wouldn’t think she’d be vain to want to provide that to me. Either way, vain or not, I realized I wanted to leave something to those who might care in the future. Something they could look at once or many times, and walk away with a little bit of me to remember or know.

How then, could I give them this part of me – this blog – if the blog will eventually disappear? And then I knew. It needed to be a book. Sure, it’s easy for a book to disappear too. It can be thrown away, or chewed by a dog, or burned in a fire, or just lost over time. But there are millions of books who have survived all of that and are still around today, hundreds of years after they were first printed. A book is solid and can easily be passed down from one generation to the next.

Bingo!

I had a goal. Print my blog! 

That concept is actually a blast from the past. Back in the early days of the web, when blogging was all the rage, a few book-to-blog services started cropping up. The idea was that just by clicking a few buttons, you could instantly have your blog formatted and printed in book form. 

Turns out, those services still exist! Well, maybe not all of the original companies are still out there, but some are, and new ones have joined in over the years. 

Now, I no longer had just a goal, but I had a means to achieve that goal. Yes! So, I started researching the various services. The prices seem reasonable until you realize that most of the prices listed only apply to very small books. I was surprised to realize that even if I only printed out half my blog – those posts I considered most representative of me – I’d still be printing a 200-page book. And that meant I’d pay more than I’d like at some of the blog-to-book services. 

So I made my decision based on my research. I chose Pixxibook. It still wasn’t cheap, I’ll be honest. But it was reasonable for my purpose. 

Easy Peasy Process

The process was super easy. I just filled out the form, giving it my site’s URL, and then choosing from a list of my posts, the ones that I wanted printed. Next, I could choose what I wanted my book cover design to look like. I could have uploaded my own design, but I didn’t want to do that. Instead I chose to use their option of showing a selection of images from my blog, displayed as a tiled gallery on the cover. I then gave it a title and wrote a blurb for the inside page and one for the back cover. Then I hit the process button and done! 

The software shows you what it will look like when it’s printed. You can flip through virtual pages in a flipbook style. If you see a post you’d rather not include, or decide you need a different one included, you can just edit the information you gave it, and reprocess, as many times as needed. Then, when you’re really sure it’s the way you want it, you click another button to finalize it. Place your order, and wait for it to arrive in the mail.

When it arrived, it was very well packaged, which is a good thing, because my local mail lady is very rough on mail. I was worried the book would be damaged by the time I got it. But it was in perfect shape.

Love It!

I was really excited when I saw it. It is a large, hard-cover book, with really thick, heavy-duty pages. It looks great. It really exemplifies the idea of a “coffee table book”. And yes, that’s exactly where it is right now – on my coffee table.

Here are a couple of pictures to give you an idea of what it looks like. These are screenshots I took from a video I recorded for someone. The video isn’t share-worthy to the general public, haha, but I grabbed these screenshots from it.

Honestly, it’s perfect for me. It’s exactly what I hoped for. Pixxibook did a great job, and I can now check this off my list as well. 

And now that I’m prepared, I can get back to the job of just living my life.