Writing in the Margins, Bursting at the Seams: Great 365 Day Purge

January 4, 2014

Day Four of "The Great 2014 Purge."

Still excavating from my trunk. Disks, this time. Old three-and-a-half inch disks, contents neatly inked on the label: Database programs I wrote twenty years ago. Work reports just as old. College papers. My writing.

I break off the metal piece; snap open the plastic case. I withdraw the disk and slice it in half with a pair of scissors, hoping that that measure is sufficient to keep people from reading the data thereupon.

I don't count the disks I destroy, recycling what I can, throwing out the rest. It must be at least sixty. In years past, I've likely thrown away twice that amount.

Bits and bytes of my life, digitized; an existence represented by a series of zeroes and ones.

I tie up the trash and take it to the curb.

010101000110100001100101001000000110111101110110011001010111001001110011011010010111101001100101011001000010000001100010011000010110011100100000011100100110010101110000011100100110010101110011011001010110111001110100011100110010000001101101011110010010000001110100011100100111010101110100011010000011101000100000010010010010000001110100011100100110010101100001011001000010000001110100011011110110111100100000011010000110010101100001011101100110100101101100011110010010000001110101011100000110111101101110001000000111010001101000011010010111001100100000011001010110000101110010011101000110100000101110