This afternoon I was searching online for a reference to an event I helped run several years ago, hoping to see if I could find the name of a subject matter expert I’ve completely forgotten.

While doing so, I ended up finding some old references to myself during a 12+ year period where I helped found and run a critical infrastructure security organization called InfraGard in New York. I thought, “Hmm, I should be saving these.”

For quite a few years now I have pounded the pavement both figuratively and electronically searching for genealogical records to document our family history. But, you know what? I have not been a good archivist – Though I faithfully take several hundreds of family photos each year for our future family memory, I have almost completely forgotten to also keep track of our current professional and public lives in any structured and interesting way.

I’m quite proud of the things I helped accomplish in that organization. And oddly enough, information on the Internet can have both a surprisingly long and a surprisingly ephemeral shelf life.

While there may be some things in my online presence that may not reach that level of pride, there are other things that will certainly help give my great-grandkids a taste of now.

In honor of the marathon cancellation I’m going to run down the streets trying to buy milk, bread, and gasoline. #sandy

— John J. Tierney (@JJT) November 3, 2012

(By the way, that’s a post-Hurricane Sandy tweet.)

In the past, people snipped newspapers and pasted them into scrapbooks. I’m going to make an effort to go back and start some virtual scrapbooking and archiving so my descendents see that I was more than my <adjective> Twitter feed. (Which, of course, they’ll be able to find at the Library of Congress.)

Now,  if you’ll excuse me, I have some college era photos to white out.