Another(?) for instance.

I'm quite sure that over the years I titled (at least) one of these pages For instance, but considering that I've run two different checks for the phrase and haven't found it in a title (though I've rather unavoidably used it numerous times in my texts), perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps it was a working title that got changed in the end. It's a rather logical title for a page with a list, especially if I've linked to Gilbert and Sullivan a number of times already (though from my present checking it seems that I've only really done that - about lists - only once, and that needed a bit of updating). But enough of this. Do I have a list here?

Not exactly. My repetitions are numerous - too numerous to list. But they do follow a certain sort of pattern. If I reused a song title, for instance (there it is again) I usually linked to where I did so the first time. In a similar manner, if I wanted to "reuse" a comic that I'd posted in the past, I preferred to link to it rather than repost it, usually explaining why the context from which I now referred to was different. The same went for a particular story that I chose to retell

But it seems that twice instead of doing this I actually scanned the comic a second time. In an examination of online communities I post a comic that I reposted less than a year later within the context of an examination of addiction to the internet. Chronologically, this was the first time this repetition took place. The second repetition was slightly later, though it referred to a comic that I'd used in the first year of columns. The topic the second time around was different enough (though since then a rather recurring one itself - the idea that internet use has ceased to become something really worthy of our interest) that I probably didn't even think to check whether I'd used the comic before, though of course I had.

Should this repetition distress me? My guess is that I'm the only reader who may have noticed. Were a reader to ask him or herself "haven't I seen that here before?", I suppose that it would have been only a minimally bothersome question. And if that reader was to reread previous columns to find the source of the repetition? Frankly, it might be an enjoyable experience. Leftovers can often be very tasty when they're warmed-up again. I've even played with the idea of a new column being no more than a link to an old one which I've reread and enjoyed, and found still relevant. But though it might be a cute trick, I'm fearful that it might become a habit, and then I'd really be repeating myself.



Go to: Repeating myself.