So, I had this task, right? Needed to dig up some info on someone, or maybe something, called Catherine Wells. Sounded straightforward enough at first.
I started where everyone does, just plugging the name into the usual search engines. Got a bunch of hits, naturally. Lots of different Catherine Wells out there. Seemed like a pretty common name, actually. Found writers, artists, regular folks on social media.
This is where it got tricky. The specific context I had was super vague. An old note, maybe from a project years ago? Just the name, nothing else. So, which one was it? I spent hours sifting through profiles, articles, mentions. Trying to find a connection, any clue that matched the little context I had (which was basically zero).
Went down some rabbit holes, let me tell you.
- Checked ancestry sites.
- Looked through old university alumni lists.
- Even tried searching variations of the name.
Nada. Zip. Zilch. It was like chasing a ghost.
Getting Sidetracked
At some point, I stumbled onto this forum thread, completely unrelated, discussing difficulties in tracing people mentioned in old company records. And man, did that resonate. People shared stories about mergers wiping out archives, name changes, records just lost to time. It was a whole community of folks hitting the same brick wall I was.
It made me think, you know? About how easily information just vanishes. We think everything’s online, everything’s searchable. But so much isn’t. Especially older stuff, or things related to people who just lived their lives without a big online footprint.
So, did I find the Catherine Wells I was looking for? Nope. Not a clue. The trail went completely cold. Maybe the note was misspelled? Maybe it referred to something else entirely, not a person? Who knows.
The real takeaway wasn’t finding her. It was the process. The hours spent digging, the frustration, and then stumbling onto that forum. Realizing how fragile digital memory can be, and how many stories just… disappear. It was a weirdly humbling experience, started with a simple name search, ended up making me think about information loss. Not what I expected when I started looking for Catherine Wells, that’s for sure.
