Whoa! It’s different around here. I’ve caved and finally gone dark text on light background and, holy balls, is this a serif font?!
Anyway, I launched this thing way back in 2005. The anniversary was in December actually, and normally this might be an anniversary type post, but on that day I was battling a sore throat and nasty chills, glaring incredulously at my negative Covid test. I took another the next day which was positive, so that was a thing. The moral of the story is don’t spend Christmas with anyone. So, screw it, I’m thinking about this now, so here it is in June.
Other than the redesign process involving a lot of revisiting old material, I’ve seen a pattern among other blogs or even social media accounts I know. When I launched this thing, I was 22 years old. Back then, we were into George W Bush’s second term and couldn’t imagine a worse president. I firmly identified as Christian. I was living with family. I didn’t have a car or even a license. Hell, I even used to be pro-life! Flash forward to now, and I just turned 40 last month, I’m solidly secular humanist and decidedly irreverent toward faith, two of the three people I was living with are now deceased, my car is 16 years old and has been on its fair share of adventures, I think my current views on abortion rights are clear, and as I write this the Orange Thing is being indicted on 37 charges of mishandling classified documents among literally everything else about him. Back then I was also in my first term on NYRA’s Board of Directors, a role I would hold until 2015, as well as forum moderator, in its heyday at the time. I’m no longer with NYRA, and the forum has been gone for over a decade, but I’m still a youth rights supporter through and through.
So for sure both I and the world as a whole have changed. Why then do I keep writing to the blog I started so long ago? Even if posting has slowed. That brings me to the titular musings. Let’s begin with…
Coping with the past/younger self
I don’t like talking about a younger self as if that’s a separate unrelated person. There’s a direct line from past self to present self. I understand the urge to do that, because, holy crap, younger you was just so cringe, amirite?! So you distance yourself to maintain an image of integrity for the present self. Trouble is, because there in fact is that direct line, somewhere in there you made some change to “not cringe” (an assessment your future self may disagree with). And by distancing yourself, you erase that change or at least don’t indicate you even understand what changed. Maybe you didn’t actually change at all.
HAPPY 5TH ANNIVERSARY, EIGHT MINE FORTRESS!!!!
