Take A Look Into Your Past

Recently I took a look back at some of my old blog posts. I started with the very early posts and worked my way forward. The experience was both amusing and enlightening. It was amusing because no matter how you feel about my current work, those early posts were very unpolished. As I reread the posts, I found it incredibly obvious that I was trying to find my voice.

The funny thing is that I don’t remember writing some of the posts. That might be a bit frightening because the oldest of the posts is about a year old, and since I am only 25 years old, I should not be so forgetful. For me, this brief exercise in reflection was evidence of my growth and development. It was fun to see some of the things I wrote about back then.

I hate to call myself a “writer” because that implies that I’m established at the craft, but I’ve always been a person who writes. Even in my elementary days, I was writing short stories like crazy. In middle school and high school, I wrote horrible depressing poems and a few short stories. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started novels in my life. Obviously, they never materialized. Just as I made the shift from fiction to non-fiction in my reading, so have I in my writing.

I still have some of those old poems and short stories. From time to time, I go back and read them, just as I did with my blog posts. And the feelings the act invokes are very similar to how it felt to look back at the early works on my blog. By looking back, I get a snapshot of who I was and what mattered to me at the time. And in some ways, it makes me appreciate who I am now so much more.

So many times I catch myself saying What the hell was I talking about? What the hell was I thinking? Again, it’s refreshing to look back at how I once wrote and see evidence of my progress. However, I do sometimes look back at writings that I once thought were horrible and change my opinion. The delivery might not have been the best, but the idea and effort were there. And maybe the same can happen to you with your blog posts, or with other ideas that you have floating around. Maybe the idea you had and threw away wasn’t bad; maybe it just didn’t pop up at the right time. There are some posts that I wish I could go back and rewrite, but it would be pointless. We all develop, we all grow; one day I’ll look back at my current works and feel differently than I do right now.

Normally, I would say that you shouldn’t look back and that you should always be looking forward. Of course, it can be okay to break your own rules as long as the results are positive. So, I encourage you to take a look into the past. If you’re a writer, look back at some of your early writings. If you’re a salesman, compare your old sales numbers to your current numbers. If you feel that your current work is better than your old work, good — that’s what you want. If you look back and feel that your old work was better — that you’ve lost that fire that you once had — ask yourself what you can do to get it back. Hopefully, when you take the time to reflect, you will walk away more aware of yourself than you were before.

Tagged as: looking back, reflect