Old Blog Thoughts

I once had a blog that I started for the same reasons as this one: to help me better remember the key points of topics I had a casual interest in, and to express my opinions of those topics.

That initial purpose faded as the drama of my life became a more interesting topic. As much as I tried, I could not be as interested by news about people I didn't know in places I never went than by what affected me personally. Personal disturbances linger and demand reflection. News stories inspire flashes of outrage. I believe that the more news a person consumes the more outrage metastasizes in  a combination of activism, or hatred.

But I digress. Girlfriends and jobs can cause stress. I needed a place to process that stress, and my old blog became a diary that was updated frequently with these processes.

The old blog was public until it was only diary and had to be hidden to protect myself and the people I wrote about. The posts were too personal for 'public' consumption.

I aired out my deepest, most personal thoughts on that blog during periods of emotional upheaval, then slowly stopped updating it a few months ago to give myself space from the thoughts of my life. I tried silent reflection.

Having had some time away from my past to focus on the present has made my old blog useful in deciphering my thoughts of the events of my immediate past. At first I was reluctant to be blunt. It was not supposed to be a diary. The bluntness was useful. I can now see some wrongness in those posts that I couldn't see while I was writing them because: Time + Honesty = Clarity

Using recent insights, I noticed some negative thought patterns in the old entries. To begin writing an entry I needed to be dissatisfied with myself for not writing first. Almost every entry would start with self dissatisfaction and self disappointment. Then I would use that new motivation to write about the topic that I liked/disliked, usually further developing an argument following a contentious disagreement with someone. (Sound familiar?) I would end by making empty promises to change my habits, not make the desired changes, and start the next entry with the same narcissistic disappointment.

I complained about myself and was disappointed in myself in some new way in every entry because I wanted to improve myself. Hahahaha! By those same standards I would be SO disappointed in my present day-to-day! I have less possessions today than I did last year! And waste my time 10x more!! Even after everything, I didn't know how to appreciate what I did have. I needed to be humbled more.

Reading through these old memories reminded me of my forgotten thought processes and forgotten obsessions. You know, the ones that are so frequent for a short period of time that they run in the background. These processes change little by little until they are gone, replaced by new thought patterns that seem innate. Time, honest documentation and reading theology helped give me the resources to read between the lines of my diaries.

Asking myself the right questions was one of the answers:

Have I stopped caring about myself or have I stopped nitpicking myself? Why did God allow me to suffer? I will always have problems, how does my thinking help me solve these problems?

Obviously I can't read my future diary...only living in the present having learned from the past can give me the clues to the future, as only good actions in the present can create my future.

Therefore, I have to focus and work on the things that make my life instead of destroying what I built and starting over. Patience is a virtue and pride is a creep.

Deciphering my life's history from my present point of view inflicts good pain, thoughtful pain, hopeful pain. That's a good reason to write a diary, and a good reason to take a break.