Meeting and Reading the Old Me

Every now and then somebody will dig up something I wrote twenty years ago and send it to me.

And yes… sometimes I read it and think, “Wow. That was… strong.”

For fun sometimes I go back and read a post say like from Feb. 2006 or 2007 and reflect on Feb now in the present. 

To be honest, I like a lot of what I said, but not always...LOL.

If you’ve ever read something I wrote back in the mid-2000s and cringed a little, just know — I probably do too when I read it now.

I’ve honestly thought about going back and cleaning some of it up. Fixing the typos. Breaking up the run-on sentences. Toning down the ALL CAPS moments. Maybe adding a little disclaimer at the top that says:

“The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the host — even though both of them are me.”

The guy who wrote those posts is me. Same convictions. Same heart in a lot of ways. But also not quite the same man.

Reading old writing is like looking at old pictures. You remember the clothes, youthful intensity. You remember what you were fighting for. What felt urgent. What you were trying to protect. And you also see things you’d say differently now. Most of all was this somewhat arrogant urge that I deserved to be heard and known.... and the old 'ham' part of me exists, but now is just a feeling of sowing, not entitled- I don't know if that makes sense.

I don’t want to erase any of it.  I was probably a little fired up about whatever I had seen that week.

But I can also see some things that have fallen off over time.

Less sharpness- less anxiety( that  I didn’t recognize as anxiety). Less fear dressed up as certainty.
Less confidence in my own perspective that probably needed to be humbled.

Sin still clings. My heart is still prone to wander. That hasn’t changed.

But I am more at peace now than I was then. Less reactive. Less fearful. More settled.

I’m more confident in Christ. And honestly, less confident in me.

So no, I’m not going to scrub the archives anytime soon. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t say what I said. That was part of the journey. Growth looks like something over twenty years. Sometimes you can actually see it.

If you read something old and think, “He wouldn’t say it that way now,” you’re probably right.

But that man was on the way to this one.

And I hope, if the Lord gives me another twenty years, I’ll be able to say this same thing again.

There is another part of this that is somewhat opposite, there could be some who read the past and miss that old guy- maybe this 'new' me is too safe or even silly. 

I can tell on my blog where AI began to help me in the editing process, though I have fought hard to let it be just that- but one thing is for sure, there was no such thing in 2010 or 2017....

The music thing has had people scratch their head and look at me with odd expressions... One of my co-workers said to me, "'AI music is sketch, but some of your songs do get stuck in my head"- and I appreciate the sentiment.... in the case of the music, I am writing the lyrics and I work hard on the prompts and genres and finally publish what I like even if no one else does... the soundtrack of my day is much healthier that it was becoming, even Country music had gotten too dark, tongue in cheek hooks made me love the genre, but it is just hip hop with boots and  twang now.

So at odd times, the old me sometimes meets the current me and I wonder if the future me will think the same about the current me like the current me thinks about the old me.

Will we even be reading in the future? Only the Lord knows.  

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