This blog was started more than 15 years ago, and by most measures, that's a long enough time for people to change unrecognizably from their earlier selves. For me, this blog serves a very useful purpose in that it keeps me anchored to who I was then, and also gives me a sense of how, as time went on, I deviated away from that person, and reverted back to being that person, in myriad ways, over many occasions.
Today's is going to be a self-indulgent post, because, well, it's a personal blog with a readership of precisely one, what other reason do I need?
Sure, I've deviated, as one should, from that 2005 lad, but there's value in continuing to be that person, in some roundabout way, and in my experience this blog has been as good a tool as any to serve that purpose. Come to think of it, if I hadn't created this blog and decided, somewhat impulsively, to chronicle some small fraction of my life on it, what other tools could I have employed to fulfill this need for anchoring?
Sometimes I tell people about something that happened in the summer of 2011, and they're surprised I remember dates to that level of precision. I don't quite agree that remembering the year and approximate month of events is too impressive, but if at all it is, I would credit that also to writing this blog. Often, I only remember things because I remember under what mood, in which room, in what degree of loneliness, did I write a particular post, and therefore I remember what had been transpiring in my life in those days.
I am, it is fair to say, a fairly different person from whoever started this blog, even whoever wrote on it in 2007, or 2010, or 2013. As a bundle of thoughts, opinions, desires, character, I'm maybe not terribly different from my 2015 self, but then if I account for external aspects such as livelihood, fitness, marital status, again, much has changed.
Now I'm almost 35 (I was 19 when I started here) and my hair are greying at great speed. In the last 3 years alone, I've put on 33 pounds (15 kgs) of body weight, and I wasn't particularly slim even back then (this is me 3 years ago). Compared to my 2005 self, I'm 53 pounds (24 kgs) heavier.
Internally, I think I verged too far away from my 2005 self in the years 2007 to 2013. The second half of that period was marked by slipping into depression, becoming a bit of a toxic guy, about whom neither my present self nor my 2005 self would have many good things to say. The period since 2014 I've tried to calm myself down, think clearly and work hard. I believe I've made some good progress, but being married over the last year and a half has thrown new situations my way and given me more to adapt to, just when I had started thinking I'd reached a point where I could adapt to anything. Grandiosity is always dangerous, even when it is about how malleable or non-grandiose you are, in fact more so then.
Thus ends this post on no notable note. I am writing this during stolen time, and must go back now to attend to some work.
