Remembrance of Things Past: The Honest Version

Blog is a great thing for yourself, if you keep it up for years.  Come to think of it, i have been doing this since this millennium and made it “official” when i went to New Haven in 2001.

Quickly reading my old blogs many years ago, i feel both strange and familiar.  Yes, that was me, so excited about so many things new in my surroundings and couldn’t wait to tell everyone (i.e. family and friends).  I wanted to share all that i saw with you as a frequent reminder that i still existed in your life and you should not move on without me.  

But i guess everyone just goes on their own ways and so do i.   we develop different priorities in life – for some it is marriage and mortgage, for some it is career success, for some it is just the vague idea of being free and seeing as much as possible.   To compensate for the alienation, we meet new people and make new friends.  

so i guess it is actually the future version of me who will benefit most from the blog.  it is interesting to see how i have changed and not changed.   There have been changes of tone and subjects.  I sounded much happier and more excited back then and wrote more details about my day-to-day life, which i now i find often too trivial.  later i went through bad times and came out stronger. i realize that things happen.   I realize that happiness is fleeting – and so is unhappiness.   so i should be more indifferent to both happiness and unhappiness.  because everything looks less important to me than before, now i tend to comment more with free association (well that is a Freudian term).  if i were James Joyce, you would call it stream of consciousness but since I’m not, you call it digression.

on a lesser scale, just look at our record of Facebook or Twitter or MSN Messenger status updates.  what has caught our attention for the moment is quickly replaced by something else.  what we may be obsessed with is totally abandoned with a sudden and random change of mood. looking back after a little while,  i’m often surprised how i have completely and quickly forgot everything.

but still, we are the accumulation of our past even if unawares.    all these blogging/social network status updates provide a good way to look back without interference from inaccurate memory of imagined past.  at that time, those thoughts and feelings were real – later they simply fade into something else.