I was looking through my draft posts, trying to clear off the cobwebs of antiquity and readdress the things I started and never finished. I came across one post which was personal, but I just don’t think I can get into the mindset this particular post needed to continue as it is. This is not a normal thing for me though. I can normally capture the mindset and voice I had at different eras of my life. Granted you don’t want to see my third-grade writing mindset, I mean it’s painful.

This piece though needed a time, place, and moment to write about it for its particular voice. Anything else is a complete and utter rewrite. So I am working through the thought process of why. I have the same interests, and the same unabashedly sharing of personal stories. The writing in the piece was even fine. So I’m looking over what part of me has changed.

I shared this sentiment with my Facebook friends, in slightly more detail – but in a more off-the-cuff manner. Writing that I think it’s the tone that throws me. Because the original article was written in 2016. Between the changes in the world. The changes in society. The changes in the country. It has been so much change. While I feel I’m the same person, the rotation of the globe has moved me without permission. Which is strange.

Nothing is less or more meaningful to me compared to what it was five years ago. I still have the same beliefs neither stronger nor weakened – but more expressed. This may actually be the key since the writing I was addressing had a key function that dealt with expression. I’m at a stage for those things that are important need to b expressed differently. This is likely why in the last year I’ve been writing significantly more again. Obviously not on my website, but significant long-form writing has been done.

Between data-basing and cross-referencing everything I’ve written in my life to working on a project to record each and every childhood story – it’s a matter of expression. If we disregard the world and just look at personal changes in my life in the last five years, it’s been a lot. I don’t however share what I’m going through in the present tense. It’s easier to relay the building blocks from twenty or thirty years ago that echo forth to how I got here. My own therapy.

Now some people think we should leave the past in the past. That doesn’t help you deal with who you are today. Granted at some point every story I tell, it might be the last time. Last week when recording my own personal memories I stumbled across one in the grey matter that I haven’t thought about in one to two decades at least. It was how I got my blanket when I was two. Now the pathway there was recording other memories and working them out to record a different story. Without chasing it down, that would have been lost. Is it important? No, and at this point, I can tell you the end of my blanket has more to do with my personality than the beginning of it. It was a fantastic memory to revisit though.

For those that know me, I obviously have boundaries that I won’t discuss openly. I’m open about so much, yet we guard certain aspects that just make us whole as we share most of the pieces with the world. It is how I deal with issues. I take the approach that Mister Rogers gave us growing up.

“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.” – Fred Rogers.

Obviously many people didn’t get that memo. Because they just won’t talk about their issues in public. They won’t share random thoughts or deeper meanings. That’s fine also though, some people are guarded and find their own way to make things manageable. I’m more personally worried about those that don’t

So here we are talking about things like I always have, on the same subjects I always have. Why does it feel like I’ve changed? If anything in the last five years (granted on Facebook) – I’ve been much more open about things I’ve gone through growing up. The good things and the bad. I’ve shared things that some others don’t discuss. Granted my profile is locked down so it is a fake pseudo-privacy. Yet, I always write so I’m fine with whatever gets recorded or shared – I can stand behind it without issues.

I don’t know what it is. But I feel it, I feel that I’ve stayed the same a very core has shifted. I can contemplate many reasons for this, but nothing definitive that I thought would color my writing. I’m still the same flawed and optimistic human being that suffers through joy and tragedy – just a different joy or tragedy of the week. I don’t know.

I just thought like discovering that story from when I was two in my brain that writing all of this out would shake things loose. To help with a self-discovery that I might be missing by letting it stew as words on the page instead. Chasing down the thoughts as they escape out of the fingertips. Here we are, almost a thousand words later, and with no clear answers. Maybe this has helped me and I just don’t realize it yet. Regardless, I’m still the same, yet I’ve changed.