Looking back

I was just looking back on some blog entries (from here and from a blog I had long before Windy Cross) and even in the year I've been writing this blog I can see the differences in my writing that convey the idea of who the author is. I don't think you ever have to stop growing up and I'm trying my hardest not to.

There are little things that I've noticed like my point of view changing on certain subjects as well as big things like the way I live my life and what I look forward to.

For example, with my original MSN blog I didn't have a stable job. I would write about attending interviews, being turned down, trudging to the job centre to sign on every week, entertaining pipe dreams of things I wanted to buy after months of saving my weekly pittance. It was a lack of structure, reliability, and independence.

I didn't have my own form of transportation. I just accepted that I had to walk everywhere I went, that taxis were expensive, that it took a long time to get anywhere, that I had to rely on other people to get from A to B, and that I was restricted by the boundaries of the town because anywhere else was too far. It was again a lack of independence. I had no real plan to get myself on the road. I had no real plan at all.

Okay so it may sound hypocritical to say that things are different now when I still don't have a solid plan, but I have parts of a plan. I know, partially at least, what I want now. Back then I was just hovering on a plane of indecision, unaware that my life hinged on my decisions. It's all maturity and experience, I know, but I was lacking in so much of it at the time.

And yet I still hadn't fully subscribed to the thinking that in just a year's time I'd look back on myself and be embarrassed by my past actions.

One of the reasons I would like to find a better job is because this one isn't going anywhere. When my one and only colleague retires I can move up to his position if I want to. And then that's it. It's not a job which teaches me anything; and certainly not anything I really value. Like I said, I've learned a lot about people during my time here, but I know there are a lot of things I don't know. About people. About the way society works. I've always been an outsider to the way people interact; either fleeing or pushed away from the prospect of interacting with people. So while I was socially clumsy and awkward back then, I can now recognise that I still am and that my clumsiness is much more acute than I thought. It's not until I get dropped into a social situation like the staff room here that I realise how paralysed I can become.

What I suppose I'm trying to get at is how we're only shaped by the challenges we are put through (and the ones we put ourselves through, which I suppose is what a pilgrimage must be for). Without these trials we are without form; shapeless entities built from nothing more than an idea. When we are shaped from the things we encounter in life we take form, become grounded, and are built out of something more solid than if such-and-such happened to me then I would do this... instead we are constructed from when such-and-such happened, I did this...

When I look back on my earlier blogs I see someone without much of a coherent shape or form. I am sure I will have the same reaction to posts like this one in a year's time and I may document such thoughts here if my situation permits it. Perhaps I'll say "But that's so obvious! How could I not know that already?" or maybe I'll think "If only I knew then what I know now."

I sure as hell won't be saying "I wish I could be as ignorant and immature as I was back then."

PS: Here's a look at that Photoshop project I was working on. I think it came out pretty well.