Two weeks ago, on the 1st of June, WordPress was kind enough to remind me that it has been two years since I registered with this account. Granted, I didn’t start blogging right away, mostly because back then I was unsure of the direction I want to steer my blog toward. Not that I am putting all my attention to a single element nowadays, but hopefully my writing is focused on fewer interests. And I most definitely did not keep up with my writing throughout those two years, there were frequent monthly breaks and one dark period of a long, six-month absence. But as much as our past is nowhere near perfect, sometimes we need to revisit it in order to move to the future, take a step back so we can jump forward.
I noticed one of my first ever posts getting attention lately, an old Harry Potter fan-fiction piece that was probably shared somewhere, and for a moment there I considered deleting it or fully rewriting it. It’s ridiculously short, poorly written, and overall it seems like I had put no thought to it when I wrote it. To sum it up, it’s an embarrassment. On the other hand, it shows just how much things have changed over a time span of two years — it made me feel better about some recent written works (which I have not shared here, not yet at least). There is just as good as there is bad in every experience that we go through, regardless of how we feel about certain things from the past they all contribute to who we are. At the end of the day we’re just a collection of short stories, books whose pages are filled with the tales of our lives. For a few of us, those stories may live on forever, should someone somewhere decide they’re of great importance. For the rest of us, those stories will eventually be forgotten. They’ll still be there, no one can take away your past, for better or for worse, but they won’t be the topic of discussion among our successors.
One could say that ultimately it’s all down to perception and attitude, since they would define whether whoever takes a peek in our life sees the good or the bad in our past. Would someone who reads that specific fan-fiction piece think of how bad a writer I have been, or think or how much my writing has improved since then? I do not believe leaving a note of any kind would lead the reader toward the good side of it, you can give directions to anyone but they can choose to ignore them, they might believe you’re trying to trick them and will go elsewhere instead, or they might go in the opposite direction just to spite you. You can try though, and you can hope. You can always try and hope for the better even if everything seems to be going bad. It might not be much, but often it’s the best you can do.
If I could, I’d list the changes that have taken place during this two-year period, but I honestly would not even know where to start from and it would be too big of a list. Lots of memories, lots of wasted time, lots of shared moments, lots of loneliness, lots of happiness, lots of sadness, lots of rewarding times, lots of painful moments — lots of this, yet lots of that. When you’re going on with your everyday business it seems like time is literally crawling, I’ve caught myself hoping time could move faster whenever I’m busy with work. Yet when I look back I wish time didn’t fly so fast, I wish there was a way we could turn time back. The idea is not to relive everything, but to go through those years with my current state of mind, so unfortunately unless someone has a time machine they’re not sharing with the rest of us, the truth is it isn’t going to happen.
What we can do instead, is take a glance at the stories from our past sometimes and remember who we were and how we got here. Remember what we’ve been through, remember the good and the bad times, and find a way to avoid making the same mistakes. Find a way to improve our lives because we owe ourselves that much. We owe it to who we were to put the effort of making our stories in the future greater than the ones our past tells. One way or the other, the clock is ticking. But time doesn’t matter, we are not slaves of some grand clockwork design. It’s all about the stories and making the new ones better than the old ones.
Happy belated two-year anniversary to the Phantom Child, I guess. Hopefully some better writing pieces of mine in the future will overshadow the bad ones from my past. I’ve found a plethora of fantastic blogs to follow here, I only wish I could read every single post you folks have shared and find a way for my blog’s content to match the greatness of yours. I’ve made quite a few friends through this blog, and a golden rule says never disappoint your friends. Hope you’re all enjoying your weekend!
The Phantom Child 