Sentimental Journey

They say not to look back, but if you’re not sure what lies ahead, what else is there but looking back?
― Laurell K. Hamilton

Looking back through life, you will find the pleasure of achieving your dreams is always greater than the pain you met while achieving them.
― Moffat Machingura

The years go by. The time, it does fly. Every single second is a moment in time that passes. And it seems like nothing–but when you’re looking back… well, it amounts to everything
— Ray Bradbury

For Christmas, one of the things I shared with my sisters was a series of home movies made when we were kids that I’d had converted to DVD format. I wish I’d done it years ago, because they were pretty degraded in quality.

Still, it was kind of fun to take that walk down memory lane with what the company that did the conversion was able to salvage. And now I can take that sentimental journey any time I’m feeling nostalgic without having to worry about further corrupting those old, Super 8 film reels.

But a couple of weeks ago I took a sentimental journey of another kind. I can’t remember exactly what prompted it, other than a big attack of writerly angst, but I started going back over some of my early blog posts. I was curious to see what, if anything, had changed in the last 15 years.

While naturally a lot has changed in that time, I was more focused on my blog posting. What I discovered was that in the beginning my posts were shorter but more frequent, and I had no structure as to what and when I was posting.

But then I went down this dark rabbit hole when I realized how little other things had changed. It was a little depressing really, and I sure don’t need any help in that department.

When things aren’t going well, sometimes it can be really hard not to dwell in the past, but I have to agree with Henry Ward Beecher, who said: Too much looking backward… is bad for progress.

How about you, do you often take a sentimental journey? And do you enjoy the trip?