This is the first time I’m writing a blog post in over a decade. I back up most things, including most of my blog entries between 2003 and 2010, and I’ve come across them a few times. Whenever I’ve faced them, I’ve had a strange feeling.

On one side, like many people looking back at their younger selves, I cringe a bit over what I wrote when I was younger. On the other side, I admire the creativity and fun behind those posts. I can tell that the person behind them was someone who practiced often and read a lot.

I’ve set up this blog to have the chance to express myself on the internet in ways other than tweets or Instagram stories. I want to realign some of that focus that I’ve given to social media over the last few years. I think writing long-form texts often, whether online or in my physical journal, does the mind good.

I plan to give the address of this blog to just a few friends and maybe post the link on Blogroll.org after I’ve written some entries.

I will try not to worry too much about my future self finding cringe what I write now, or that my friends do. And I know they won’t. 5 years into the future, will I stand by everything I’ve typed today, and also not find it cringe? Probably not.

But one thing that’s recently changed is that, with help, I’m learning to be more compassionate toward myself, and my past self. And I won’t judge someone who was excited about writing in that cool thing that the internet is.