What I learned from reading my own writing

Migrating my blog proved useful in more ways than one. It gave me an excuse to re-read all the articles I have ever posted to it. I realise now that I should have done that a long time.

The style, the focus, the choice of topic, it’s all markedly different now from when I wrote my first blog article, back in 2004.

I started of by writing about myself. My blog served as a diary. But as the months went by my articles became more reflective. Eventually the narrative shifted away from me and onto the world around me.

Off course with this change in focus came a change, in my mind, in the audience. Where I set out writing for friends and family, I ended up writing for a general audience, reflecting on the society I found myself in.

But if the focus of the articles changed, I still judged the world around me by my own standards. Not man but I was the measure of all things. Many grand ideas I’ve seen reflected so, for good or worse, in my own writing.

As my world view became more, for lack of a better word, contemporary, so did my ideas become more polished. I vividly remember certain events – people I met, discussion I had , books I read – that changed my mind on grand issues. I connect these events, in retrospect, to changes in the direction of my blog.

Just as my writing became more polished, and my choice of topic less unassuming, more politically engaged, et cetera, my articles shrunk in size.

At first my articles were clever because of the way in which I interwove many different narratives. Drawing such superficial connections, I notice now, is almost inversely related to how much I really opined on the matters at hand.

And so five years have passed. Even the lulls in my writing may be telling. They may coincide with great changes in direction, of my writings, of my opinions.

My blog, my diary, therefore, serves as a record of my development, in style, in mind. A difficult realisation perhaps, but also a valuable one. Migrating my blog taught me a lot about myself. It won’t be another five years before I take that opportunity again.