Changes

Everybody changes - we go through different times in our lives, learn new things, change our outlook on life. 

I was re-reading some of my earlier creative work today and I couldn’t help but cringe a little at it. I am a very different person to who I was 12 years ago when it was written, in a lot of ways, and its a little hard to digest. 

It’s all different aspects of the work, too. I think my writing style and ability to story tell has matured, I think my approach to social progression has changed and I am in effect just not the same writer anymore that I was back then. It’s neither a good or bad thing, just an observation. 

I can even see from my own writing how time has progressed. In order to ever publish the book needs a lot of work to both update it to modern times (12 years ago was a surprisingly different time) and for appropriateness. I’m almost ashamed to say that not everything about it is either politically correct or reflective of my personal views today. 

Change is a good thing though - we’re always changing, for better or worse. It’s valuable to look back sometimes and its entirely true that hindsight is 20/20 (let’s not get into the year 2020, that’s its own thing). I’m glad that I’ve changed the way that I have even if it means I’m not as proud of my past work as I used to be. At least it isn’t published and out there for people to critique from a contemporary lense besides myself. That being said though - historical context is an extremely important thing to remember when interpreting any text (from books to film and tv). No matter what your understanding or take away from the text is, you can’t remove the text from the context of its initial creation. History 101. 

I can re-write my works, but I can’t remove the original work from its context - the context of who and where in life I was, what I knew and what I believed. I can disagree with aspects and cringe at it but now its a time capsule in a sense. 

Never be afraid to change and improve and reflect. We can’t change the past, but we can do our best for the future. 

Sam xox