Well, to say that it feels weird to be here again is an understatement. This is a little emotional for me and I'll try to explain why.
Firstly, it's been a while since the last time I wrote here.
When I typed the address into the search bar, I was actually surprised that a 404 page didn't show up and that, instead, I saw a familiar title and design come up on the screen. There it was - my own writing, published on a web page I undoubtedly spent hours adjusting and tweaking until it was just right, down to the blue and green squares I painted by hand, scanned into a computer and digitized the old fashioned way with....wait for it.....*Microsoft Paint*.
But even the details and designs of this page speak to the reason why this is emotional for me.
All of the things about this blog that I'm just now looking at - 6+ years after posting last - might be the truest, best representation of myself that I've seen in a long time. That makes me sad, as well as fill up with love and compassion for my past self, and the self -or at least "writer" side of her - who has been hiding out somewhere inside over these last 6 years, waiting to be invited to come out and share what's on her mind.
If you do a little bit of scrolling, you'll come to the second facet of the emotions this page brings up.
"Hey folks, I haven't written in a while which seems to be a recurring theme around here, but this time I do have a good excuse. I got married!...."
I got married. That I did.
In September of 2015, I got married, and in July of 2021, I got divorced, and between those two dates, a lot of things happened. That's the shortest, one sentence version of the story that I really need to tell. I'm sure I'll go into parts of it more, in time. I don't want to convince you to be on my side, or to make a judgement call about the situation on any side of the spectrum. To be honest, I'm kind of tired of that. I'm just here to tell my own story, so that's what I'll do.
Suffice, for now, to say that there's so much I didn't know was coming. We could all say that. It's probably more rare than normal that anyone's life turns out exactly as they expect it to, for better or worse.
But it's been a ride, that's for sure. And I don't really know if I'd take it back, because here I am now, and I'm thankful for it and to have learned what I've learned, mostly about myself.
I think those might be some of the most valuable things we can learn in life-the things about ourselves.
One big thing that I learned from my former marriage and it's ending (which is another thing that makes me emotional revisiting this blog and the things I wrote on it 7+ years ago) is that others will always have thoughts and opinions on how I could do things.
Sometimes they're here for it, sometimes they disagree respectfully, sometimes not so respectfully. Sometimes they're right and sometimes their opinions are just simply different, but you gotta be brave and do what you know is right anyway.
This blog, although on a much smaller scale than the ending of "lifetime commitments", is one of those for me.
Could other people disagree with the things I write here?
Could even I scroll through the posts on this blog over the years and find ways I was overly dramatic, or naive, or cringy, or prideful, or straight up wrong about things?
I GUARANTEE it.
But I don't want to let that stop me from showing up now, even if in the future, I find out I was wrong.
Will I learn along the way? Yes. And to me, that's what matters. Creating this space and arranging these words together on the (digital) page brings me joy and, in some way, makes me feel like I'm fulfilling a part of my purpose.
That's what matters to me over never making a typo.
When the day comes that I change my mind about some of the things I wrote, or I realize I was being too dramatic or naive or cringy or prideful or stupid, it'll be ok.
It's worth creating the things that matter to me, even if one day there are parts of it that I grow out of.
I look back on the former posts on this blog and admire that I had what it took for me to bring what I had to the world, more than I admire my past self always having been right - (which I wasn't LOL).
I look back at this blog and see someone I've honestly, deeply missed.
An Anna who wrote all those past posts by carefully crafting her words together to express some concept that was important to her.
I've updated the blog theme now, but I see the page she designed all those years ago to give those posts a place to be shared, that she felt represented them well and thought was pretty.
The fact that she didn't write them or design them to impress anyone else besides herself, and solely to create something that the present Anna still feels a passion to keep making, makes me feel like I'm running into an old friend that I'm meeting again, except it's me.
And I'm grateful to run into this part of myself again.