hello,

i was going to preface this tradition with just another little self deprecating spiel degrading the annual bursts of emotions that i get while writing these notes. as if i, now an adult, cannot even allow myself to have and remember and experience my own feelings without tearing them down as as silly and immature first. as if i need to write a paragraph-long disclaimer prefacing them and let everyone reading know that i recognize that my feelings are irrational and stupid before i even allow myself to have them.

but that sounds pretentious in my head — like criticizing myself harder and doing it first could protect my fragile ego from feeling hurt when other enact the same criticism. here’s the fallacy of the self-criticism feedback loop, however: no matter much how i try to look at what i’ve written with a dissociative stance or a veneer of objectivity, i will never be free from everything that has a claim on my heart.

loudly denouncing my past selves so i can relieve myself, in part, of the embarrassment i feel. sometimes looking at snapshots of myself in the past feels like collecting a little bit of history that doesn’t belong to me anymore. like my past self is a young sibling i feel the need to continually apologize for.

the truth is, though: that person, one year ago, two years ago, three — she was me as much as i am now her. i am slowly learning there is so little to be gleaned from shame over our past selves.

2020, in review, has been a nostalgia year. i've grown a little obsessed, in the past year, of collecting and recording memoirs of my past selves. web archives of my old blog pages & sites i used to frequent, screenshots of previous user profiles, replaying playlists i use to loop. sometimes the me of the past feels like a stranger in how i obsessively save pictures of her and constantly think about how her life was. what was she doing at this time now? what would she have said in this situation?

it feels like as the years go, it’s less about you (the person) and more about what you (the symbol of a time that has slipped through my fingers like grains of sand). i am aware that it’s unfair of me to project that burden onto you — you are not an anachronism, and you are not the person you were 5 years ago. i am guilty of sometimes having issues reconciling the rose-tinted image of you of 7 years ago superimposed over the changed person you are now.

4 years i've been writing these notes. every year it gets less and less about you and more and more about myself. i don't know if that's good or bad. i can only hope you are well.

love, a