Relooking “Old” Blog Posts
“I tend to write only what’s on my mind, at present.
But almost everything I know, I knew in the past.”
Over the next few days, I will be importing material from my old blog, written back in 2012 to 2013. Then, I was serving National Service as an office clerk. It follows that the blog mainly constituted an escape. It was an escape from alienation – cue Marx – not only from work monotony, but also from loneliness. Cubicles are hurdles too high. I turned to the blog for friendship.
Old posts are refreshing. Nostalgia is one thing. Scanning them now, I notice differences in how I used to write. It boiled down to this: I was unabashedly personal in my point-of-view. Thus I was more experimental in my openings and more free-spirited in my conclusions. Curiously, the goal then was already – vaguely – to write about social topics.
Reading them made me question my present incarnation as a blogger. I’ve become more conscious of the need for a coherent blog vision. In the process I’ve become more serious (or boring). Generalist as SmartCasualSG may be, I’m subjecting myself more rigidly to the confines of particular themes. This is as Education post; that is a Culture post. I do straddle categories, but perhaps I’m galloping off the wrong foot.
I’ve reached a point when I’m clear on the what and why, but murky on the how. With this mental impasse, why don’t I turn around and look back on more prolific times? It indeed surprises me that several “old” posts do actually fit within the broad parameters of this (really no longer) “new” blog. Each of them may generate ideas on how I can leap over present hurdles.
I can do it now, because I’m no longer leashed by those demons of yesteryears.
Review
Ironically, I have somewhat narrowed my conceptions after expanding it with a trip into the past. I decided that I need to challenge myself more, in terms of craft and in terms of building on the knowledge of others. There are obvious limits of drawing insight cleanly from only my experiences. I thus seek to read more, write from what I read, and focus on what can be learned.
