I made an interesting discovery today. I found my old blog from 2014, created nearly nine years ago. I had started it a few months before I transferred from community college to university with the intention of teaching myself. Here’s my first post from it compared to my first post from this blog.
It’s shocking how little I changed from nearly a decade ago. My goals are the same – to pursue knowledge. My interests are the same – programming, video games, art, and music. My struggles are the same – being unable to finish the goals I’ve set for myself and learn the skills I want to. And last of all, my sense of humor hasn’t changed (still making fun of myself for being a hermit).
One line in my old post that stuck out to me was this one:
While some people long for love or money, this is my aspiration in life: knowledge.
https://alinda-h.blogspot.com/2014/06/having-learned-much.html
Interesting to see how my desires have shifted. Back then, love and money weren’t priorities in my life. While I do see my pursuit of knowledge as still my main priority, I’ve come to accept that I now do want love and yearn for money.
It weirdly bothers me I’ve grown to want money so much. It seems like nowadays, I’m always thinking of alternative ways to make extra cash to supplement my main job. In fact, this blog originally had monetary motivations to some extent although I don’t expect to make anything from it. When I realized money was the key to freedom, not having it created an ache in my heart and I constantly stressed out about it. I guess needing to pay for rent and bills will do that to you.
Anyway, it was cool to see that I did sort of achieve one of my old goals. I have the experience of creating a handful of browser games under my belt now. Unfortunately, beyond that, it doesn’t feel like I’ve made progress in any of the other skills. I’m certainly a better programmer now than I was then, but beyond that, I haven’t seen much improvement for anything else on that list.
I also found it mildly amusing that math was something I wanted to learn enough to put on that list. Ha! Fucking nerd. Ok, I still think it’d be fun to learn math again, but unfortunately, with so many other much more fun things I’d want to learn, math kinda just plunges to the abyss.
I guess my only deadline for learning most of these things is death (or if I, God forbid, get dementia or become brain dead in some way). There’s no real rush, and learning is a lifelong process, but I’d still like to feel competent in the hobbies I enjoy sooner than later.
Anyway, it was fun to stumble upon 20-year-old me on the internet. Really makes you reflect on yourself, how far you’ve come, and how much (or how little) you’ve changed.