A question to all bloggers
DO YOU EVER READ BACK ON YOUR OLD POSTS?
Can you see growth in your personal life? Regression?
Are there things you regret having said in previous posts?
Has your true voice changed?
AND SPECIFICALLY FOR BIPOLAR BLOGGERS:
Can you ever see the same-old, same-old patterns in your life?
Are you ever embarrassed about posts that you wrote when you were hypo?
Does looking back help you get a much-needed perspective on your life?
OR IS IT JUST BETTER TO MOVE ON - FOCUS ON THE PRESENT AND FUTURE RATHER THAN THE ANALYSING PAST?
Hell, I read old posts all the time- and I've only had a bipolar blog since novemember. And now that people from work read I'm a little bit more politically correct: but not so much. I think its good to see where you were, where you are- and its kinda funny to read back. I do it all the time.
ReplyDeleteIn driving a car you need to look in your rear view mirror every 8 seconds.
ReplyDeleteIn life you need to look back, but as a reference point and not a fixation.
Focusing on the presents determines the truth in your voice and you have the power to say it. You don't have a voice in the past and your future voice is yet to be compiled by what you are doing today.
So speak now or forever hold your peace. Suppose easier said than done.
V.
i only like myself hypo!
ReplyDeleteits the low one's make me cringe, talk about same old same old...waaah
:)
Your online journal is an immediate source of reflection, nostalgia even. I am sure we have all come across things we have wrote in the past, "Did I write that?". We are all evolving, different branches, different leaves. However, the trunk remains the same. Just gets a bit thicker :).
ReplyDeleteI love some of my old post, then there are some of mine that I would rather just do with out, but like life I can't have one without the other really.
ReplyDeleteI don't know so much about showing growth or progression but it gives me an outlet that I don't have in the offline world and a certain freedom that I just can't afford to turn off by hitting the delete post because it might be crap or because it might be embarrassing later. If I post it I did it for a reason. And for me that must have seemed like a pretty good reason at the time. It could be something that I felt or could have been a detriment to my mental state at the time so I may have to reflect on that and remember why I did such a thing in the first place.
I really don't know where I am going with this but I'm hoping that something came out of my comment.
Take care and I hope that this finds you in good spirits. ;)
i'm narciZZistic enough without having to go back and reread my shit, thus i don't blog, i excercise impermanence, every time i post an entry, i delete the previous.
ReplyDelete& it's not like a hold onto the crap on a hard disk or some place hidden either. i used to have a blog i kept for 4 years (2oo2-2oo6) and i blew away that one too, completely.
i also am burning in short order my handwritten diary which i've kept from 10 grade in high school, fuck half my lifetime, all gone baby, all gone.
at least in the writing world, i can truly maintain I LIVE 100% IN THE NOW!
just like you've discovered mood charting is bullshit, so is blogging. it's quite a release actually to surrender all that "creative" work back where it came from - into nothingness.
but hey, nuttin wrong believing the Y project will live for an eternity and thus you too will be cursed with immortality. heh!
the only time I read my old posts is as reference. On occasion questions have come up as to when this or that happened or how long I had been depressed and I can look it up. That has only happened once or twice. I think a couple times I have looked back to show pictures of the baby and my sons smashed up car to people who wanted to see them. For the most part I dont look back. I didnt start this blog for any particular reason, just thought I had to had have one to respond on others and I dont keep one for any particular reason. I do find sometimes it helps me get stuff out of my head so I can sleep. Sometimes its fun to put stuff up so I can share it with friends. Sometimes its a vent. There is not any particular purpose in having a blog for me. So there is no particular purpose in looking back either, I guess,never occurred to me to do so. Maybe I'm just too busy trying to deal with today to worry bout last year?
ReplyDeleteSometimes I do. It helps with the perspective.
ReplyDeleteThere has been some growth, but I'm also seeing the patterns now more clearly.
I don't really like myself manic, but I hate feeling sad and needy far more. Prefer to feel stable. Unfortunately that's even less likely.
I've been blogging for just over a year now and my first posts were generaly auto-biographical in an attempt to bring possible readers up to date on who I've been. I'm pretty much myself again in the present these days so what I blog about is generally more current. And no, unless I'm overwhelmingly burdened with ennui I never read any posts below the bottom of the page.
ReplyDeleteI'm also happier now and just beginning a new international relationship with a young lady in Japan who doesn't have a computer. She reads all my e-mails on her cellular phone. I think I'll be sending her a lot of letters and postcards for a while so If the blog slackens a bit please excuse my focus being elsewhere.
I do a monthly print out of my blog and put it into a 3-binder folder...
ReplyDeleteIt is a GREAT way to look back because you can sit in your bed or go over your pasts post while watching TV and not have to sit in front of a computer...
I don't regret anything I say as I am ALWAYS honest with who I am and how I feel :)
I was in such denial when I was first diagnosed and after a year of being diagnosed I started my blog, and looking back all the time helped me HUGELY to really understand my illness, to see my ups and downs and realize that I really am Bipolar 1....
I always tell others to print out your blog...Things are ALWAYS for FREE...one day Blogger just might charge us:)
I meant to say "Things aren't always for free!"
ReplyDeleteI pretty much never read my old posts. I'm afraid to.
ReplyDeleteI read them to death this year, then started to detest my blog in the way you detest a room in which you have been ill, all medicine bottles, magazines, stale air and coffee cups. So I decided to put anything that reminded me of being sick in a different blog, privately protected, at 4 in the morning. Do you know how horribly easy it is to delete a blogger blog when you're half-asleep? there isn't an "are you sure" message like you get when you delete a comment- one wrong click and it's gone. I felt shocked. Then I felt relieved. And now I still feel shocked and relieved if I think about it. Which is not very often. Onwards! :)
ReplyDelete