MEMORY LANE

Over the last few days I have finally got around to merging sections of my old blog (mostly my life in France in the mid 00s) into this one, which has meant reading and reviewing each post to decide whether I wanted to keep it as well as reformatting and refreshing images from my photo archive.

Initially I was undecided about whether to do this (and in the end I decided to publish only a few of the more neutral posts and relegate the rest to my own private files). It was a different time, place and blogging community and though I have come full circle (in the complete sense, I am back living in a studio at my parents' place in my former home town!) I am in a much different place as I was when I first entered the blogging world and have a very different approach to what and why I share online.

In a sense it's been difficult to revisit a part of my life that was so simultaneously exciting and miserable. It was an often challenging, ridiculous and exciting period of my early 30s - where I made some good decisions, some bad ones, and learned some lessons from the harsh reality of being a very poor little fish in a very popular big pond full of strangers. I channeled a lot of the frustration I was feeling through humour and hyperbole. Reading back through some of my more ridiculous struggles from the lofty vantage point of hindsight has been insightful in understanding how I tried to adapt and cope with the challenges and changes, but also a little sad in remembering the situations I tolerated at the time.

Although it was tempting to delete everything and start afresh, there are quite a few interesting travel-related posts that fit quite well with the theme of my new blog though, as is often the case when you look back on past experiences, I do wish I'd focused more on other things at the time.