Tabula Sordida: there's no erasing the past
Bringing back old blog posts
In December 2023, I wrote a post about how I intended to stop traveling and start focusing more on my writing in 2024. Yet, in my infamous fashion, I proceeded to delete my blog entirely as soon as the new year commenced. Thankfully, I saved a backup copy and today I restored my old posts (and ended the paywall) for your reading pleasure.
Rather than become a full-time writer as I had intended in January, I couldn’t shake the call to be of direct service. Despite even writing a post about how writing is a way to be of service, I couldn’t convince myself it was good enough. Instead, I focused my time helping at a legal clinic for six months. I learned a lot, helped a few and now as the year approaches its conclusion I’m in the writer’s seat once again.
Looking back, it’s funny how much I craved tabula rasa, the blank slate. I no longer fancied myself a writer and wanted to erase as much of that part of my identity as possible, never mind the countless hours I spent writing over the past 16 years, I was putting that behind me and starting a new life. Well, fight as I might, the truth is that my past is always there, no matter whether I like it or not. Hence the title of this post: tabula sordida. And not just ‘there’ in terms of physical artifacts, but also in the memories of all those who know me or have read my writing. Not to mention my own mind.
That drive to reinvent myself has thankfully passed for the time being, although I am sure it will emerge once again - perhaps I will be more prepared to deal with it in the future. For now, I’m back to picking up the writing projects that have been gathering dust over the past few years. As I mentioned in my post last week, the time volunteering has helped me better appreciate what it means to really commit to something and now I am able to take that on in a way I wasn’t prepared to when the year began.
It was interesting to look back through my old posts as I went through the inconveniently tedious process of restoring them. Unfortunately, some characters and links got mangled and I apologize for that imperfection. While reviewing my old travelogues, I was reminded that there is a lot more I have to share based on those experiences. It’s always more tempting to take off on a new adventure, rather than sit down and dive deep into sharing what I discovered on previous ones. While I swore off travel at the end of last year to do just that, I ended up going on four more adventures this year (to France, Italy, Alaska and Iceland) in addition to my legal clinic volunteering. So if anything, the real lesson hasn’t been whether or not to travel or write so much as not to make commitments I don’t intend on keeping. There’s nothing wrong with traveling or writing, they are both wonderful privileges. Escaping the perfectionist binaries is an ongoing struggle I face as I continue to compose the tabula sordida that is my life.