Beginning soon after the inception of my blog, I would periodically publish a post using an alter-ego named Mr. Id. Anyone remember my doppelganger? Don't everyone speak at once, please. Soon after publishing a memoriam in May 2019, even the evil twin's creator - i.e., me - forgot most of what he'd cravenly reflected about here on the bell curve.
But then fate intervened when several readers recently exhumed Mr. Id's four-year old corpse. Those folks had stumbled on some of Mr. Id's snarky rants and contacted me offline. To properly respond to those readers, I re-read the cited rants. If only the story ended there.
Unfortunately, that first innocent step sent me down an introspective rabbit hole. Perversely, I then searched my archives, leading me to subsequently re-read all thirty+ of Mr. Id's 2011-2019 ravings. What - you might reasonably ask - did I hope to gain by torturing myself in such a self-referential fashion? But wait .. am I that alone in the land of solipsism? When did you last re-visit a past version of yourself? And, how did you get there? Was it - like me - by reading something you wrote a while back? Or did you perhaps look at an old video or listen to an old recording of yourself? Maybe you asked someone close who has known you a long time about an earlier version of you that they've experienced? What did you learn via taking any of these paths to look at - however briefly - a past self? Last question: How did it feel when you inhumed that past self?
I've concluded that what I hoped to learn by re-reading the words of that cranky creation of mine were the opinions Pat Barton was concerned about admitting as his own at the time. By hiding behind Mr. Id - albeit in plain sight - for the eight years he crabbily roamed the blogosphere, I was hedging my bets in a cowardly fashion. It's now time to re-inhume Mr. Id. If some reader exhumes him in the future, I hope I'll avoid climbing down this rabbit hole again.
Thanks for this post. Curious why you feel that having opinions (rants) --good, bad or ugly -- is a negative thing? There's much to like and dislike in this world be it big topics (politics, climate change) or small (food preferences). We are each a citizen of our time and opinions we held in the 1980s likely will morph -- or solidify! -- over the decades. In high school I didn't particularly like history class. Now this broad topic fascinates me. Bleu cheese - once hated now loved. At a recent college reunion, throughout the weekend the same thought resurfaced: I wish I was my 2023 self in the early 1980s - friendlier, less of a loner. My basement has boxes of photos, some of which I'll glance at when waiting for a laundry cycle. For whatever reason, I'm not particularly fond of literally looking at my past. It usually results in a negative feeling of some kind even though these photos of vacations, family events, boyfriends are happy memories. Soooooo I can see why the recent rabbit hole was unpleasant. Wow this comment is all over the place. Here endeth the ramble.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous; Thanks for the comment. In this post, I wasn't saying that having opinions is a "..negative thing", per se. What I was instead referring to was my discomfort fully owning the opinions expressed via my alter-ego, i.e., Mr. Id, in the early years of my blog. BTW, I enjoyed your "ramble"; reminded me a bit of how my brain sometimes operates. Thanks for that as well.
DeleteHello Pat and, the former, Mr. Id. Hope this finds you both doing well. I can honestly say that, over the years, I have thought about a past 'me' and how things were then and, if I had taken the 'other road' how things might have been different. I have to admit that I found those thoughts to be intriguing and - at times - a little tempting. To this day my mind will still wander and I do let those thoughts in .. for a little while. But then I remind myself of what it is that I wouldn't have if that other road had been taken. And I'm right back to my reality, my life. Although I believe that most would say that not everything is perfect, I'm very happy and content with the choices I've made.
ReplyDeleteBe well,
Bob
Bob (hat trick); Thanks for the comment, especially the nod to my alter-ego. Your embrace of the current joy in your life - past self navel-gazing aside - is commendable.
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