Day 359: If I Checked Myself, I'd Surely Wreck Myself

A friend recently pointed out to me that one can search my blog for specific words or phrases. Such a search will bring up every blog that mentions the searched for word(s), thus allowing one to see trends and/or patterns in my writing. Fabulous. A shortcut to dissecting the frequency and timeline of my many issues, just what I was hoping for. So now if I want to see just how often alcohol has played into my personal year-long experiment I can just type in a few words (whiskey, scotch, beer) and see that in 35 separate blogs I mentioned one of these three. 35 out of 358 isn’t that bad, right?

I suppose I should be glad for this new knowledge. If the initial intent of the blog was to get to know myself better and hold myself accountable now I have an actual accounting of each issue. I can search all kinds of fun topics and reminisce. Things like, sad, lonely, low self-esteem, angry, mistake, and all sorts of lovely blasts from the past. Should I actually catalog the various blog topics of this past year would I learn anything about myself? Perhaps, but I’m not sure I even want to learn that lesson. Life is hard enough without wallowing in one’s misfortunes. When I blog about them I just let them out into the world and try not to revisit except for the most egregious of typos or grammatical mistakes.

Now, however, I have this lingering potential summary hanging over my head. I am both fascinated and repulsed by the idea of knowing who I was and what I was thinking on any given day. Imagine having the ability to recall any day of your past, would you use it, what about if it were only over a specific period of time in which you were admittedly struggling? As a person who tries diligently to live a life without regrets this factual hindsight into my past mentality is tormenting me. On one hand I am a narcissistic soul who clearly has no problem wallowing in my own life experiences be they good or bad, but I also believe in accepting and moving on without a lot of worrying over what was and what could have been.

I believe people live their lives in a manner best suited for them at any given moment in time, and to revisit that time does not necessarily mean that one’s current mentality would align with that of the past. I hope that I have grown some, learned some, and forgotten some over the last year. No one is more aware than I am that within me exists the potential for both excellence and massive stupidity. Will reviewing those choices now make me the better for it? I’m not sure and I’m even a little afraid to test it out. There may only be 35 instances of my mentioning those three drinks, but search drunk, cocktails or drinking and you’ll likely to get quite a few more hits. Some things are better left unknown and under-analyzed. I am what I am and I cannot undo anything, but I certainly do not have to relive it.