My first blog post was on July 3, 2007.

No picture. No “my thoughts from…” sign-off. I didn’t even know what I was doing was called a post. I typed— this is my very first blog entry. I thanked all zero of the people following my blog at the time for “letting me sort it out here.”

I was clearly trying to start something twelve years ago, struggling to hang onto a shred of identity amid the knock-to-my-ass waves of marriage and motherhood. I was unsure and finding what I would later learn was “a voice.”

If I could go back in time and sit next to that woman in her mid-thirties on the bed in my mom’s house the day before the Fourth of July parade, I could save her so much angst and tell her so many things. It is a fact that the me-back-then was a clueless hot mess.

But, I don’t have a Delorian, so the edges of beginning have worn soft in reflection. I’m taken by the romance of writing for years for no one but myself.

Before I knew what followers were or how to write anything. Anything. The me-in-reflection is free and poised to fail. She’s still patting herself on the back for figuring out WordPress and thinks herself incredibly witty.

She doesn’t know yet that her writing is brimming with filler words, that she has so much to learn, or that in a few years she will be more vulnerable than she has ever been in her life.  She’s not concerned with “brand” or “reach.” She’s not even on social media, let alone thinking about “content” and “analytics.”

She’s simple. She makes me smile, and I miss her today.

Everything says I am stronger now. Better now. But, I’ve lost something in all these years of posting, writing, trying to market “me.”

I have never liked looking back. Not because it hurts, but because I’ve always thought there was nothing I could do with what’s back there.

Now is all I have. Now is productive and I’m happy with my eyes forward.

But, I’ve picked up a lot of new crap on my way to the shiny-new-experienced now. Maybe there is value in a blog “entry” and the unmitigated pure bliss of not knowing.

Maybe instead of the details of who I was then and where I’m at now, I need to plop down on my stomach with me-in-reflection who wanted to say something and had nothing to lose.

I’ll try that.

She seems like she’s more fun than the me-these-days. But, I’m keeping my now-hair because there was nothing good about my 2007-hair.

My thoughts from the… eh, not today.

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