One activity I never fail to enjoy is the re-reading my old diary entries. I also never fail to cringe inwardly at what I thought was the most exciting highlights of my day or what I actually found interesting enough to write about.

Too many of my blog entries from way back when have been about cute boys (actually, come to think of it, nothing’s changed much since then) and about things that seemed like they meant the whole world to me, but were in fact really specks of dust in the whole scheme of things.

It doesn’t help that they sound like the random ramblings of a teenage girl, which even in the privacy of my own room and many years on, still make feel embarrassed for my 16-year-old self.

One of the more memorable (and utterly cringe-worthy) entries I’ve written contains almost no paragraphs, long run-on sentences, very few full stops or commas, plenty of exclamation marks and even more words entirely in uppercase to highlight my state of distress.

In it, I was going on and on about how my “Mortal”, A, was so lazy that he never replied mails or did anything nice in return. That entry also chronicled how deeply envious I was of my fellow “Angel” friends who would get consistent replies from their “Mortals” with equally fancy and lovely trinkets in return. (Back then, the Angel-Mortal game, which is something like Secret Santa but with letters and small gifts, was all the rage).

Believe me, if I wasn’t so embarrassed by what I wrote, I would have excerpted a section of it here for everyone to read. But I am.

But what I do like about re-reading my old blogs is how it reminds me of how naïve I was then, and therefore in retrospect, how much I’ve grown.

What’s even more important though, is how it really puts everything into perspective.

For one, I know that whatever seemingly huge wall of doom I am up against right now, I now realise that in hindsight, it will seem as miserable as a flimsy wafer, so why worry so much? There are much bigger things to worry about in this world.

Secondly, without my past mistakes and experiences all recorded in one place, how else would I remember to learn from them and make sure I don’t do the same stupid thing(s) all over again?

Ultimately, I think it is all about remembering the past, so irregardless of whether it was filled with tears or laughter, having that memory itself is all that’s important, at least to me, since I have a mind like a sieve.

I’ve stopped blogging for awhile now, after all, the blogging trend faded as fast as it began, but I might very well just start again. Hopefully, in a few years, when I look back at what I’ve written today, I’ll like what I see, with a lot less cringing.