Inspired by Facebook comments, I ended up reading through some of my old blog entries. A lot of it is in fact quite sad and pathetic, to the point where I started thinking to myself, “My God, the writer of this crap needs serious help!” (The part that isn’t sad and pathetic is random and borderline incoherent, which leads me to the same conclusion.)

But I guess things do change, no matter how much they feel exactly the same. Perspectives change. You get older. You lose your ability to tolerate annoying—and often self-inflicted—bullshit. You get better at avoiding pain and suffering.

Sometimes I wonder if the fact that I no longer have wild mood swings between intense boredom and major depression is merely because I’ve stopped being so self-analytical (which, as a side effect, has caused a sharp decrease in my blogging output, and in my writing output in general.)

At this moment in time, I actually feel like this is a net win. Except for the fact that I miss writing. But you can’t have everything.

Still, it amuses me how many times I’ve written that things have got to change. Things have changed. Most of those changes have been part and parcel of the regularly scheduled programming that I subscribed to when I decided to embark on my protracted academic endeavor which finally culminated three years ago. The rest have generally been out of my control. But I’m sure of one thing: change will continue to come.

True, my big picture hasn’t really changed much at all. I’m starting to wonder if this is as far as I’m going to get, that there ain’t no more, and I’m just counting the (hopefully) decades and years until my time is up.

Rather, the changes have been the small details. From an outsider’s perspective, the changes are probably imperceptible. As far as anyone is concerned, I haven’t changed a bit. But I can tell things have changed just from reading what I’ve written in the past. I won’t go so far as to say I’ve made any progress, but in the end, it’s all Sisyphean anyways. I might as well just hang on and enjoy the ride while it lasts, and not think about it too hard. Sure, there’s that admonition that if you don’t know where you came from, you’re not going to get to where you’re going, but I’ve decided that I’m not really that picky about my destination anyway. I might as well just keep plodding down this road, at least until I can’t keep going.