As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today
When you see photos or videos of yourself from 5-10 years ago, what goes through your mind?
Somehow, it’s appropriate that I get a prompt like this, as today is my birthday! Anything I can do to get that little nugget of trivia inserted into one of my posts.
But in all seriousness, birthdays are our time to reflect, I think, especially as when gets older; and a prompt like this truly demands that we look back on ourselves.
10 years ago… In 2015 I was in the middle of my relationship with X2. I was just starting to really get my life back together after my divorce. in fact, 2015 was the year that kid two was born. He’ll be turning 10 in a couple months.
As 10 years younger. That’s probably a better shape than than I am now. Unfortunately I wasn’t writing much at all then; as much as I right now. That is one of my regrets of that relationship. I wish that I had blogged more at the time.
I feel like I used to be a deeply reflective person. Maybe “reflective isn’t the right term I’m looking for. I’ve always been reflective. But when I was younger, I used to be a person who would really look back on things from the past. In a lot of ways, I feel like I don’t get very nostalgic about the past anymore. Almost as if once a particular chapter of my life ends, I move on. I did that when my marriage ended and I did that when my relationship with X2 ended.
At this time five years ago, we were in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdowns. My relationship with ex two had ended in just a few weeks prior, and I was back living in my childhood home. Again, this is another time that I should have been blogging about how much is for posterity sake. I would love for nothing more than to be able to look back on the time and get a feel for exactly what I was thinking. I’ve seen a few photos of myself that were taken During that time. In the spring, I started walking again. Everything was quiet outdoors. There wasn’t a lot of car traffic. I remember seeing a lot of messages written on sidewalk and even on windows and chalk: words of encouragement – not just from adults, but even from children.
Do you ever feel like we’re all just living in some strange, alternate reality? Like somewhere I’m on the way, time just branched off into this variant earth, like something out of one of the Marvel movies?
The truth is, there’s no going back. So in a lot of ways, that nostalgic part of me died. There’s one photo I have in particular that I think of. It was from opening day at the Tiger game, I think in 2014. It was X2, me, Fred and the old man. I’ve posted the photo on some of my real life social media accounts and I’ve actually cropped the X2 out of the picture now. This wasn’t like a Photoshop job, mind you. I simply cropped the photo, as she was on the far left side.
But true is I hate it. I hate it because that was the last opening day that I ever went to with the old man and asked who was there. She was a part of that. Of course, if Guillaume were available, he would’ve gone instead.
As for today, I’m looking forward. Today is my birthday. I’m picking up kid 2 later, we’re heading out to Wisconsin to meet up with kid 1 to see the college that he’ll be attending in the fall. then, I’m going to catch a couple of baseball games on my way home. I’ll be crossing two more ball parks off of my “Chase list“ I’m sure I’ll have reviews of them going up over the next few days. 
Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, đź‘Ť comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts:
- Teacher Armor and the Saturday Clearing
- The Extra Day: A Ten-Year Memory
- Of Training Wheels and Christmas Lights
- Charity Starts at Home (And I’m Back in My Childhood One)
- The Muscle of Empathy
The article “reflecting and reminiscing“ first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.
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