On the week of my birthday in the year that I graduated from high school, a new movie was released. It was The Way We Were with Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford, two of the hottest hotties of the time.
I guess I remembered this movie title because I too was reminiscing about the distant past and how the me of today relates to that person from so long ago. Some things are recognizable as the same as today’s me, and others are so very different I don’t recognize her.
Does it make you chuckle when you think sometimes about the way you were back in the day? I think it’s funny that my first-grade report cards, each marking period had a note in red ink under the social skills category, “talks too much.”
Apart from having grown up, filled out, and gone through many, changing life circumstances, have you changed much? I still talk too much.
I can talk to just about anybody about nearly any topic, given my interest in the subject. And, as you know, I write about everything under the sun. You get my drift then, some personality traits do not change, they evolve, encompassing all the matter that has accumulated in our DNA, since.
One can be quiet but not shy. We can be introverts who are the life of the party. Extroverts can be tortured by social anxiety in certain situations. Some people can be orators but avoid small talk. Have you met someone verbose for whom social gatherings are an endurance test?
In high school I was in a lot of clubs and extracurricular activities. I dabbled, as to my interests. Today I guess I still dabble.
I will write a lot about a little of everything. My husband and I don’t always leave the tree where we first planted it. Our property has within its bounds, one of these, two of that, totaling a whole lot of various plants. That’s the way we like it.
I went to college, not at the traditional time. I dabbled in business and travel first. Have you ever noticed that some people knew what they wanted to do as their life work, way back in their past? Others have had fits and starts where they tested their fit. They moved their trees, so to speak.
Today, I’m not yet retired, but probably should be. But the takeaway is, variety is still the spice of my life.
Having a home-based business is not for everybody. There is a strange discipline, yet scheduling freedom built into such a business. Some stuff has got to be done, like it or not. This reminds me of an internet saying I recall, which fits the self-employed to a tee: “Do it tired. Do it sad. Do it unmotivated. Do it scared. Do it alone.”
I can in one day, prepare an extravagant home-cooked marvel, oversee the shipment of multiple packages to one part of the world or another, schedule the payment of this or that invoice, play with my grandson utilizing his on-site corn tent and multiple diggers, shovels, rakes and so on; I can stack firewood, at which my husband claims I am a master, do the laundry, organize the database to accommodate a new computer system, jog for at least twenty minutes, mow part of the lawn; oh, and write a blog post.
This is not a litany of complaint. Instead, it is an example of the variety of activities in which I thrive as a fully grown adult. However, this list of potential daily activities is not uncharacteristic of the teenager who stayed active in a whole bunch of clubs, in and out of school.
My lifestyle is neither here nor there but to show you an example of how a personality evolves but doesn’t necessarily change. I challenge you to look for the thread or tapestry that has run through your life.
You and I are likely not the way we were. The way we are now, like it or not, has a glimmer of that self from a while ago, but with a twist. That’s called evolution.
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