A friend of mine recently made a facebook post talking about how she was reading through her old livejournal blog history from back in the early 2000's (when livejournal was a thing), and basically how she wanted to apologize to everyone who knew or interacted with in that "10-15 years ago" window because of the sheer volume of her own cringeworthy, callous, careless or just cruel comments and posts.
I think that's a good exercise. I did the same. I'll just say ... me-in-the-present remains a bit disappointed in the conduct of me-in-the-past... I was definitely not the best version of me back then.
We are all the deeply flawed products of our upbringing, our environment, our culture, our genetics, but also of our own choices in the past. The nice part about that is, while you can't change the mortifying wreck that you probably were in the past, you are able to choose what you are in the present -- and how you-in-the-future will feel about you-now.
This part though:
I know a fair number of the old active members who are gone now are gone in part because of the pervasive, aggressive negativity that's pretty much always been a thing here. One of the things I view as a personal failure as a community admin is the number of opportunities I could have personally intervened to change that that I didn't.Originally Posted by shinta|hikari
Reply With Quote