Still learning from my fourteen-year-old self
Junior-high Haley was embarrassing and endearing in equal measure
Written on May 30th at a coffee shop in Newfoundland.
Last night I found my junior high Tumblr. I thought I’d deactivated the platform a decade ago, but some sort of cache stuck in the corners of the internet, and I stumbled upon it while trying to type my writing portfolio’s URL into Sean’s phone. (Made a typo and clicked three links deep on Google search results and got hit hard by nostalgia.) The “how I got there” part doesn’t need to be a long story—I just feel like it’s important that I wasn’t looking for my old blog. I did not set out to find pieces of my past.
They found me.
We were driving to Bonavista from St. John’s, the evening light fading, rain lazy on the windshield, when Sean had to shut off his podcast so I could reminisce aloud. He made me sing the chorus to a “song” I wrote at thirteen. (Even my toes blushed.)
I’m twice as old as when I shared the bulk of those posts. That Tumblr documentation marks the halfway point of my life. I wanted to rush back through the years and hug my past self: Tell her to stop listening to early-era Taylor Swift and pretending she understood lyrics about heartbreak (she didn’t). Say “don’t subpost like that, it’s cringy.” Smile at how pure she was. Warn her there was so much else coming, hold on to that belief if you can.
Junior-high Haley was embarrassing and endearing in equal measure.
Among the “aesthetic” reblogs (closeups of Hollister shirts and blurry beach photos, bouquets of flowers and double exposure edits) were a few dozen text posts I’d tagged as #original. One, titled “dear future babe” must never be repeated under penalty of death. Another is just the lyrics to Pretenders’s Stand by You. (#original? What was original about that? I was shocked to realize I could still sing every word despite not being able to tell you about the song’s existence a few minutes earlier, though.)
And there, after minutes of scrolling and laughing and shoving my face into my palm, was a chunk of text from March 2012— twelve years ago, almost exactly—titled “On Writing”.
It begins: “I want to travel, and I want to write. Those are the two things that I see playing a significant role in my future. … there’s nothing I love better than writing; I can just get everything out on paper. Absolutely everything. I feel so much stronger when I’m done, and smarter too. Writing makes me realize things. It helps me believe. I sound so crazy but it’s just that writing is everything to me. Through it I can be brave and understand things and tell people how I feel. Through it, I can be and do anything.”
Two months later, an untitled post: “Think for a second what would make you happy. Big things, small things, anything. What do you want out of your life? I want to be able to take pictures day to day of pointless things, keep them forever and look back and laugh. I want to be able to write and know that those who read my work won’t judge me for it. I want to be loved and feel secure, like every day will be a good day because I’m surrounded by people who can accept me … I want to have a tire swing or a trampoline and never let go of my childhood. … I don’t care so much where I live or end up, as long as I’m with those that I love. I want to be strong but real, not afraid to cry but not afraid to look up on the bright side either. I want to be unafraid of moving on and letting go. I want to be a fair person, someone who can be trusted to do what’s right. I want to stay me. I want to be wiser and smarter and braver, but deep down I want to still be loud and crazy and foolish and reckless and easily amused and easily impressed and bold and full of laughter. I want to grow and become better, but never lose myself along the way. There are a lot of problems with the way I am and I know I’m full of flaws that can be improved. But I never want to lose them entirely because without those pieces, however small they are, I wouldn’t be me.”
An anonymous question asked shortly after: When you get older, where do you want to live? I replied “I guess it doesn’t really matter so long as I’m happy and with someone I love, doing something I love.”
Was I naive for thinking the world was so simple? Or was I as smart then as I’ll ever be?
“I want to travel, and I want to write.” I don’t remember typing that, let alone posting it on the internet, but I can imagine 14-year-old Haley sitting in her parents’ office—at the old desktop computer where I was just as likely to be playing Zoo Tycoon—dreaming about the future. Making it real by shouting into the void. Regarding my current life with capital-W Wonder.
My Tumblr discovery came in the midst of a mild career crisis. (Can crises be mild? That’s the word I used when telling my mom about it, but probably “period of uncertainty” is more accurate.) I don’t even want a career in the corporate sense of the word—it’s one of the ways I feel distanced from my fellow B-school alumni—but I do want to feel self sufficient and proud of my output. Freelancing can be unstable (and content marketing drains me in a world of hyperconsumption). I took a lengthy social media break earlier this year and haven’t been working with brands on Instagram. I’m trying to figure out what I want Paws and Reflect to be, and how I should make my primary income, and if all that adds up to a whole I like.
After getting news of a client’s tightened budget, I somewhat frantically decided to resurrect my old writing portfolio. (Do I need to pivot to journalism to get paid to write anything that isn’t clickbait or sales-centric?) I was waist-deep in a CSS stylesheet I wrote five years ago when my 14-year-old self tapped me on the shoulder.
You want to travel, she said. And you want to write. That’s what you care about.
I looked around, Newfoundland’s two-lane highway glowing in the headlights, Sean’s too-long hair wrapped around his finger, Scout snoring in her crate. I saw us from above, the sunset peeking through heavy clouds, ocean cliffs surrounding our van. A firefly carving a washboard path. A beacon in the fog.
That’s what I’m doing, I whispered. That’s exactly what I’m already doing.
I can’t help but think that my 14-year-old self is prouder of me than anyone. All these other things I’ve grown concerned about—should I have more bylines? Are my old articles any good as my writing style has evolved? What if I’m never as successful as the badass writer I’m currently obsessed with?—never crossed her mind. She saw what was important. “I want to travel, and I want to write.” “I guess it doesn’t really matter so long as I’m with someone I love.” “I want to be wiser and smarter and braver, but deep down I want to still be easily amused and easily impressed and full of laughter.”
It seems I’ve hit the jackpot, rounded out the travel-love-writing trifecta, peaked at 26 years old doing exactly what my cringeworthy—but clear-eyed—freshman self thought I should.
I wouldn’t trust Past Haley’s take on healthy relationships or the merits of semicolons or anything approaching “live laugh love”. But she was right about a few points.
This life is enough for her. I will still change it, I’ll adjust and keep moving, but I will remember that it’s enough for me, too.