What I learned from rediscovering my childhood Tumblr account

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 an…