Thanks, Past Self

It helps to codify your thinking. Whether you agree or disagree five years down the road, you’ve given yourself a place to start, and clarified your thinking along the way.

As I’ve continued this daily project for nearly seven years, I’ve spent hundreds of hours turning thousands of ideas into little mini-essays about creativity, choral music, and education. I’ve turned my thinking into words I can search later.

And search them I do – when I need inspiration, or when I need to remember a concept that I know I wrote down. Just recently, I went and looked up a series I wrote five years ago, because the concepts are important to share with my current students. Thanks, past me!

Like many people, I don’t really know what I think until I can turn it into words – which is one of the reasons I love teaching! It’s a journey of discovery.

When I write down my ideas, I save those ideas for the future. I am giving a gift to my future self.