Pages from the Past: Digging into our personal archives
The Invitation
Join me for an evening where we dust off our personal archives and share words our past selves wrote. Every piece - whether carefully crafted or hastily captured - tells a story of who we once were, who we thought we'd become, and how we've changed since then.
The Premise
Each person reads aloud a piece of writing from their past and provides brief context about when/why they wrote it (about 5-7 minutes per person).
After each reading, there will be a Q&A (about 7-10 minutes per person) where we explore how these writings reflect our journeys - what shaped us then, what's evolved since, and what still rings true today. We might discover shared experiences, surprising growth, wisdom we didn't know we had, or even inspiration for our current selves.
The Archives
All forms of writing welcome. For example:
A journal entry from your teenage diary
The conclusion from your first piece of published research
An unshared or unfinished poem or letter
A phone note of an idea you didn't want to forget, or a midnight reflection that seemed deep at the time but is actually just dumb
A cover letter or professional biography that you meticulously drafted during a different career stage
A blog post you never published
A grant or project proposal you were excited about (successful or failed) that changed your direction
Your personal values or an end-of-year retrospective
Some tough feedback you drafted to a colleague, or a friend, or anonymously to someone you actually didn't know all that well
A travel journal entry from a memorable trip
A letter of recommendation written by your old manager (but really, you wrote most of it)
A braindump or longlist of ideas you were once excited about
The past is now! Is there something you plan to write between now and this event that this event will motivate you to finish and share?