The pretentiousness of reading your own writing

I wonder if authors sit and read their own books again and again. This suggests some sort of pretentious arrogance - that something you wrote was worth reading more than once.

Of course, if other people think it worthy of reading more than once, why shouldn't you.

This particular vein of thought sprang forth as I rediscovered a blog I created some time ago. You can read it here. It's called "Devotions with Jonathan" and it's all about the Bible. If you're not Christian, you might not find it interesting - but you never know. I'm pretty poetic sometimes. (Yes I'm aware that makes me look like an egotistical airhead.)

My life has changed much since I wrote those blogs three years ago. One might even say that I've taken many steps backwards from those days. It's funny, because everything that I say there is still just as relevant to my life, but in a totally different way. Strange how that works. Reading those blogs, I feel like past Jonathan is finger wagging future Jonathan. And I can't even resort to the platitudal "Don't judge me" or "Don't tell me what to do" for obvious reasons. (Can you imagine someone telling themselves "don't tell me what to do?" The absurdity of the situation makes me actually laugh out loud.)

And yet my heart seems to have hardened somewhere along the line. I find myself caring less. I find myself nostalgically reminscing that those were good times, but things are different now. But pray tell what's so different now? I seem to have been a better person then; at least this is what my writings suggest.

My writings also suggest that my writing style has changed somewhat since then. I don't write in such long sentences. My thoughts are more clipped. I have far more paragraphs than I need. Apparently, the hours of video gaming have finally turned my brain into mush.

I was going to talk about a new endeavour that I was considering. That new endeavour seems like a poor choice after having spent the last hour reading my devotional blog.

Spiritual conviction is a funny thing.