Dec 11, 2025
Imagine one day you discover some documents that belonged to an important historical figure in your family. You dust off the notes and read about events you only vaguely ever heard about. The first-person accounts and the old photos are amazing, and make you laugh and smile. Super cool! You notice that they were a person incredibly similar to you, maybe younger and with less wisdom, but definitely more clever.
Yes, the “historical figure” was you all along! Because of how foggy memories can be, it really can feel like being an archaeologist uncovering the past. I opened the SD card of an old android tablet and was blown away by photos I forgot about. I'll open a 10-year-old folder on my Google Drive and it's like opening a time capsule. I have a Word doc of a fiction I wrote in fourth grade, and when I found it I marvelled over how good 9-year-old Matt was at writing. My memory is terrible. There's a cliche about asking old people to reflect on their life. If it were me, I might think long and hard and look up without remembering much.
So the main reason I'm writing is to leave writing for my future self to read. I want to preserve the ideas and memories that I'd probably otherwise forget. While writing my Guatemala trip report about a year after the fact, I'd realized I'd forgotten so much of what I'd experienced. I had to piece it together with photos I took and the texts I had sent during my trip. Now that I've written about it, I feel pretty good about that week of my life.
Other reasons for me to write: