One Column, Brighter Colors

One column, bright colors, a relentless party energy that felt completely right at the time—I came across a blog recently that sent me straight back to that earlier version of this journal. Lots of Apple content, genuinely pretty women, the kind of confident, loose posting that doesn’t stop to wonder whether the internet asked for it.

There’s a specific texture to running into your past self on someone else’s domain. The kid running it was good at it the way I used to be good at it: unselfconsciously, which is the only way that particular style works. Someone had described it well once: fresh design, cheeky writing, and frivolous links. Accurate, and the compliment applies in both directions.

But there’s no going back. This journal has moved on, grown up, whatever you call the thing that happens when you stop posting everything and start trying to post something that actually matters to you. The column count changed. The energy shifted. I don’t exactly miss it—more the way you’d feel nostalgia for a louder, more carelessly dressed version of yourself at a party you left before it ended. You don’t want to go back. You just remember being that person and find it hard to believe it was the same hands typing.