reconciling with the past creative self.

GO GIRL INDEED: My 2007 column.

Once upon a time, I had a newspaper column. It was 2007, I was 25, and it was — excruciatingly — called ‘Go Girl’. I can feel you cringing. Don’t worry, I am too.

I shared the column with two other women, journalists who I felt had far more informed opinions than I. We would take turns in sharing our ‘female perspectives’ (lol) on topics of our choosing.

It all sounds very Carrie Bradshaw, but it wasn’t. More often than not, I was scrounging for ideas and resenting the fact my life wasn’t interesting enough to warrant this platform I had been given, which many would consider a privilege.

I saved some of these columns, and I stumbled across them recently while going through storage boxes.

And look, they haven’t aged well. The writing itself was not as bad as I feared, but the topics … oh, the topics. Hair colour. Fashion critiques. Friendship dramas. It’s all kind of naive, immature and superficial.

SAME BUT DIFFERENT: Taylor Swift’s Fearless and Red albums, original and re-recorded.

Unless you have been living under a pop-culture rock, you’ll know Taylor Swift has been re-recording her old albums in order to regain ownership over them. It’s a genius move, creatively and professionally speaking, but one that got me thinking. These albums are near-perfect copies of the originals, with a few songs ‘from the vault’ (written at that time but didn’t make the cut) thrown in too. Listening to the albums — Fearless from 2008 and Red from 2012 — reminded me so much of my own work from that time: sweet and innocent and a little juvenile.

How utterly bizarre it must feel to have this time capsule of yourself out in the world, for anyone to examine and critique, when it’s not who you are anymore. The desire to just tweak a lyric here, reinvent a chorus there, must have been excruciating for such a creative mind!

All art is, in essence, a product of its time. Film, television, music and literature can’t help but be frozen in the era they were created. Sure, they are still available — the best ones are reprinted or remastered for future generations to enjoy, old faves are rebooted with a modern slant — but the same people have not reproduced the same material only decades later.

Take Friends. I LOVE Friends, I rewatch it often, it’s like comfort food. But could you imagine if the whole cast filmed the entire thing again, exactly as it was? Some of it is problematic to look back on through a 2022 lens. We don’t tolerate sexist, homophobic, fatphobic jokes in our art anymore (thank god!).

So (taking the many millions of dollars off the table), could I do a Taylor and re-release my past work into the world? Work that reflects a time when I was young and unrefined and irresponsible?

My initial thought is no. No no no no no HELL NO. How mortifying. How embarrassing. What would people THINK?

But then I decided to be gentle with myself. Our twenties are meant to be about fun, freedom and building life experiences, right? Poor decisions and trivial pursuits. Discovering who we are and what we want from our career, from relationships, from ourselves.

Just like Taylor’s Versions, those columns are a snapshot of a time in my life when those topics were relevant to me, and I did the best I could.

In fact, I can look back with immense gratitude that frivolous topics were my only fodder. Many others are not so lucky. Check your privilege, girl.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that no, I would never allow these columns to see the light of day again (unless those many millions of dollars are put back on the table, of course), but they are providing some solid inspiration for my novel writing.

So it seems they do still have relevancy after all. 

HOW ABOUT YOU? Are you proud or a bit embarrassed by the creative work you made when you were younger? How would you feel releasing it into the world now?