Comparing yourself to.....yourself?

Last night I was going through some photos to post and organize online, some of which were of myself taken either alone or with friends. I found myself really looking at my features, how I looked 'back then' as opposed to now. In most of the pictures, I thought I looked attractive...thinner even. It made me wonder if I really looked better and more attractive in those pictures than I am now or if my mind is just playing games with itself to mess with me psychologically. Does anyone else do this (have you ever felt this way?) or am I crazy?

Maybe it's also a matter of my not being happy with the way I look these days, as I have very little time with my work schedule and commute to exercise. I need to do something about it because I feel really gross and not as healthy or confident as I do when I am able to workout regularly. It's more than physically though.

It also permeates into my creative talents and abilities too. I find myself comparing my writing now to my writing from the past. I feel like my writing isn't as juicy and interesting as it was when I was living in Chicago. My imagination felt more vivid and quirky, possibly due to living in a highly stimulated city?

One would think a writer's works would become more original, less dull. Then again, look at some of the great writers of our time who churned out their "great American (or European,etc.) novel" at a ripe twenty-something age, only to disappear into obscurity thereafter. How can one go backward from greatness? If it's a process of evolution, wouldn't it only get better? Or is it having expectation of the outcome that threatens our aptitude for joy, creativity and success in our endeavors?

Last weekend when my friend K. was visiting, I was telling her how I felt the most creative and quirky with my expressing that side of my personality when I was working at the bookstore. I wrote in a journal regularly, wrote entertaining and descriptive character sketches of different 'characters' (ie, actual real people who I thought were odd and interesting to make characters out of for a possible story one day: coworkers, customers, homeless regulars), and I always had something to write about. I wrote letters and emails to people regularly, papers for school, jot down thoughts I happened to be pondering or experiences I had. It was a good balance of using my imagination and my intellect. I was also in grad school, so maybe being in both an academic and literary environment helped balance these aspects of myself. Still, it boggles my mind.

Sometimes I wonder if my creativity would be more pronounced if I didn't have to be as engrossed in my therapy work. It's as if most of my creative and analytical faculties get channeled into that to where there's not much left in my brain. It would be so nice if I could do counseling work part-time and then do my writing and photography as my other 'part-time' gig....

Just to demonstrate what I'm talking about as far as things I have written in the past, I am going to gather some things I've written in years past and post them here as I come across them. I want people to see writings that have only seen my eyes, my pre-blogging years. May the Katie from Chicago past help inspire the bloggin' Katie present....