Writing to a past version of myself

Left to my own devices, I write in the second person. With apologies to my high school English teachers, I have a justification for this: I’m writing to myself from one, five, ten, twenty years ago.

I’m writing a thing on the skill of reading framework code. I try to keep in mind that I should write to you the reader from me the first person, so as not to project upon you. But I keep writing to you the past version of myself, like I’m Scrooged‘ing myself, sending back little bits of wisdom about things that worked out for future me and things that future me wishes past me tried differently.

So sometimes you, the reader, will see me hastily publish something written in the second person. Sometimes I’m diligent and search&replace for “you”. Tools like Grammarly could probably help me here. But sometimes, I like to leave in the notes to my past or future self. 🤷‍♂️

Adam Keys @therealadam