When you start one of these websites, the first post is always titled “Hello world” by default. I find that both interesting and completely redundant at this point. Before I was a pastor I was a web designer and internet consultant for small businesses learning how to use the internet.
Yes indeed, I’m that old.
I still look fondly back at the days of designing websites with code in dreamweaver.
Then along came this new software called wordpress and the early designers decided to give a nod to the old anthem “Hello Dolly,” and it stuck around.
I wonder how many people have their names attached to an old website lost somewhere in the interwebs that says “hello world” somewhere a mile down the page. I wonder how many of these my own name is stuck to lost out there in the world.
The truth is, I just spent a couple hours deleting everything on this old server and simply starting fresh because I haven’t touched it in more than a decade. I guess I just got busy. Maybe I didn’t want to look my past in the eye.
You ever get the feeling that looking behind you with too much focus will be terrifying? Maybe you’ll see all the things you did poorly and feel shame. Maybe you will notice all the things left undone and feel regret.
I once sent an email to myself in the future through some service that would hold it and deliver it later. Kinda like Western Union in that Back to the Future sequel. Big mistake. I read it several years later and saw how far short I had fallen, and how stupid younger me had been.
Yea, looking back is scary. Sometimes you even notice the same monster that was hiding under your bed when you were little just grew up with you and is still stalking you.
Or worse, you look back and nothing really has changed at all.
It’s funny how some things never change. Either because we’ve just got too many other things to do or because we just get used to plodding our way through life.
At any rate, I suppose that’s the reason I deleted everything and set this new old hello world post up. I don’t want to plod my way through life. And I don’t suppose you do either.
We all have a tendency to move forward with our heads down so we don’t have to engage too much of the crap that we learn life has in store for us. The problem with plodding along like that is that we also miss out on a whole lot of beautiful stuff too.
So let me encourage you to lift up your chin, look ahead bravely, and learn to enjoy the days that are in front of you. They’re coming, you may as well enjoy them.
So, hello world again.