Looking back at my writing

I spent a bit of time today reading back on my old blog posts. I can almost hear the voice of the past me speaking the words that I had written. When I had read back in the past, I had a fair amount of criticism for myself for expressing ideas and techniques that I now disagree with. However, this time, I felt appreciation for my past self for putting the time and effort into documenting my journey in dentistry.

I note several things:

• My quality of writing, structure of writing and organisation of my thoughts has improved significantly.
• I wrote about techniques which I still use today from time to time. It is very valuable to read back on these as I can actually remember the clinical scenario where I used it the first time and with the benefit of hindsight understand when they will or won't work.
• I wrote about techniques which I used but have stopped using for some reason or another. Sometimes this was because they were bad ideas, some because I found better ways of doing it and some because I now lack the patience to take these extra steps. It is a good reminder for me to focus on trying to achieve excellence and to try the best I can to avoid compromising the quality of my work.

One day I will look back on this post and be grateful to myself today for writing it. I do wonder what the future holds for myself and all of us but I hope that the principles and values that have steered my in this direction holds steady and I can continue to grow and develop in my career and as a person in general.