2025: My First Post
"Go ahead, put anything."
These words welcomed me upon reopening my Tumblr account after years of hiatus. Sure, Tumblr, I shall do my best.
Being back on Tumblr in 2025 feels like reopening the diary you stashed in your drawer for so long that you forgot it existed but somehow—miraculously, as if the stars above aligned and paved the way to the moment—made its way back on your mind, so you retrieved it to appease your mind's desires.
Tumblr's layout now is far from how it looked years ago, but I have to give props to the site developers because the user interface feels like that of any other social media platform I currently use. Despite having a lot of changes, Tumblr still feels like home. I can't help myself from looking back in the past by visiting the profiles of those whom I interacted with here years ago, as well as checking my own to see the thoughts I published here when I was a late-teenager making a sense of this world. I felt the power of nostalgia take hold of my mind and emotions as I scrolled down as far as I could.
It is actually interesting how I got back here. I purchased my current planner, the one for the year 2025, in the last quarter of 2024. I liked how smoothly the nib of my Parker pen glided on the pages of the first one, so I bought my second planner from the same maker.
For the past years, I have been using my planners simply as planners, and just like any planner, I lined up my activities for the month, week, and days to come. Indeed, they were just planners: plan, tick off the done activities, repeat, and nothing else.
However, I suddenly came to the realization that I may write more than just to-do lists in my planner; I could write things I did at work during the day—basically a journal of my activities for the day—so I can easily recall what I did should I need that information in the future. It started off simple by including what I did and discussed as a professor in my classes, who got called during recitations and what grades they received, and what topics I planned to discuss in the future. This eventually turned into writing as well personal notes, a Likert scale of some sort of how I felt during the day, and brief explanations of my highlights of the day—usually things and events that made me feel bliss, sadness, anger, or anything in between. Slowly, my planner has become a diary. It took me years to understand why people enjoy logging their daily activities, and I am enjoying it.
While writing my entry for today, my passion for writing got rekindled. Writing my thoughts directly on paper, out of my own interest, not as a graded homework, and without the use of generative AI, felt liberating. As I wrote my thoughts directly on paper, the sensation felt foreign yet so familiar. I have been so desensitized and used to technical writing that I somehow forgot how it felt to write to express oneself. This eventually led to me reaccessing Tumblr, where I posted my thoughts from time to time, which led to me making this post.
I missed how it felt to Google grammar rules and read Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing before posting. I missed selecting the entire text of my composition and pressing Ctrl + C to save myself from the headache of reconstructing my thoughts after accidentaly clicking back button or refreshing my webpage. I missed rereading my compositions and looking at it through the eyes of a random reader, and missed posting content on the internet far from the prying eyes of naysayers.
I missed writing for myself.
I find it funny looking back at my naive 12-year-old self who despised making entries to the diary his English teacher made the class do as a grade requirement. Ha! The joke is on you. You will never know how your future self would unwittingly long to do such thing because of his busy schedule.
Going back here also made me realize how things have changed. I still remember scrolling through Tumblr and social media using my parent-funded but now unusable Lenovo netbook, to my first full-sized Lenovo laptop (still parent-funded), to my Lenovo Legion gaming laptop and Samsung tablet that I purchased using my own salary.
After introspecting on how I used social media in the previous years, I realized that I have been the most expressive here on Tumblr. In fact, Tumblr was my original diary, though I only posted from time to time. Here, there is no sugar coating, just plain expressions of how I feel. Facebook is too toxic, Tiktok is too full of brainrot, Instagram is too pretentious, and Twitter feels too crowded. I will probably hang around here and post more often.
God, I missed this platform! I welcome myself back. May the Donovan who expressed his thoughts continue to do so in the future, and may the future Donovan go back to his previous posts smiling and happy with how far he has come.
