What Stayed

On time, change, and the parts of ourselves that remain

 

A life can change in ways you never expected.

Plans shift. Circumstances rearrange themselves. Entire chapters close, and before you know it, you’re living a life that would have been difficult to imagine ten years earlier.

Over the past few years, there have been moments when I felt untethered. Moments when so many pieces of my life had changed that I wasn’t entirely sure who I was without them.

Sometimes it’s easy to focus on everything that changed.

Lately, though, I’ve found myself noticing something else.

Not what changed.

What didn’t.

I’ve always had a book nearby. There has been a stack on my nightstand, a library book in my bag, or a Kindle within reach for as long as I can remember.

For years, I never thought much about that. It was simply part of who I was.

But lately, I’ve started noticing those kinds of constants more often. In the middle of so much change, there’s something reassuring about recognizing the same habits, interests, and instincts that have followed me through every chapter of my life.

Reading is one of them.

But books were never the whole story. What stayed wasn’t just the reading. It was the curiosity behind it.

I’ve always been the kind of person who wants to understand things. One question leads to another. A quick search becomes an hour of reading. One article becomes five. Five become twenty.

I’ve lost entire evenings to missing persons cases, unsolved mysteries, random health questions, and topics most people would forget about by morning. I start with one small detail and somehow end up ten tabs deep trying to understand the bigger picture.

That same curiosity shows up in other places too. I’ve always liked systems, progress, and the way small pieces add up over time.

For nearly a decade, I’ve tracked my debt down to the penny. Every payment. Every balance. Every milestone. Long before I paid off my credit cards, I was documenting the process in spreadsheets and blog posts. Even now, I still update the numbers and watch the balances move.

My reading habits get similar treatment. Somewhere along the way, I created a spreadsheet to track what I read, complete with categories for genre, series information, ratings, author demographics, and enough other details that most people would probably wonder why I bother.

The answer is simple: I enjoy watching things take shape. A debt balance shrinking. A reading year unfolding. Small pieces slowly adding up to something bigger.

Somewhere along the way, that instinct blended with writing.

I’ve always had the urge to save things before they disappear.

When Holden says something particularly funny, I’ll often grab my phone and type it into the Notes app before I forget the exact wording. Sometimes those notes become One Minute Memoirs. Sometimes they become blog posts. Sometimes they simply stay in my phone, but I save them all the same.

Over the years, I’ve filled notebooks, documents, blog posts, and phone notes with moments that would have otherwise vanished. Small conversations. Funny stories. Tiny details that seemed ordinary at the time.

Documenting life has become its own kind of habit, a way of paying attention. I’ve noticed that the same thing happens with people.

I’ve always spent a lot of time observing, listening, and turning things over in my head. Some people process life out loud. I tend to process it internally.

Even in a crowded room, part of my attention is usually focused on the dynamics around me. Who is talking. Who isn’t. What people mean versus what they’re saying. For years, I assumed everyone paid attention to those things as much as I did.

I’m not sure they do.

And then there’s the part of me that gets stuck on a goal.

The part that trained for a half marathon. The part that tackled major weight loss more than once. The part that can spend weeks researching job opportunities, salary schedules, retirement systems, and civil service requirements while trying to figure out the next step forward.

Once something matters to me, it’s difficult to let it go.

Looking back, I can trace those same threads through every chapter of my life.

The books. The curiosity. The spreadsheets. The saved notes. The writing. The tendency to observe before speaking. The determination that keeps moving toward whatever comes next.

Tonight, I’ll probably do what I’ve done thousands of times before. Read a few pages of a book. Add something to a spreadsheet. Jot down a thought in my Notes app before I forget it.

The kinds of things that don’t look important until you realize they’ve followed you through every version of your life.

The kinds of things that help you find your way back to yourself.