I never knew. I grew up filming everything, every holiday and random get together. I'm 30 now. I don't have many friends - after high school we all drifted apart. I didn't make any in college, I was too busy working a part time job and studying, I don't have many through work, and I'm not close with my siblings at all. I don't particularly consider myself hard to get along with, I've always felt that I was super relatable and down to earth, I'd even go so far to say that I'm pretty funny.
I recently decided to digitize all my old home videos from over a decade ago, and as I was going through them I realized just how mean I was. I can't let anyone see them. I yell at my friends, I berate my adorable little siblings, I give nasty comebacks to family members. It's awful. It's so incredibly hard to watch. I should mention I'm a woman - I never thought I went through that "asshole teenage years" that mostly boys seemed to go through, but there I am, being a complete asshole to everyone around me. I don't understand it. I really never knew. And I absolutely hate it. It's no wonder my siblings aren't close to me, don't open up. It's no wonder I reach out to old friends sometimes to see how they are, and no one ever reaches out to me.
It's embarrassing. It simultaneously breaks my heart and makes me angry watching these videos. I think I'm a better person now, but I know I can still be mean and I worry I have burned too many bridges in the past; that that's just how people see me. That the reason my adult siblings won't open up to me is because of how cruel I was to them in childhood. It just breaks my heart hearing myself in those videos, yelling at children. I'm so hyper aware of it now, and I recognize I still have that piece in me; I'm still very capable of being downright mean. It comes so easily to me, it always has and don't know why my brain is wired this way. I want to change it.
I'm striving to be better. I was expecting such happiness watching these old videos, but it's been such a wake up call. I just want to apologize to everyone. I don't like my past self, and I'm scared of not realizing I'm exactly the same person and haven't changed at all. That's my biggest fear.
P.s: don't download valorant if you want to study, the game is like drugs
This video BTW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwpzTnLC8BY&ab_channel=AVweb
In my case I was in a Piper Arrow and the engine lost power on climb out. It was high enough to land the wrong way on the parallel runway after declaring and the engine died completely shortly after landing. There was oil everywhere and the prop wouldn't turn by hand. As of now it looks like a mechanical failure of a piston. The FAA was involved for a week and then I never heard from them again. It wasn't reported as an incident and engine went for re-build (near TBO anyway) and everything just kind of moved on. I know I'm biased because it was possibly the scariest 12 minutes of my life (so far) but I found it so out it's no reportable whatsoever when it could have gone so much worse. I know GA isn't in the best place right now but one place to improve safety would certainly be improving the quality and quantity of the data we collect. How many two seaters touched down peacefully in a field? How many singe engines got (extremely) lucky like myself and made it back to a runway? How many partial outs were able to land "normally" and go on with regular maintenance under the radar? (I was also part of a stuck valve and bent pushrod once and that wasn't reported either...). What I'm saying is I think he's right and there's a lot more engines pooping out and going unreported out there...
I've become the de facto family historian, now the keeper of old photos, videos, and memorabilia. I love this job and looking at all the memories. I've been transferring everything into digital form to easily share with everyone and have dutifully built a family tree. But what stands out glaringly for me is how little of my childhood was documented compared to my (boomer) mother's and my Millennial/GenZ kids. There are hours of videos of my mother from toddler through early adulthood (50's-60's), likewise of my kids, but not one single video of me or my cousins. Not one. There are pictures and slides, many of which are now a sickly yellow or otherwise damaged by water, bad storage, or whatever. I'm an older GenX, born in 69. Do other GenXer's have this too or was it something unique to my family? All the kids of my generation were the consequence of out-of-wedlock relationships/absent fathers (me) or broken marriages, so it could be that.
Edit to clarify: rereading what I wrote, the video's of my boomer mom's childhood was originally reel-to-reels which I converted to VHS in 94, from VHS to DVD around 2012, and then converted from DVD to digital.
