I find it fascinating to look back through old diaries, emails and notebooks. Sometime reading through my old stuff takes me back so clearly to the moment I wrote it, but with the benefit of knowing what happens next, so in a way it almost feels like I’m able to tell the future. Often I think we’re so focused on creating new things and wanting fresh content and thoughts that we forget to look back and enjoy (often with new insights) all the stuff that’s been created before.
This article about Barack Obama from the May 2004 edition of The New Yorker is great. It seems especially great when you know what happens next…
My favourite bit…
Jan Schakowsky told me about a recent visit she had made to the White House with a congressional delegation. On her way out, she said, President Bush noticed her “obama” button. “He jumped back, almost literally,” she said. “And I knew what he was thinking. So I reassured him it was Obama, with a ‘b.’ And I explained who he was. The President said, ‘Well, I don’t know him.’ So I just said, ‘You will.’”
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