Post 54: Convergence: This is the End

So this is it. This is the beginning of the happily ever after. Now what? I wonder what I’ll do with myself when I don’t have posts to worry about and rehash all the time. How will I disperse all my creative build up now that I don’t have a mandatory means of channeling it? I guess I just have to do what I’ve been doing all along in this class: make it up as I go.

I am kind of sad about being a couple posts shy of 54 but I never really liked that number anyway, it isn’t easily divisible.

So is this really the end? Who knows? Maybe I’ll keep posting; here or somewhere else, now that I’ve (sort of almost) gotten into the habit.

Do I have any regrets? Bet your butt I do. I regret not working harder on some of these posts. I regret putting them off for so long. I regret not trying all of the really crazy ideas I had because they scared me. There were things I wanted to try but didn’t. Efforts I could’ve made but chose not to. I wanted to do a post drunk. I wanted to survey strangers. I wanted to make and eat something related to VW and make a post about it. I wanted to make better art and work harder on the art I made that I didn’t like. I wish I’d done those things.

This one is called “regrets”:
(Powerful imagery of the beginning of Volkswagen.)
“Do we regret anything? Yes.
Is there something we think we could’ve done better? There’s always room for improvement.
Did we try as hard as we could all the time, every time? Yes.

Everyone has regrets, the key is not letting them define you. Dirty secrets, a dark past, complicated circumstances that are hard to explain; we get it. No one likes to talk about our history, but the important thing is that we rose above it. It’s still there; it’s never going away, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the story, in fact, it’s just the beginning. It isn’t the beginning we would have liked, but you don’t always get to choose. Now is about moving on and growing from past regrets.”

I like that this touches on some powerful undertones that no one ever really thinks about when it comes to VW. I dunno, maybe it’s kind of dark for a last post, but I see it as a demonstration of hope. The past does not define the present, it doesn’t have to repeat itself, and we can refuse to let it shape who we are now even when we can’t change who we’ve been. I see that as about as hopeful as it gets.