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I closed my laptop, walked a dozen steps, and plopped myself on the bed, when the words “I'm a big, big girl in a small, small world” appeared in my head, complete with a piano soundtrack. I didn’t know the artist, but a quick search led me to the song (earworm::Big Big World by Emilia) on YouTube. What amazes me is that I remembered the exact tune, the lyrics—everything was perfect in my memory.

A twinge of curiosity tugged at the edges of my thoughts. When had I last heard this song? I was confident I hadn’t heard it in the last decade—yet Last.fm told me otherwise: July 3, 2023. Hmm… Months had passed. What caused this song to resurface now, of all the countless tracks I’ve heard since then? And why now? I tried retracing my path through my thoughts. The thread vanished somewhere in the labyrinth of memory, a Theseus without Ariadne to guide me.

An hour later, I still didn’t know why the song sprang to life. I smiled, letting it be what it was: a fleeting, playful proof that thought and memory are never entirely ours to command. Maybe an errant misfiring synapse. Yet a reminder too, of some strange delights hidden in the quiet flicker of memory.

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Last Saturday night, Max and I were watching a movie. It was already a bit past 10:45 when we started the movie. We were shifting between watching on TV or the laptop. We snuggled up on his bed with pillows piled up, snugly ensconced in blankets and began watching.

As the movie played on, we talked about scenes, characters, and dialogues. I pointed out the lore and he asked questions or asked to rewind to watch a missed scene or two.

About midway through the movie, I noticed his breathing pattern had changed — deepened. He had fallen asleep. I called out his name to verify that he was fast asleep. I slowly extricated myself from the intertwined blankets and proceeded to arrange the bedding around him when he woke up.

He wanted to continue the movie which I refused as he was sleepy and groggy. I told him we could watch the rest of the movie later. As I was tucking him in, he said, "Sorry pa" and "Good night," and fell asleep.

As I returned to my bed, his words were still on my mind, 'Sorry pa'. And it took a long time for me to fall asleep as I kept on thinking about it.

Was he sad because he fell asleep or was he sorry that we couldn't have the father-son bonding time?

Countless other thoughts kept circulating in my mind. I ran through all of our interactions throughout the day — words of praise (He had yet again got 97% in his music theory), words of frustration (at each other), words of advice, words about word origins (we had a discussion on why science usually uses precise terminologies to mean something) — and words unsaid.

The next day at church, we're sitting together and I asked him why he said sorry the previous night. He was embarrassed and said it was something he doesn't remember saying. As he turned away after complaining about his too-tight shirt, I remembered a poem by Wordsworth about fathers and sons: "O dearest, dearest boy! my heart / For better lore would seldom yearn, / Could I but teach the hundredth part / Of what from thee I learn."

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Yesterday, I was looking for a topic I knew I’d written about before. But I wasn’t sure if I’d ever published it. So I went searching — through my vault of old drafts, partial posts, abandoned ideas, and half-finished pieces. Organizing that vault has been on my "someday” list for a while now. I keep putting it off.

And then I started reading some of the old drafts. It felt like walking back into a room I used to live in, one I hadn't entered in years. A room that I could navigate with the lights off.

And there it was—the piece I'd been looking for, sitting among all the others I'd abandoned. Which made me wonder: why had I left so many of these unfinished, unpublished?

I’d tell myself I was too busy. That the ideas had gone stale. That I’d moved on. But really, it was a quieter resistance. The kind that doesn’t announce itself but just lingers.

Writing, when it happens in the moment, feels fluid. Like catching a thought before it takes a more concrete shape. Rewriting, though — that’s different. It’s not just editing words. It’s stepping back into the mindset that made them.

That’s when I understood: rewriting isn’t polishing. It’s time travel with consequences.

Reading old writing isn’t just revisiting the words. It’s meeting the person who wrote them. The turns of phrase I thought were clever. The tone I thought struck the right balance. The ideas I believed were solid, maybe even worth sharing.

Sometimes I nod along; sometimes I wince. I catch myself wondering, not “What was I thinking?” — but “Who was I trying to be?”

Rewriting asks for more than a better sentence. It asks what’s changed, not just in how I write, but in what I believe.

Some pieces I revisit and think, “Yeah, I still mean this.” Others… I hesitate. The words are fine, but the person behind them feels distant. And that’s the hard part.

Editing, when it’s honest, isn’t just improving. It’s letting go.

I still don’t love going back. Some drafts feel like fossils. Others feel too close, like they’re still breathing. But I’m learning to treat them with care.

Revisiting those moments isn't just about cleaning them up. It's about listening to who I was, so I can respond with who I am now.

Each one holds a version of me — what I noticed, what I believed, what I thought was worth capturing.

So yes, rewriting is time travel with consequences. And one of them is meeting yourself again...

Banner image is Saint Jerome in His Study by Albrecht Dürer.

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Today, Max asked me to look at his descriptive writing assignment from school. He didn’t really want help. Not really. He just wanted a quick fix. A skim-and-sign-off.

But he chose the wrong parent.

He flopped beside me on the bed, reluctant. I scanned his draft and saw the usual: a decent attempt, a few bright spots, but mostly scaffolding, words and phrases repeating. It read like someone trying to finish a thing, not someone trying to say something. To show something.

I quipped, “Writing’s easy. Rewriting is the hard part. And it always takes more time than we want it to.”

That didn’t go down well.

Luckily, his book had a passage from Jane Eyre. I asked him to read each sentence out loud and then tell me what that sentence was about and how things were described. His reading was flat, each sentence dropped like a stone. I could tell he wasn’t listening to himself.

“What does that sentence say?” I asked. A shrug. “Something about... the unoccupied bedroom?”

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Later that evening, I kept thinking about it — not just the parenting part, but the writing part. That kind of descriptive writing — the kind that wraps an image around you, the kind that slows you down — feels rarer these days.

Outside of fiction and the occasional well-written essay or newsletter, you don’t find sentences like that often. Even in long-form spaces like newsletters and blogs — places without social media character limits or Instagram's visual priorities — writers seem to default to shorter, punchier sentences. Shorter paragraphs. Shorter sentences. Quick hits. Fast reads. Sometimes that’s good writing. Often, it’s necessary. But something gets lost in the speed and efficiency of it all — the layering, the rhythm, the careful unfolding of an idea or a scene.

Maybe our attention spans are to blame. Or maybe we’ve been trained by character limits, previews, and scroll-friendly design to read in blinks and fragments.

I found myself wondering if I was witnessing the end of something almost medieval — the notion that a sentence could be a dwelling place rather than a thoroughfare, somewhere you might pause and unpack your thoughts like settling into a favorite armchair, letting clauses accumulate and ideas unfold in their own unhurried time, the way this very sentence insists on taking the scenic route while Max's generation has already moved on to the next notification, the next swipe, the next dopamine hit.

Quick, clean, done.