What is the worst feeling in the world for you? For some people, it’s getting a text that you know is about to ruin your week. For others, it’s realizing you lost your wallet or phone somewhere and have no idea where to start looking. For me, it’s seeing my Snapchat memories or Instagram posts from 2016 through early 2022.

One of my resolutions for 2025 was to make my life more efficient, live more in the present, and stop holding onto things I no longer needed. I’ve always had a bad habit of overpacking, keeping things for “sentimental value,” and holding onto objects long past the point where they served me any purpose. Over the course of this year, I went through my apartment in Kentucky and got rid of old clothes, junk, and documents that I had no use for anymore. When I went home for winter break, after the Christmas tree lot wrapped up, I did the same thing at my parents’ house.

In my childhood bedroom, I went through my closet and drawers and donated almost all my clothes from high school and freed up cabinet space. I cleared out old items I had no attachment to and condensed what I wanted to keep into a few cabinets’ worth of meaningful memories: certificates, yearbooks, some memorabilia , and a few uniforms and jackets. I moved to my brother’s old room, now a storage room, and cleared that out with my mom’s help. We did the same in the garage, the pantry, and a corner nook that had slowly become a dumping ground. After over a week of deep cleaning, I took fifteen black garbage bags of clothes to Goodwill and hauled a full trailer of junk to the dump.

My parents aren’t hoarders by any means, but there were parts of the house that were long overdue for a reset. Now those spaces are usable again. It was a lot of work, but it felt good to take some stress off my parents by knocking out projects they hadn’t had the time to get to.

The last step, though, was going through my social media. And that’s the one I’ve been dreading.

After moving to Louisville, I slowly stopped using Snapchat. I have a personal rule that by the time you’re 22 or 23, it’s probably time to stop using Snap and just text or call people instead. That rule applies only to me; I genuinely do not care what anyone else does. Earlier this year, I deleted the app but kept re-downloading it every few weeks just in case someone messaged me there instead of texting. A week ago, I downloaded it again to pull some old photos for a family event. I barely made it through my memories. Once I hit anything from before my sophomore year of undergrad, I could feel myself physically tense up. I cringed watching myself laugh at things I thought were funny at the time and rereading captions that, in hindsight, were just awful. The same thing happened when I started clearing out old Instagram DMs, archived posts, and stories. The photo quality was bad, the captions even worse. It was humbling in a way I didn’t expect, to see myself frozen in different phases of my life trying to figure out who I was. Eventually, I deleted my Snapchat account entirely and cleared out my archived Instagram content and old DMs. I had to delete each Instagram post & DM individually. It sucked, and it was painful. But I still recommend doing it.

From 2016 to early 2022 (age 13-19) was an awkward, difficult stretch of my life, like it is for most people. I took a long time to grow into my 6’7” frame, and there was even more emotional growing to do. High school just wasn’t a great experience for me. I tried and failed at a lot of things. I spent way too much money on a fair steer that was, frankly, the spawn of Satan, and then lost at the county fair in eighth grade. I got cut from the basketball team freshman year, which honestly was fine because I didn’t like basketball very much anyway. I got bullied. I tried roping in high school rodeo, hated it, quit within six months, and disappointed my dad in the process. I ran cross country, made good friends, but was never very good at it, got extremely thin, and now I despise running.

I also got way too involved in FFA. My first two years of high school, with a young advisor, I acted like a complete jackass, at one point seriously thinking my 14- or 15-year-old self could run the chapter better than she could. My last two years were consumed with trying to become a state officer. I finally got elected during COVID, lost nearly every benefit that normally comes with the position, and then was banned from helping out two years after I retired. It would be overdramatic to say every moment of that six-year span was terrible, but I do carry a negative bias toward that period of my life. So when I scrolled through old posts, reels, and memories during that time, it just didn’t feel good.

What made me cringe wasn’t really the content. It was remembering exactly how I felt when I posted those things, seeking validation from people I barely knew in an attempt to convince myself I wasn’t feeling as bad as I actually was. That feeling came flooding back as I scrolled. So I deleted my Snap account and wiped out most of those memories on Instagram. Maybe that wasn’t the most “textbook healthy” response, and perhaps sitting with it longer would’ve been better. But it’s the choice I made, and I’m okay with it.

This is my 23rd personal, non-political post since I started this journal, and a lot of them have neat, linear stories with clean lessons at the end. This one doesn’t. There are too many takeaways that would make it impossible to force this story into a tidy ending.

Growing up often just means acting differently and learning from your mistakes. Seeing yourself at an earlier stage feels uncomfortable because you hadn’t learned what you know now. At the same time, I recognize that I’m viewing that period with a very negative lens. Not every moment was bad. While I’m firmly against gaslighting yourself into thinking life is great when it isn’t, the opposite is also true. Constantly wallowing in how terrible things were at a certain time isn’t honest either. There is good too.

There’s also a lot of value in decluttering, not just physical spaces, but mental ones too. I don’t need to keep every reminder of who I used to be, especially the versions of myself I’m not proud of. At the same time, those years were necessary. Acting like a dumbass in previous leadership roles gave me clarity that helps me now in Louisville. Trying and failing at different activities helped me find what I actually care about.

Most importantly, everyone is a little cringey. And that’s okay.

If you look back at your past self and don’t cringe at all, you probably haven’t grown much. Cringing is a sign that you’re better now than you were then. If you genuinely believe you were a better version of yourself five years ago than you are today, that might be a sign you’re heading in the wrong direction. In my case, that doesn’t mean that I’m some superstar and have learned everything at 23 years of age; but rather, I know that I’m able to recognize the fact that life is about learning as much as it is about living. If I were to look back at this post and my social media in 2030, I’ll probably cringe a bit at my current self, as will you.

At the end of the day, we’re all a little cringe. Some old photos from 2017 still make me physically tense up, but they’re also proof that I changed and made it through it. I’m better now because I went through those phases, not in spite of it. And for that, I’m somewhat grateful, even if I never want to (or have to!) see those Snapchat memories again.

-Colby