Giving Gifts to Younger Versions of Me

Growing up, I held my private and my public dreams in two different worlds.

In my public dream, I was a wannabe doctor and a pending family man. In my private dream, as you would expect, I wanted to be a baby girl. You know, the one that gets every single thing that she wants and is absolutely doted on.

It would take the uncomfortable journey of teenagerhood and early adulthood to realize that I didn’t particularly want to be a baby girl. It came with a high expectation of a certain performance of appropriate behavior, discounting the motivations that drive us personally, discounting our own search for greedy pleasure.

I just wanted to be me with the resources and the relationships that allow me to flippantly describe my life as ‘fine’ and not actually feel like the ceiling would fall inward just as I am about to leave the venue.

V Talks was my first foray into the world of blogging. I had imagined it would become something like Oprah’s company, OWN; not knowing what it would take to build a media conglomerate.

Life happened and V Talks left my mind completely, returning as flashbacks to a sillier time in my past. I had always wondered how I would be able to simultaneously run a world-renowned TV empire and be a neurosurgeon that innovates in his field like Ben Carson and also have a family with the mandatory minimum of two kids.

Spending the past few weeks organizing my life, I have been reintroduced to the interest in somewhat frequent letter-like notes, shared with those that like reading my work. It is a way to add more structure and even urgency to my writing practice. It is a way to build my archive. It is a way to work through my thoughts and come out with more portals to jump through, more excitement to seek.

Reviving the name V Talks feels like giving a gift to my younger self; the way a big brother would give their younger brother a gift.

The Vasilis of 2014 and 2015 did not have the bandwidth to maintain a project like this, but I have more time, and strength and experience, I can honor goals I previously held, even if it is in reduced portions and not pivotal in the formerly expected ways.

So here you have it; this is V Talks.