Facebook materialized midway through my university career, and the majority of what was shared by me and my peers before and just after that were, much like our flip phones and the specifics of our MySpace Top 8s, lost to history.

There’s still evidence of my early internet existence out there, though.

I started writing for newspapers back in high school, and some of those publications have since been digitized. But I really hit my e-writing stride in 2009, when I booted up my blog, Exile Lifestyle. I’d dabbled with blog posts prior to that, mostly for clients. But the work I shared on EL was all about me and my thoughts and my life, and for better and for worse that served as the basis for much of what I made after.

I say “for better and for worse” because, looking back at my early writings, I feel the same full-body cringe I experience when I stumble across a photo of myself from high school, or resurface one of my news analysis pieces from 2002. In some ways I was surprisingly well informed, and not entirely wrong about everything. But these flash-frozen artifacts also capture all my misconstruals, all the off-registration understandings, all the not-yet-solved internal issues. They’re maybe not as obvious to everyone, but to me they stand out like neon road hazard signs.

Given the option, I wouldn’t pull all that earlier work from the web—no matter how embarrassing and (to my modern eyes) superficial, off-kilter, or incomplete. Different sorts of information can be useful at different stages of our lives and journeys. Consequently, some of what I made back then will resonate more with some readers than the work I’m making today.

It’s also valuable, I think, to look back at where we’ve been so we can better appreciate where we are now.

I try to remind myself that each era of life is just a blip on a larger timeline, and the things I currently think are vital, the most important stuff in the world, may seem quaint, even laughably so, to a future version of me. But that’s okay. In fact I hope that continues to be the case, as it means I’ve grown in the intervening years. And all those prior versions, with all their flaws, ignorances, and naïvetés, were necessary steps along the way to becoming who I am today, and who I’ll become in the future.

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This shouldn’t be a heterodox statement, yet much of what’s published in the “how to flirt,” “how to network,” “how to be confident in social settings” thinkpiece space seems to center the experience of one person at the expense of the other. So here we are.

If you’re engaging with another person, whatever your intentions with that person, remember that they are just as conscious, complicated, and three-dimensional as you are. Other people are not a game to be played, they’re not a lever to be pulled, they’re not an exotic puzzle to figure out, they’re not a monster to be fought or NPC to be exploited.

We might, at times and in some contexts, necessarily abstract away the full complexity of human-to-human interpersonal dynamics (in highly formalized work environments where it’s prudent to operate as a node in a larger system and to treat others the same, for instance). Almost always, though, as a default, you’ll be better served by thinking of people as people and then treating them accordingly.

To behave otherwise is to do a disservice to both that other person and yourself. You miss out on whatever gifts you might have gleaned through exposure to their presence, to their perspective, to their knowledge and know-how. They miss out on everything you have to offer. You’re both shortchanged by your decision to superficialize the relationship and treat them as something they’re not.

I don’t care what that dating guru, life coach, or networking influencer says: if you act as if you’re the only person that matters, like you’re the only thinking, feeling, conscious being with agency, don’t be surprised if you struggle to connect with other humans in any meaningful way.

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This is almost certainly not true (each of us are all of those things and none of those things, at times), but it’s a relatable feeling.

It can be a relief, then, to find a group of people who are going through similar things, and to maybe even adopt a label that points at this perceived condition or status.

These labels can be useful in that they help us feel less alone and can make it easier to connect with others who have had similar life experiences. These labels can make us feel normal. We can suddenly say, “It’s not just me! This is a thing, look at all these people who understand!” And that feels good and can be helpful and healthful.

If we’re not careful, however, these labels can subsume everything else that we are. Our unique traits and circumstances, our other interesting flaws, our superpowers. It can be so energizing, such a relief to be part of this group, that we neglect our full roundness, our three-dimensional density, sacrificing them at the altar of communal cohesion and conformity.

There’s something to be said for reclaiming labels that might otherwise brand us as flawed or weird or less-than, and it’s amazing to be part of something bigger than ourselves: to find people who get it, and who we can be our full selves around.

It’s also important to maintain a sense of who we are beyond these groups, though, lest we disregard (or discard) the totality of our unique, valid selves in the pursuit of recognition and understanding for just one sliver of who we are.

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