Changes

Always something to be concerned about.
My current worry is change.
Specifically, comparing my new opening to Tethered Light with the rest of the ms, I can get a good idea of how my style has changed over the last couple of years.
Can I bring the new me together with the old me?
We'll see.
Okay, in truth I don't think the concept of change worries me; moreover, I see it as a positive thing. Furthermore, I see lack of change as a very negative thing. My worry stems from the mismatches in style. My writing has become so poetic and deliberate - I have been so influenced by Hemingway and by contemporary lit fic authors. I have become more aware of what I want from my style, and what I don't want. When I'm happy with my new opening, I might post a bit up here because I'd love for some external thoughts (thoughts not validation mind :o)
It's a peculiar thing: I feel that I've been on holiday, especially for the last year as I've been working on my lit fic. I've come back to my first ms and I'm a different person. I like what I read - in a way, I feel I've come back home - but I can never write like that again. This has to be a good thing. But it makes me think, and it makes me acutely aware that I am in perpetual change and that I might well look back at this moment in another couple of years and present a wry smile to my previous self. As I look back at my virginal foray into literature and think 'Solvey, I see what you're trying to do there, but there are better ways,' I know that this will occur again and again. Speak to me, the Solvey who lies on his death bed! 'Here I am, and I ain't gonna tell you a thing 'cos you gotta work it out for yourself. It's the journey that matters, young Solvey.'
I wonder if the best writers find themselves in this endless continuum of change. I wonder if they ever settle or feel comfortable. I don't think Hemingway ever settled. I'm pretty sure that Picasso never settled. Worse still, I think he became jaded and, towards the end, could only parody his younger self. I wonder where this journey is taking me.

Grandad, the self-appointed guardian of human righteousness, has written of his despair at falling standards in literacy, and of his disdain for txt spk. He doesn't like change. And yet, within a single post, he observes how few people are able to use an apostrophe correctly, and subsequently uses an apostrophe incorrectly. An in-joke? No; you can find similar errors throughout his blog.
Is it the endless pursuit of perfection that motivates the best of creative minds? The ceaseless realization that things can be better? And an ultimate realization that the quest for something unattainable is a folly that instils a bitterness in later life?
I've no idea, and the death-bed Solvey isn't letting on either.