Reinventing yourself doesn’t mean deleting the old you. It means keeping the parts that were true.

A rebuild done out of embarrassment tends to throw out good material. Some of what you want to leave behind was only a style, and some of it was actually you: the stubbornness, the odd sense of humour, the thing you have always cared about. Those parts are not what you are escaping.

Write down three things about your younger self you would defend to a stranger. Keep them on purpose while you change the rest. Reinvention works better as editing than as demolition.