karniv0re's Journal: A Hardcore Trip Down Memory Lane

I think 2014 is going to go down as the year of nostalgia.

Earlier this year, I went through a project of documenting all the documentable days of my life. This means going as far back as any digital records I may have, as well as some paper documents and
whatever is left of my terrible memory and putting it in nice, concise calendar form. The furthest reaching digital documents I have detailing what I was doing at the time go back to June of 2004 in
the days when I first obtained Gmail. Sadly, my Hotmail emails dating back to the late 90s have all been wiped away. My old MySpace account which I did a lot of blogging on was deleted when Facebook became available to me in August of 2005. Writing this entry here reminds me I should probably dive back in to my Slashdot journals as they date back to June of 2004. Most of it is technobabble, but some of it is useful.

Anyway, point is, I have been documenting furiously. Reliving the past, good times and bad. And something I've noticed, nostalgia tends to kick in strongest when you're the least happy with your situation. I guess my situation has fallen into a rut of sorts. A terrible combination of being in a bland, barely-happy relationship, and having no real goals or interests to keep me going. I care a lot about my girlfriend, to the point of moving her in with me so she can focus on applying to CRNA school, and if she gets in, staying with me for free while she focuses on school. But in the process, I have been left feeling lonely and trapped. Not that I can't break up with her and move her out, but I see that as being cruel and dream-crushing toward her. And again, it's not that I
don't love her. It's more that we've grown into the typical habitual relationship format, where everything you do is automatic, including the fighting. Perhaps I could focus on breaking out of that rut, I don't know. And make no mistake, part of my nostalgia has been thinking back to when we first met. It was awesome. I guess I just want it to be like that again.

Ugh, that's not even what this journal was supposed to be about! I guess it's just stuff that's been rattling around in my brain and I haven't been able to tell anyone - yet another problem, all my friends have dried up - caught up in their own relationships and careers and problems. I guess this is what getting old is.

So, as I look back on everything, I am now reaching back to a more curious and innocent time. Back to 2004, when I worked for the co-op. I'm putting myself back into that mindset, at least for a day, to muster up some curiosity and whatever desire I have left to learn. Because I need to build a PhoneGap app. It's new territory for me, and I haven't had the interest in anything technology-related in a long time, so I'm hoping that by getting back in the mindset I had at my most curious, I can recapture my ability to learn things quickly. So I'm listening to music from ten years ago, I'm going to go eat a ham and cheese sandwich from Subway (a daily staple from that time) and I'm going to write in my Slashdot journal.

I will capture the curiosity again, and I will knock this project out of the park as usual. Because that's what I do, and though I may be getting old, this dog can still learn a new trick or two, with a little help from memory lane.