Nostalgia, Lethargy, & Desire
Nostalgia has always been a strange business for me. I loved my childhood, and many of the ninties-esque businesses, restaurants, music, movies. Life felt more vibrant then, before. Before I got a larger scope of understanding as to how the world is, and the injustices and unfairness in its humanistic design, life was easy. Because, I was blind. I was blind to the trappings of life's macrocosmic rotations, the people and their desires, the ways they achieve their goals/agendas.
The internet, I can remember, was very slow. And, though it's always been the marketplace of ideas, I honestly prefer the times when I downloaded and printed a picture of Pamela Anderson naked, from my friend's grandma's computer. It took several minutes to download, and even longer to print. And, somewhere, in a box in storage, is a photo of Pam, legs crossed, fully nude, looking directly into the camera. It's funny, what I remember, and what I've forgotten, they never coalesce. I never seem to mine memories like Pam without a deep dive through a pool of nostalgia, that, as fun as the memories are to remember, they're also painful in that life isn't as... slow, or simple, anymore.
A great awakening in the collective consciousness took place at the exact same rate as information on the digital superhighway became faster, easier to access. So, you'd think, that amount of information, at everyone's fingertips, would revolutionize our intelligence. But, I feel like we, as a species, have somehow gotten slower in our calculations, and further detached from each other. I know, I've got a series of issues with how I process information currently, and it starts with my attention span. Since I can grab any idea from the internet, I don't learn as thoroughly, or take my time learning, for that matter, nearly as much as I did in the past. My attention span is shot, when it comes to reading knowledgeable information.
My attention can still focus on movies fairly well, which, given my profession and desires, I'm supremely grateful for having not lost. I don't know when I'll start training myself to really focus in on topics I want/need to know about, and to keep my attention focused. See, since I'm so able to latch onto information, I don't think to put forth a lot of effort. I also retain information I'm interested in, very well, so I doubly don't try too hard to focus.
My focus is lost, at the moment. I have no less than four scripts, one which is being pitched to a prominent musician in the future, I'm writing. And, I can't seem to feel out the story beats in a way that feels like bulk work is being done. Oh, to be honest, it doesn't feel like finite information is being processed, either. Nothing is getting done, and my world is passing me by.
However, I also have these moments in life where my work pauses, and then I have a bulk of work completed nearly at once. This is just, by far, the driest spell I've been through. There's a lot of noise to cancel out in the world, for one. Though, so much of that noise is for great causes, and so I try to devote some of my attention and thoughts to standing in solidarity with the things I believe in. I always give time to equality and civil rights.
But, civil justices, peace, fairness, are hard to overcome in such a warped system. And, how am I to combat that in a way that makes a major impact? There's no telling if I ever will. Those finite moments I get to take with people, to remind them of their hypocrisies, or to outright ridicule their angry, neglectful behavior toward others, those are moments when I feel like I'm impacting my world.
I want to be free of guilt, of depression, of the nagging feeling my life is being wasted in some way. It's not, I know. I'm devoting myself to taking care of an ailing family member. I'm thinking of others as I live life publicly. I'm putting life into others by loving and caring for them. I'm doing my part. It's just... the parts that mean the most to me as a career, they're on the shelf. I know it'll turn around and I'll be churning out creative works soon.
I'm just tired of waiting.
Jed