I find myself retreating to the past.

Is it retreat?

In some ways, it is an entirely natural progression. For the last few years, I’ve felt myself becoming increasingly disconnected with the broad, forward momentum of pop culture. I find myself caring less about new movies, TV shows, books, video games. And I find myself caring even less about Caring About those things. With gaming specifically, early last year I realized that I would rather have Playing Video Games be my hobby than Following The Gaming Industry. My own collection has grown so much, coupled with my own executive functional failures in actually engaging with my hobbies and playing games, that I don’t actually want more games. I desperately want to connect with what I have around me, that I’ve been piling up - hoarding really - for some future imagined day. Well, that day is here.

And that sentiment rapidly expanded beyond games; I have so many books I’ve never read, movies I’ve never watched. And then of course there are the movies/books/games etc. that I have engaged with that were so meaningful that I want to engage with them again. Ain’t nobody got time for that! Because I realized I had become fixated on acquisition and curation, and I lost the ability to play, read, engage and enjoy all the amazing art I worked so hard to stockpile.

But where I am at right now is about more than just making a concerted effort to do things. I seem to have landed in 1985. And 1999. And 1972.

I’m in 1985 via Project ‘85, a meticulously plotted course I’ve devised through classic WWF content starting roughly around the first Wrestlemania and working its way through the mid 80’s. I’m in 1999 via my music library where I’ve been re-engaging with the most formative music from my youth… which has also deposited me in 1972 with Jethro Tull where I am working my way through their catalog with a new appreciation. You ever listen to your favorite music so much that you kind of become numb to it for a while? That happened with me and Tull, and I didn’t listen to them at much all for the last few years. Its been long enough now that I can re-approach them with fresh ears and from a new phase in life. And yet I feel like a kid again, spread out on the living room floor with my dad’s record collection, reading the lyrics on the record sleeves and losing myself in the album artwork.

And that’s the goal of all of this, really - to engage with my passions like I did as a kid. With unreserved abandon. With my whole heart. Without having a plan. Without managing a list or a schedule. My entire adult life, to some degree, I’ve struggled to just do the things I want to do. But I didn’t struggle like that as a kid. I just… did things. Oh, I totally had ADHD as a kid - I realize all the time the ways it manifested when I was young that I (and the adults around me) never noticed - but it didn’t keep me from doing the things that brought me joy like it does now. Now, I tie myself in knots because I can’t seem to finish any video game I start; when I was a kid, I didn’t know you could finish a game. They ended? I was shocked when I learned that. I just… played them. And that was enough. It wasn’t just enough, it was the point.

I’m trying to play again. I’m trying to approach the things I love with the full yet unencumbered heart of a child and divorce myself from all the baggage around everything that this modern age has bestowed upon us. And it’s working.