I've got a headache.

This is going to be one of those blogs where I ramble on and on to myself and try to stay motivated. Will it work? Find out by reading all of it.

Sarah and I have had a kind of recurring conversation about looking back at our time together and nostalgia in general. I think looking back is only natural as the year winds down. I even keep a little list of cool stuff that’s happened over the year to take a look at as the new year approaches. I don’t like being “stuck in the past” but I like kind of going over the things that made me happy in the past. I think there’s kind of a proactive way of doing it, one where you avoid getting bogged down in just reliving former glories.

If you take stock of the good times, the things that you found were rewarding, you might be able to focus your efforts into pursuing similar things in the future. At least, that’s the theory.

It seems that as I work my way into my mid-30s I am more and more likely to get trapped in that mindset of “things were better when…” You know, when everything seemed simpler? When there were always a friends hanging out to meet up with? When there weren’t so many bills to pay?  When we all got together to watch a movie because there was only one copy of it on tape in the whole city?

Life used to be like a loose bag of Legos. You could put it together any way that you wanted to. It always seemed like it would be easy to just quickly pull it apart and make something new if you didn’t like what was happening. But now it’s this complicated Lego tower and changing any of those blocks way down at the bottom seems nearly impossible.

So maybe it’s not the end of the world to take a look at your Lego tower and relive the parts that you’re happy with? There’s still a lot of tower to build. Maybe it’ll be easier if you focus on building up the good parts. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…