nostalgia – Page 2

Old colleagues

I keep running into old colleagues. People I’ve worked with five, ten, twenty years ago. At events like parties, weddings, wakes, and networking. When you’ve worked all over a particular region for the best part of three decades you are bound to run into people you’ve worked with on occasion.

How are you doing, how have you been, what are you up to these days, do you remember so-and-so? The obligatory small talk questions. You are caught-up in minutes. Years refined down and summarised in a few sentences. I’m fine I’m retired I make jam and sell it outside my home. Or I’ve had some health problems but I’m fine now. I took redundancy from my last job and I’m semi-retired now doing the filming for the occasional wedding.

I was surprised by how many were retired. Many younger than me. Others had changed careers entirely following their passions, usually after receiving an early pension or large redundancy payout. After calculating how much they need to reach their pension they declare themselves semi-retired and make their hobby a part-time income source. They seemed much happier.

Others are still in the game. Their words. Rising up career ladders, making a name for themselves in their respective fields, making money and investing in property, businesses, the next big thing.

All have stories. Over a coffee or chilled glass of wine we catch up. Has it really been X years? We each throw out names of people we worked with. Names long forgotten. So-and-so left company X and is now a postman. Someone else started their own plumbing business. Another died of a heart attack. Some I remember, some I don’t. People I worked with side-by-side for days on end, for months, years.

Time moves on. We all have lives with unique paths. I received a summary, a snippet of some of those paths second-hand as I slowly drained my glass.

Old colleagues.

My childhood

My childhood was a series of John Hughes movies mixed with an overlaid DIO, Def Leppard, Van Halen, and Iron Maiden soundtrack, with Rodney Matthews and Roger Dean posters on the walls and ZX Spectrum cassettes mixed in with Commodore Amiga floppies. There’s cans of diet pop on top of worn copies of Heavy Metal magazines and faded Nemesis the Warlock graphic novels. William Gibson and Neal Stephenson look down from the bookshelves with Rudy Rucker, Piers Anthony, and Harry Harrison for company. Evil Dead II and The Terminator rest by the VCR while my Raleigh Grifter needs a new back tyre. Kenner Star Wars and Palitoy Action Man are under the bed along with a mixed box of electronics. A puppy eyes me from the foot of my bed while a goldfish swims aimlessly in a nearby tank. I stare out the window wondering what the future holds while an engineer installs a satellite dish on the wall outside my room.

Travelling without a phone

I used to travel without a phone. I couldn’t imagine that today. Being totally disconnected from everyone digitally. If I wanted to phone home I would have to go purchase phone cards and find a public phone box. Are they still around today? For email I’d have to go to an internet cafe and pay for computer access by the hour. Do they still exist?

These days our smart phones can do everything and work in most countries. Or you could just purchase a pay-as-you-go SIM card for each country you travel through if you wish to avoid roaming charges.

The point is that technology and communications move on and when I first started to travel the world there was a greater feeling of disconnect. These days everyone is just a smart phone away from one another.

Could you travel without your phone?

Upscaled nostalgia

It’s weird how we remember computer games from our childhood being better than they actually were. I recently started playing with emulators and played a few of my favourite games from my bygone years such as Attic Attack and Turbo Esprit on the ZX Spectrum, Alien Breed and Dreamweb on the Commodore Amiga, and the first Tomb Raider and Fear Effect on the original Playstation. The graphics of each game was very blocky and the sound effects and music wasn’t as smooth as I recall. It’s almost as if my memory was upscaling the graphics and sound quality. A kind of upscaled nostalgia!

A kid from the city

One of my favourite books as a kid was A kid from the city by E.M Watkins. I grew up in a concrete town and this book made me dream of a life in the countryside with nothing but rolling fields, farm animals, and plenty of fresh air.

When I was old enough I would ride my bike out of town to the nearest stretch of countryside and spend many an hour cycling down country lanes and up and down hills stopping for ice-cream or fudge at the country stores sitting by dry stone walls or winding streams.

At the end of the day I’d always have to return home, vowing that one day I would live in the countryside.

I finally achieved my dream and I now enjoy every minute of it. I still go cycling, exploring further afield taking in churches, ruins, and the odd manor house. I bought a copy of A kid from the city for my kids and read it to them but they didn’t seem to appreciate it like I did. I guess they already live in the countryside so maybe they’ll have different dreams of adventure.

A nostalgic mind

I have a nostalgic mind. When it wanders, it likes to explore the past. A style of house I’m passing may trigger memories from my student days: LAN parties and the computer games we played. Old cars will remind me of my first car, working on it with my dad. Something else may trigger memories of loved ones that are no longer with us.

The point I’m making is that my mind seems stuck on nostalgia and although it’s nice to recall memories on occasion, too much looking in the past is not healthy. You need to be looking forward to the future.

I’ve been trying to train my mind to think about the here and now or the future. It is hard though as I go for a lot of walks and practice mindfulness. My mind will wander without direction and inevitably will become nostalgic. Yet I endeavour to keep it on track looking forwards.

Don’t forget the milk

Many moons ago I did a stint at a computer shop building personal computers to customer specifications. Not to show my age but one of the jobs I had to do was to configure the jumpers so that the seven-segment display worked correctly when the turbo button was employed.

Anyway, during this particular period of employment one of the boring jobs that I was tasked with was to take all the cardboard and packaging out to the trash bins down the alley. This alley was shared with one another building, one that was a burned-out shell of a house. It was long abandoned and each day that I had to take the trash out, passing this building, I would wonder what was inside. This was long before urban exploring was a thing or excuse for trespassing.

One day I decided to venture inside. Everything was charred and the upstairs was pretty much gone. But the staircase was intact. On one of the staircase spindles was a note, taped. In neat penmanship was written “Don’t forget the milk”. The building has been uninhabitable for many years and I don’t know what became of its occupants but I often think back to the time I found that note wondering if whomever the note was addressed to remembered the milk.

The dreams you had

Reflection, nostalgia, looking back.

I recall a memory from long ago. I was travelling around New Zealand and I had made some friends, some fellow travellers. We were in a big town somewhere, a park, laying down on the grass staring up at the sky looking at the clouds. We discussed our travels, where we had been and where we were going. We discussed our futures our dreams.

Looking back you remember the dreams you had and compare them to the life you lead. Each decision takes you in a different direction. No matter how small the decision. Your life is what you make it to be.

Regrets are pointless. You can’t change the decisions you’ve already made and how you have lead your life so far. If your dreams didn’t come true then that’s ok. Make new ones. Each new day that you wake up to is full of endless possibilities. When you get older each day where you wake up is a good day. Enjoy it. Make new dreams.

Clive the barman

I have this memory from my first holiday abroad. An island off the coast of Spain. On the beach was a tiki bar. A round bar with stools on the outside and Clive the barman on the inside making whatever drink you wanted.

I often think back to that bar thinking if I could just retire to a tropical island I’ll spend all my time at the tiki bar staring out at the cool blue water, over the perfect white sands, feeling the cool breeze while watching customer after customer ordering drinks with all colours of the rainbow, mini umbrellas and fruit being served by Clive the barman.

Childhood seemed easier

Childhood seemed easier when you only had to think about who to play with, and what to play with: Action Man or Star Wars toys today? None of this adulting stuff. Career planning, frenemies, bills, knockbacks, constant health problems: yours, family, friends.

Everything was in front of you, but not that important. Playing, eating, sleeping, were the priority. Leave the adult stuff to the adults. Simpler times.