Sub-title: 2005 washed over me and I time-travelled. Not with a phone booth, but a mouse and laptop
I did a weird thing last night. Let me rephrase that. Last night, I was scouting around the internet for pictures and things to add to my new Facebook page, and I ended up logging into my Myspace account because I knew I had some pictures on there that've been lost everywhere else. Like everybody nowadays, I hadn't even thought of that profile for at least 2 years which is long enough in real-world time. But in internet time this equates roughly to the process of star death. After getting what I was after, I wiped some of the dust off of things and decided to poke around a little, which landed me squarely in an archive of messages dating back 7 years. 7 years...let's think about that. For some people, possibly more solid folks than I am, 7 years doesn't mean much. Changes in wardrobe or style, possibly car. For me though, 7 years ago is an entire lifetime. I do this, have done this, multiple times. I can look back in increments of years over the course of my life and say that literally, my life has completely changed multiple times. Obviously I'm still me. My parents are still my parents, I'll always have grown up in the same place, etc etc. But other than the physically unchangeable facts of my life, I can say with absolute certainty that in the last 20 years, back to when I really started to exert my independence and stretch my legs out in the world, I've entirely changed my life at least 5 times. Maybe I have no real sense of how normal this is, and in fact it's something that happens to everyone. But for me, going through that glut of messages dating back to 2005, it got my head cocking to the side, my eyes widening a little to think about the many changes that have occurred in my life. Maybe the thing that seems so odd about it to me is not that things have changed for me, but how precisely everything seemed the change in these phases at exactly the same time. It's what makes me think of these things in terms of entire little lives lived in the course of one big life.I think specifics would be good here. For example, just 2 years ago, in 2010, I can look back on my last "life" which occurred before this one. I had a. a different band b. a girlfriend I haven't talked to since we broke up that summer c. an entirely different set of friends save for 2 stalwarts who're part of those "physical unchangeable facts" and are always there through all phases d. I was not in school yet for my psyche degree e. I had an entirely different set of goals and aspirations f. I was still using Myspace, and didn't even attempt my first Facebook page until later that year g. I drove a different car
There's more I could put, but you get the idea. Even my personality and look were a bit different. And all of these things more or less changed simultaneous with the end of the previous "life" before 2010. And that life ended at the end of 2010 and an entire new life began for me. And this has happened repeatedly throughout my life. Why? I have my suspicions. Personal insights. But whereas I used to think about this a lot, I really don't much anymore. These things happened. I learned what I needed to learn from these other "lives" and took what I needed and moved on to the next. I'm not shallow. I've cared greatly for the people, things, and experiences of these other "lives", Sometimes, you just outgrow them, or they can outgrow you. So getting an unexpected look back last night, at conversations with old band members, old girlfriends (through the entire beginning, middle, and awful, painful end in one case), old friends, even old events I planned or attended, and bands I was obsessive about at the time, I thought about these lives I've lived, for better or worse. This "life", the one I'm living now, is the best one yet. That's not a re-writing of history. I haven't always insisted I was living the best life I could be living. Sometimes I thought things were good and I was ok with them, sometimes I was settling and knew it, and sometimes I fought to evolve. But this life...this is what I've always been fighting for. This is the life, these are the people, the music, the environment, the everything, that I've wanted all along but didn't know the specifics.And the best part is, I absolutely know it.
"Summer's going fast, nights getting colder
children growing up, old friends getting older.
Freeze this moment a little bit longer,
make each impression a little bit stronger"...
~ Neil Peart, "Time Stand Still"
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