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Ten years ago...
May. 6th, 2004 03:07 am(The following is not depressed angst, merely some introspection I'm putting into words. It's really more for my own sake than anything else and not likely of interest to others, but I don't bother with private messages.)
Something rather odd occurred to me tonight. Someone made a literary reference, and as I mulled over it I realized it'd been over ten years since I'd read the book in question. This in turn lead to the further realization that I've been saying that phrase rather a lot to myself lately.
Ten years ago I was a voracious reader. I'd gone through a fair amount of the typical scifi and fantasy works, then moved on to classic literature, touched on a few biographies, dabbled a little in mystery. And of course outside of fiction the sciences held my fascination, particularly ethology, computer sciences, and electronics. Then about ten years ago, my reading fizzled out to pretty much just documentation I had to slog through.
I used to write quite a bit. Just letters, nothing artsy. But I maintained handwritten correspondence with a number of friends, and looked forward to email from them and others, which I would respond to at length and in short order. I've not hand-written anything longer than a quick note in, oh, probably something over ten years now, and I'm notoriously lax at replying to email. Not to mention my spelling and grammar have gone downhill as well.
Ten years ago, I used to play guitar and was quite well in practice. I'd been playing guitar since I'd found one kicking around the house as a teen, and had been playing various other instruments since elementary school. I could read sheet music (a rare thing for a guitarist), I knew some theory, I could imitate various other guitarists' styles at will and could improvise more or less. I'd hear or recall a song, and I wouldn't rest until I'd picked it apart. I'd practice for hours at a time, had the thick callouses on my fingertips to prove it, and had even done some recording and public performances, from standard rock fare to classical quartet. Then I stopped playing, about ten years ago.
And so on. (Actually, it's getting to be more like twelve years ago that most of these things fell by the wayside, but who's counting.) It's as if at some point I'd lost my interest in learning and creating and exploring, in being interesting, and apathy took the place of those interests. The only correlation I can draw in the timing is that I'd also left my academic environs completely behind at that point. Could it be so simple a thing as that? Or is it perhaps just something people commonly go through at some stage in their life? Yet I see people older than me pursuing advanced degrees and still enthralled with the same types of things I've let drop out of my life.
I don't know the answer. This entry is my reminder to keep trying to figure out how to get back to being more like I used to be before this decade-long cultural and intellectual black hole came about. Maybe I'll start by teasing my hair out like Motley Crue again...
Something rather odd occurred to me tonight. Someone made a literary reference, and as I mulled over it I realized it'd been over ten years since I'd read the book in question. This in turn lead to the further realization that I've been saying that phrase rather a lot to myself lately.
Ten years ago I was a voracious reader. I'd gone through a fair amount of the typical scifi and fantasy works, then moved on to classic literature, touched on a few biographies, dabbled a little in mystery. And of course outside of fiction the sciences held my fascination, particularly ethology, computer sciences, and electronics. Then about ten years ago, my reading fizzled out to pretty much just documentation I had to slog through.
I used to write quite a bit. Just letters, nothing artsy. But I maintained handwritten correspondence with a number of friends, and looked forward to email from them and others, which I would respond to at length and in short order. I've not hand-written anything longer than a quick note in, oh, probably something over ten years now, and I'm notoriously lax at replying to email. Not to mention my spelling and grammar have gone downhill as well.
Ten years ago, I used to play guitar and was quite well in practice. I'd been playing guitar since I'd found one kicking around the house as a teen, and had been playing various other instruments since elementary school. I could read sheet music (a rare thing for a guitarist), I knew some theory, I could imitate various other guitarists' styles at will and could improvise more or less. I'd hear or recall a song, and I wouldn't rest until I'd picked it apart. I'd practice for hours at a time, had the thick callouses on my fingertips to prove it, and had even done some recording and public performances, from standard rock fare to classical quartet. Then I stopped playing, about ten years ago.
And so on. (Actually, it's getting to be more like twelve years ago that most of these things fell by the wayside, but who's counting.) It's as if at some point I'd lost my interest in learning and creating and exploring, in being interesting, and apathy took the place of those interests. The only correlation I can draw in the timing is that I'd also left my academic environs completely behind at that point. Could it be so simple a thing as that? Or is it perhaps just something people commonly go through at some stage in their life? Yet I see people older than me pursuing advanced degrees and still enthralled with the same types of things I've let drop out of my life.
I don't know the answer. This entry is my reminder to keep trying to figure out how to get back to being more like I used to be before this decade-long cultural and intellectual black hole came about. Maybe I'll start by teasing my hair out like Motley Crue again...
