15th May - How I Killed Nostalgia

"You don't realise you're in the moment until it's a memory"... Except, you do. If you're anything like me, you're always acutely aware when you're in a fantastic period of your life just how fantastic this time is, but the happiness is often tinged with a bittersweet shadow, as you're also equally aware that it can't last forever. Certainly, there have been times like this in my life. I think the first time I felt that pang of 'current' nostalgia, was during my days at Sixth Form. After enduring pretty miserable School days, surrounded by violent bullies and pig-shit thick no-marks who had no interest in learning, I was suddenly catapulted into a world where everyone around me possessed a similar mindset. 

There was focus, drive, determination. We all wanted our A-Levels, we all wanted to get into Uni, we were all getting our first cars. We had that common bond of unity, which is often a really powerful weapon in examples like this. Suddenly, we were afforded additional free-time which we never experienced in School. 'Free Periods' in our schedules, and a the relaxed luxury of being able to wear our own clothes rather than those stifling uniforms. Throw in the freedom of lounging in the 'common room', making pot noodles and playing games of Pool down the local pub, and I knew this was a key era of my life, already.

The cherry on this particular cake also arrived in a financial aspect. From earning £0 per week in my School days, and having to wait for Christmas or Birthday (6 months apart from eachother) to be able to go see a Movie at the Cinema, or get the latest Playstation game I wanted, I no longer had to rely on pimping out my 'free school meals' ticket, which I'd regularly use to purchase sausage baps from the canteen and then flog off to hungry chums for discounted prices. They paid a lower price than the canteen was offering, and I managed to get some cash out of it. Nobody lost. Except me, as I was hungry. But in all honesty, I was never too hungry at school anyway, such was the crippling pain of anxiety which fill my stomach every day, thanks to bunch of now-imprisoned hooligans in our year. The Summer I got into Sixth Form, I also turned 16, which meant I could finally earn my own wages. I was straight into Tesco, working as a check-out chick, 8-5 on a Saturday and 10-5 on a Sunday. In addition to this, I was now issued with £30 per week E.M.A (another scheme aimed at helping kids from working class families, which the stringent Tories scrapped when they came into power). I couldn't believe that I now had the financial ability to pay for my driving lessons, or to pop over to Pizza Hut on a man-date (we later labelled these adventures as 'Monday Funday') with my closest friend at the time, Nathan. 

But all of this was only a taster of the 'golden era' of my life which was soon to arrive when I started University. I already knew, before stepping one foot inside that Student Union, that this would be the greatest adventure of my life, and I took a gap-year before beginning my degree, reminding myself of this every day, hyping myself beyond belief, and making friends on Facebook by adding people from groups who were also scheduled to start at Winchester in the September. This mindset helped me enormously, as by the time I started, I already had this hugely familiar bunch of faces around me, and I was something of a 'go-to guy', once again subconsciously assuming the mantle of 'leader', as people would pass and shout my name, with the fondness of our pre-Uni conversations still fresh in their mind. I immediately set about setting up a big 'pre-meet' in the local pub before the first BIG night of the year in the Student Union, and what followed over the next 3 years was bliss and euphoria on a constant and relentless level. The friends I made, the memories harnessed from those times... Life was a big holiday. Student loans, and drinking, non-stop banter living in a house of 6 lads. Coming from a somewhat sheltered home-life, this was the release of all that testosterone and craziness which I'd wanted to unleash for so long. Nothing was off limits during this period, and I ensured I said 'yes' to everything I could, never wanting to look back with regrets as I involved myself in every element of debauchery I could get my fingertips on. 

However, much like the story of the Astronaut who went the Moon, and found himself depressed & suicidal afterwards, I found the years after Uni particularly tough to process. You work your whole life to meet a certain aim, and enjoy every second of it whilst it lasts, but what happens when you've completed your goal? What do you have to look forward to? You've already hit your summit, and like any great ascend, the peak of a mountain only leads downhill once you've marvelled at the most beautiful sights at the pinnacle. Work, and 'adulthood', and everything that came with it, was a harsh snap of reality, and I was certainly negatively impacted by the realisation of what life, for the next 50 years, would potentially look like. The only way I kept my spirits high during this time - and in all honesty, I think it probably took at least 6/7 years after Graduation for me to stop waking up every morning wishing I was still in Winchester, heading off to lectures and playing FIFA tournaments with my housemates - was to evoke those feelings of nostalgia on almost constant occurrence. I'd maintained a very close friendship with 4 of the fellas I lived with during that era, and thus, we'd always kick-off conversations in our daily group-chat like 'What were your Top 5 moments of Uni?', or 'List our Top 10 nights out from Fresher year'. In the case of one of my friends, it was always, 'Which Uni girls do you wish you'd have got with?'.

I enjoyed this kind of talk, for so long. But in recent times I've understood that comparison is the thief of joy, and if I'm expecting my life - as a thirty-something year-old Father of two - to somehow mirror those days now, I'm always going to be left disappointed. You can't compare to different eras, or you'll always feel unfulfilled with your present. Instead, you have to learn to tuck your past in a box, and appreciate your future instead. Mental energy is like a see-saw, and if you're tipping too much to your left, how can you expect to succeed on the right? I love nostalgia, as much - if not, more - than the next person, but these days, for the first time in a long time, I don't wake up and wish to return. The thought of the '40 shot challenge' in the space of a few hours, makes me feel queasy. I'd rather stick a sparkler down my jeb-end than dance around to shit cheesey music. And I sure as hell don't wanna go back to a three-month diet of pasta and ketchup. What motivates me now, is my present, is the life I live, and the future I'm building. I've never been happier than where I'm at in life in this moment. If you want to feel the same way...

... Don't let nostalgia stunt your growth.