If I were to use a handful of words to describe this phase of my life, nostalgia would be on that list. Whether in cinema through throwbacks and the new interpretations of the old like Stranger Things, Adventureland, and even the mood of Into the Wild—that was me in 2004; or in music with developing playlists to bring in old favorites or my exploration into synthwave, I find organic attraction within this nostalgia. I'm reminded of earlier times and the feelings they evoked: those endless summer nights that were carefree with infinite possibilities before us. When you're young, you live a life that is a bunch of nothing until it's something, all within the backdrop of the distant call of a future to realize...

...then one day, you're suddenly old and life is no longer malleable. Questions have been answered and we ride the gradual descent to the grave with a slow data dump to our offpring. While I yearn for more, there is a sobering realization that this is all that there is—on this side of eternity anyway— I'd take a stab that this nostalgia is fueled by this realization. I find myself somewhere between Eddie Money's I Want to Go Back and Howard Jones's Things Can Only Get Better.

While I've never had a problem with my own death and even have great expectation of it, I don't rule out the possibility that this nostalgia is a pushback against some sort of chrysalis formation. Perhaps, I am at the Great Divide: the Atlantic and the harbor of civilization behind me, the Pacific and the unknown before me. In that sense, perhaps it is not a whole lot different than those endless summer nights, but instead of being driven by external events, there is the inward journey, something that is by far more endemic to truth and superior to our culture's hopeless infatuation for all that glitters: coin, stardom, power et al. I suppose if I sit back as a detached observer, I'd conclude that our culture's focus is just a youthful fumbling and failing to meet the pinings for the eternal.

But, what does that have to do with me? I look in the mirror and see what I was and what I will be and its subsequent double-mindedness with all that numbs the soul, before I head out the door to embark down the journey to the Pacific. Ultimately, I wouldn't jab the reset button on my NES, because it would be a hollow hell.

I appreciate nostalgia for what it is: an idealized, feel-good vibe like a hot chocolate on a cold night.