{"id":534,"date":"2001-08-30T23:50:00","date_gmt":"2001-08-30T23:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2001\/08\/30\/unexpected_nost\/"},"modified":"2024-11-29T16:02:54","modified_gmt":"2024-11-29T21:02:54","slug":"unexpected_nost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2001\/08\/30\/unexpected_nost\/","title":{"rendered":"Unexpected Nostalgia Overload"},"content":{"rendered":"

What with all the hubbub<\/strong> about Ghost World<\/a>,<\/i> Tom<\/a> and I were talking about these postcards we got from Dan Clowes<\/a> back when we were winsome young lads of 17.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I knew that I still had the card tucked away in my magic box of all the personal mail I\u2019ve received over the last 18 years or so (Yes, I\u2019m that big a pack rat), so I went digging for it, and found myself in the middle of an emotional minefield for which I was totally unprepared. This has been a pretty rough year for me so far, and dredging up so much past at once was just a bad, bad idea. Sifting through all those old cards and notes and letters and care packages, my nostalgia quickly gave way to regret, sadness, and embarrassment. (Thank goodness for those little touches of irony, such as a letter from my old girlfriend in which she refers to our first confession of love as \u201cour little coming out.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Seriously, though, it was awful. Try as I might to just skim through until I found this stupid postcard, I still found myself glancing through the physical evidence of almost two decades\u2019 worth of maudlin affirmations of devotion from friends I no longer see, notes from girls I had misguided crushes on, old boyfriends\u2019 love letters that have lost their meaning, and the paper trails of melodramatic misunderstandings.<\/p>\n

Sure there were people with whom I had those overwrought adolescent friendships that seem so perfect but fade away at the start of the next semester, but there have also been all these wonderful, wonderful people who I loved dearly but lost all contact with because of simple laziness. What a dick I feel like, knowing that I\u2019ve deprived myself of people who once made life seem so worthwhile. These last few months, I\u2019ve tried to remember how easy it can be to take people for granted, and keep it from happening. I\u2019m really sad that it\u2019s a lesson I didn\u2019t learn earlier.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Also, it was interesting to notice that I haven\u2019t necessarily changed as much over the years as I always think. Mostly, in good ways, thankfully. As much as I\u2019ve grown and matured and all that junk, I can look at letters from 15 years ago and see that my friends pretty much appreciated the same things about me as they do now. A lot of the same little things make me happy, and a lot of the same things I do seem to communicate my affection to my chums. So I guess I haven\u2019t always been a complete jackass to everyone in my life.<\/p>\n

OK, time to go to bed and forget all about the Box of Old Horrors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What with all the hubbub about Ghost World, Tom and I were talking about these postcards we got from Dan Clowes back when we were winsome young lads of 17. I knew that I still had the card tucked away in my magic box of all the personal mail I\u2019ve received over the last 18 … Continue reading “Unexpected Nostalgia Overload”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultracomics","category-ultrapersonal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76895,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions\/76895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}