MetaNostalgia
MetaNostalgia is that state you get into by looking down at your pot pipe and remembering, nostalgically, one of the first times you got high on pot and how it gave you this burst of nostalgic memories.
I've always been nostalgic. I'm always backwards-looking, continuing to react to things. Processing in my head what I think of this event and that ongoing phenomenon and still being in that moment.
This is not a confession. I mean, you do you; maybe being like this wouldn't work for you, and I'm not trying to prescribe it for you. But I like it, and it works for me.
Do I sound defensive? That's fair. There's a lot of propaganda that favors the forward-looking. I'm not saying you're a part of that, just that it's loudly out there as an attitude. That if you're looking backwards, you aren't watching where you're going. That it means you aren't a planner. That, from a healthy psychology point of view, you aren't living in the present moment. And that, from a psychology point of view that's watching for pathology, that you're traumatized or haunted or imprinted upon by your past and therefore can't move on, as if your past were one thing and who you are is another thing, victimized by the it. Does any of this sound familiar? You've heard it too then?
So yeah, here's the deal. I'm here in the here and now. I act and choose and make the same efforts to shape my life as you probably do, I'm not ignoring the present moment.
The past is how I make sense of the present. It's not a different reality, one that has expired. Now is Then, later. I'm continuing to look at all things, as they have been and on up until now when they're continuing to happen. I don't really know for sure if those of you with this present-moment attitude are doing the exact same thing I'm doing and we're just using different words, or if you folks think differently.
I'm not done with the past. I reminisce, I replay, I continue to learn from. Much of it is abstracting, seeing patterns that reoccur from time to time as part of events. That includes my own emotional and cognitive reactions at the time, what I was going through and what I was doing in those situations.
And yes, I replay in my head pondering what if had done this instead, all that second-guessing and trying on regrets like garments from the dress-up box, playing the scene out different inside my head. Of course I do that.
I am who I have always been. I never stopped knowing the me that I was when I had only recently acquired a language to think in. Maybe before then, too, it's just that I can't think back to my thoughts I was thinking because they weren't in words yet. Only some of them ever are, of course. But you can remember patches of the other stuff if you have the verbal-memory framework to anchor them to.
It hasn't been all pleasant. Or easy. The tendency is that I'm marked as Other, and marginalized, but I'm a participant in that marginalization too, pulling away from others. The problem isn't that I don't want connection and community. The problem is that other people want me to be more like them, and I want other people to be more like me; they, in general, are over there in that direction, in other words I'm different in a direction. There's tension, sometimes frustration; communication is a recurrent concern. So I'm not saying I've found Zen or sublime peaceful acceptance or whatever.
But I'm also not messed up, either by my past or by the ways in which I'm different. It hasn't been a miserable life so much as a struggly life. I'm passionate and intense even though I'm also mellow and sweet.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
I have started querying my third book, Within the Box, and I'm still seeking advance readers for reviews and feedback. It is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you're interested.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
I've always been nostalgic. I'm always backwards-looking, continuing to react to things. Processing in my head what I think of this event and that ongoing phenomenon and still being in that moment.
This is not a confession. I mean, you do you; maybe being like this wouldn't work for you, and I'm not trying to prescribe it for you. But I like it, and it works for me.
Do I sound defensive? That's fair. There's a lot of propaganda that favors the forward-looking. I'm not saying you're a part of that, just that it's loudly out there as an attitude. That if you're looking backwards, you aren't watching where you're going. That it means you aren't a planner. That, from a healthy psychology point of view, you aren't living in the present moment. And that, from a psychology point of view that's watching for pathology, that you're traumatized or haunted or imprinted upon by your past and therefore can't move on, as if your past were one thing and who you are is another thing, victimized by the it. Does any of this sound familiar? You've heard it too then?
So yeah, here's the deal. I'm here in the here and now. I act and choose and make the same efforts to shape my life as you probably do, I'm not ignoring the present moment.
The past is how I make sense of the present. It's not a different reality, one that has expired. Now is Then, later. I'm continuing to look at all things, as they have been and on up until now when they're continuing to happen. I don't really know for sure if those of you with this present-moment attitude are doing the exact same thing I'm doing and we're just using different words, or if you folks think differently.
I'm not done with the past. I reminisce, I replay, I continue to learn from. Much of it is abstracting, seeing patterns that reoccur from time to time as part of events. That includes my own emotional and cognitive reactions at the time, what I was going through and what I was doing in those situations.
And yes, I replay in my head pondering what if had done this instead, all that second-guessing and trying on regrets like garments from the dress-up box, playing the scene out different inside my head. Of course I do that.
I am who I have always been. I never stopped knowing the me that I was when I had only recently acquired a language to think in. Maybe before then, too, it's just that I can't think back to my thoughts I was thinking because they weren't in words yet. Only some of them ever are, of course. But you can remember patches of the other stuff if you have the verbal-memory framework to anchor them to.
It hasn't been all pleasant. Or easy. The tendency is that I'm marked as Other, and marginalized, but I'm a participant in that marginalization too, pulling away from others. The problem isn't that I don't want connection and community. The problem is that other people want me to be more like them, and I want other people to be more like me; they, in general, are over there in that direction, in other words I'm different in a direction. There's tension, sometimes frustration; communication is a recurrent concern. So I'm not saying I've found Zen or sublime peaceful acceptance or whatever.
But I'm also not messed up, either by my past or by the ways in which I'm different. It hasn't been a miserable life so much as a struggly life. I'm passionate and intense even though I'm also mellow and sweet.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
I have started querying my third book, Within the Box, and I'm still seeking advance readers for reviews and feedback. It is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you're interested.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts