Out of curiosity I looked up on Ebay how much my old Pokemon video games and Nintendo Game Boy would cost.
I used to play my Game Boy for hours when I was a kid, and I have learned that I can recreate history for the nominal fee of about $40 (plus shipping and handling).
It got me thinking, is living in the past all that bad?
Yeah, if you are holding on to pain, guilt, and regret, my advice is to drop those feelings like yesterday’s garbage; But is it so bad to get energy from the past?
That question stayed with me through the night and into the next day when I was having a particularly stressful day at work. There was a deadline that needed to be finished and a small crew of us trying to prepare for it. Needless to say, some people in the office were getting a bit snippy. So I decided to test my nostalgia question. I thought about a time when I didn’t have to think about work…
I flashed back to when I was a kid with my two brothers in Arizona. We used to have a small dirt lot on the side of our house and we spent hours digging in it. For no reason. Just digging. We dubbed our little piece of paradise “The Pit”.
I thought about the hours I would spend with my brothers trying to figure out how we could make booby traps to ward off intruders. I thought about the Nerf guns used to protect our nugget of land from the neighbor who invited himself over. I even laughed at the idea of us trying to dig a hole large enough to make a swimming pool.
It’s funny because right when I came back to reality, my job didn’t seem all that hard. If I could have the motivation to dig a swimming pool after seeing the classic movie Encino Man starring Pauly Shore, a couple of spreadsheets didn’t look so tiring at all.
I was refreshed with a new feeling of good energy and had a smile on my face. The office probably thought I looked crazy smiling wide as I made a dozen copies, but I don’t care. The best part is, my work was easier to complete and I didn’t let any problem stop me because there was always a good memory to battle any anxiety that the present situation brought me.
So yes, you shouldn’t dwell on the pain of the past, but if you had some pretty rad times eating pizza and watching Full House, then who is to say that you can’t use the past as a tool to work with in the present?
What’s your favorite memory that can help you through your next project? Leave them in the comments section below or let me know on Twitter @MarkJAlderson.
