The Memory Collector
“It is the way of weakened minds to see everything through a black cloud. The soul forms its own horizons; your soul is darkened, and consequently the sky of the future appears stormy and unpromising”
– Alexandre Dumas
Have you ever thought about the way you see the world? The way that all of the little things that have happened to you create this lens through that you see everything through. The way you interact with people to the way you brush your teeth. Every little action you take is influenced by something whether you realize it or not.
For me I use music. It’s like Jasper from Twilight’s ability to change your mood in an instant. Magically translating your emotion directly into words.
Recapturing a moment through music is easier than one would think. Recreating the emotion by bringing forward feelings associated with memories. All you need is the associated memory to attach it to. But how do you collect memories by anything other than experiencing?
Sometimes its easiest to just transported back to times in your life when things were more clear. Where you had an idea about what it was you wanted, and a path to get it. A goal.
Interconnecting ideas don’t always just lay themselves in your lap. When they do, it’s the universe signaling you to step up to the plate. Put your game face on and get to work. There’s not time to wonder and talk about possibility after possibility. We’re in the perfect time to iterate. Fail. Try again. Find ourselves on our feet. Finally.
After I dropped out of college, all I wanted time to do was to slow down. I was in a really good portion of my life where things seemed to start lining up for me. I had managed to get an internship working with TIME magazine at the 2012 Republican National Convention working in guerrilla advertising. Basically just getting word of mouth out on the streets. A street promoter of sorts, but for their partner app.
The app wasn’t really all that impressive. But this was back in 2012, so I should have appreciated the time it must have taken to get an entire platform running for an individual event with live updates to the schedule, live broadcasting coverage, there was actually quite a bit of useful content if you’re into that kind of techy politics stuff. Plus, people were downloading it, so some people were interested.
I was a co-chair for the student government social committee trying to get smoking reserved on campus, despite being a smoker. I was the national communications coordination in-training for the residence hall association. I was the Extreme ELITE events coordinator. And I had managed to secure a spot as one of the student leader mentors for the ELITE program, I was actually focused on student leadership and engagement on campus. There wasn’t a lot that happened at the school that I didn’t take part in some form of their student life engagement.
I was a control freak then, every second of the day had to be accounted for in some way or another. It wasn’t the healthiest way to live. But I have the tendency to overcompensate when I start heading back the other way. Finding a balance hasn’t been easy, isn’t easy, for me. A balancing act between sobriety and anxiety, finding the perfect balance of medications to keep one sane.
To balance out my anxiety and PTSD, for a long time I turned to alcohol. A conversation about how when you live in a constant state of anxiety you can sometimes develop a habit to find a crutch. That was alcohol for me. The only thing that got me through the day.
There’s this theory that time is made up of moments, and each of these moments is motionless. It’s all an illusion. Almost like a movie being played back at full speed. No rewind, or pause. Just play and stop.
