I Want to Document This

 It has been awhile since I've felt that I had a purpose. Friends and interests have come and gone. There is not much that remains of my old enjoyments. I've tried to find fulfillment in hobbies of my past, and yet, none have felt like they used to. I figured out that I was just spending money to try to feel some semblance of a better past. The truth is, that even the past is flawed. The items I bought and collected either had no connection to my past, or were idealized to the point of fiction. I collected cards, models, games, anything I remember from the past, even if I never had those items. If they were around at the time and unobtainable or unknown to me at that time, I sought them out to bring forth some kind of false closure that I felt I needed. In truth, the items represented the loss of an era. They were the loss of my childhood and early adulthood.

I am thirty six years old. The enjoyment of my life peaked in 2009, crashed in 2010, entered a revival in 2017, and has fallen and stagnated since 2021 with little expectations of it ever rising that high again. Most of the cause of these feelings have been the loss of friendships that have happened gradually. There isn't much left in terms of this. I blame no one for this happening. At this point, it just seems like the natural progression of my life. Though I am grateful for my wife and my family, I have no connection left to the hobbies that I used to love. Without friends and the things that used to bring me happiness I constantly ask myself, "So is this all there is?"

I'm to the point now where I have started to scale back or outright get rid of old hobbies, namely card collecting. While I can never get rid of all of my collectibles, I will not buy anymore, and the remainder of my collections will be stored away for the time being. I am not sure what I will move onto to pass my free time. I have kept my PlayStation 4, and will most likely continue to play games to help alleviate this new found boredom. I know all of this sounds dramatic, but I am at a crossroads in my life where I can either hold fast to nostalgia, that will slowly waste my life and leave me empty, or I can try to start over and figure out something that will give my soul meaning. The risk of course is that I get stuck in a nihilistic state where I find no point in pursuing anything due to the factors of money, possible loss of interest, or realistic expectations of such hobbies. I can't keep doing the same thing though and expect different results. This is the only path out of that maze. I'm not sure what I will find, but I don't have a choice if I want to be able to move on from the past.