For the past few years, my personal life has been rather tumultuous for reasons I will not list here. More recently, however, things have stabilized enough to the point of routine. Routine can sometimes have a negative stigma, but after a period of uncertainty, routine can be welcome calm seas after a storm.<\/p>\n
A drawback of routine, though, when it goes on long enough, is that sometimes the events of one’s past that no longer fit into the narrow scope of that routine can seem almost surreal–even to the point of questioning whether events outside of the routine ever occurred. Especially if there is no tangible proof of those past events, and only memories that fade and become even more inaccurate as more time passes.<\/p>\n
While the fading of the unpleasant memories is a welcome relief, unfortunately the opposite is true of the happy memories that seem even more surreal outside of my now predictable routine.<\/p>\n
So I find myself stubbornly clinging to the remaining tatters of those happier memories, even as my doubt about their validity continues to grow with each passing day. Yet I still make a practice of actively recalling whatever treasured memories I still can–and I do so as often as I can, in an attempt to somehow preserve them from the inevitable degradation as even more time passes. I compare it to restoring old paintings to keep them from fading beyond recognition.<\/p>\n
I’ve become what feels like a lone steward of these memories, a keeper of a time that no longer exists, while at the same time wondering if the memories even happened–or if I somehow fabricated or dreamed them. To the point of even sometimes doubting the validity of any remaining tangible proof of those memories–including the corroboration of those events by others.<\/p>\n
It’s a never-ending struggle against the inevitable passage of time, and what seems like an exercise in futility at times. And I wonder why I even bother–when I should probably be focusing more on the present and the future.<\/p>\n
Yet I feel that if I don’t make at least some effort to keep those memories fresh in my mind, they will be swept away by that relentless rushing river of time. “Lost like tears in the rain,” to quote Roy Batty from Blade Runner<\/em>. To give up on trying to preserve those memories–if only in my own mind–is to admit defeat and deprive myself of the bittersweet pleasure of reminiscing about them someday. We are who we are because of our pasts, and we should make an effort to preserve what memories we can, shouldn’t we? Life passes by too quickly as it is. And to not be able to reflect back on those precious few treasured moments that define who we are seems tragic, somehow. We have to find meaning somewhere in those memories–otherwise we risk finding ourselves mired in the drudgery of routine with no sense of who we are or how we wound up where we are in the present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the past few years, my personal life has been rather tumultuous for reasons I will not list here. More recently, however, things have stabilized enough to the point of routine. Routine can sometimes have a negative stigma, but after a period of uncertainty, routine can be welcome calm seas after a storm. A drawback […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":968,"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions\/968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimarusti.com\/scott\/artisticcustom\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}