Nostalgia

Here is my top playlist from 2024. It is titled “Ice cream and hugs” because of a memorable evening when I assembled it from that week’s discover weekly.

My favourite songs are all associated with important times in my life and important things. And this playlist combines everything from the latter half of 2024 into one evocative 24 minute block. I could be commuting or jogging when the playlist gets queued and instantly images are brought to mind of me on the train to work reading the Witcher, walking around building 10 at UTS, the first circuits I used to run when I picked up running that I have long since abandoned, the servo on the border of Edmonson Park and Ingleburn, and browsing the shelves at Green Square library after dark on Wednesdays. All quintessentially 2024.

It’s not that hard to form such an association, all it takes is a little bit of emotion, a change of pace, new environment, music that plays just one more time to make you take note of it and possibly someone to enjoy it with. You can bond with a song over a summer of working evenings at the shop or just one rainy night after a 9pm lecture.

The nostalgia characteristic of these memories grow uncontrollably over time, like a forgotten pokemon in your deck that is occasionally drip fed a couple xp. The pokemon is your lived experience. I try to have novel, fulfilling experiences so that over time it appreciates to a ‘core memory’ sized memory. Analogous to choosing a promising starter pokemon. The principle being a foundationally sound asset is a good investment. But the truth is, nostalgia does not care for the quality of the memory you start with. It will tint everything rose regardless, grow value relentlessly and tirelessly.

For large parts of last year I was miserable, I stayed up late working on too many things and I didn’t feel like I was living at all just working endlessly. I even deliberately called my spotify wrapped “the quiet year” because of how underwhelming it all was, in November.

But nostalgia has done what it does anyway and now I can only fondly remember the 10% of the time when I was actually doing things, not the 90% when I wasn’t. Even though I can’t quite say why.