Writing the same things over and over again

I tell myself I need to update this blog more often than I do.

I was out wandering the city yesterday. I deliberately left my camera and laptop at home because I wanted to explore a little and knew I was going to walk for an extended period of time. I had a library copy of Beautiful Losers and my phone with me; the latter's purpose was mainly to listen to music while I walked and to take the occasional picture. I don't know about you, but I find it hard to enjoy a leisurely walk while lugging an expensive, heavy and fragile piece of equipment around.

I've been trying to reacquaint myself with some of the music I bought a long time ago. Maybe it was all the buzz around the new album (which I haven't bought yet), but I had a strong urge to listen to Radiohead in the last week. I started with The Bends and went backwards to Pablo Honey before, but yesterday I listened to the next albums, OK Computer and Kid A.  Most recognize the former as their masterpiece, but the latter has always been my preference, for purely sentimental reasons.

While I listened, I thought about where I was mentally and physically in October 2000. I was a month into my first semester at Mount Allison University in Sackville. The week I first heard two of those songs, I had just come back from my first trip to Cape Breton in over a decade, wrote an e-mail where I laid long-simmering feelings to rest (with some post-"press send" remorse), and was still trying to moor myself in this wide-open future. This was all fifteen and a half years ago.

Sometimes I wonder whether I'm spending too much time revisiting the past. I've been going through old unlabelled VHS tapes, and while the nostalgia is nice, it hits me that I'm supposed to be living this adult life instead of going back in time. The target audience for the programming block emceed by beaver and dog puppets has already grown up. 1992 is as far back from now as 1968 was from then.

I always have the suspicion that I'm writing the same blog entries over and over again. Maybe it's a general fear that my life isn't moving forward, or a growing feeling that I'm not as open to new experiences as I think I am. I don't think it helps that I'm always looking at things that remind me of the past.