Sentimental packrat

I wrote this blog post last year on my old blog. I also create a small comic based on this post.

I'm a sentimental packrat. On display or in storage are trinkets from places I visited, greeting cards with handwritten messages from family and friends, old gaming magazines from the 2000s, photographs from gatherings, and many other items that would fill up a page if I tried to list them out.

Sometimes, during my downtime, I would rummage through these items. Skimming through old issues of Nintendo Power magazine, seeing articles and spreads about the new games coming out on the GameCube and Nintendo DS. If I look more into my collection, I would find old movie stubs, business cards from various people I met, passes from past conventions, and packets of printed photos of my old friends and me. My mind goes back to when and where I obtained this small physical piece of my memories. I drown in the good emotions tied to that event and blanket myself in these feelings and memories. These feelings die down when my conscience comes in and whispers, “It’s the past. You can’t go back to it.”

My conscience is correct; I cannot go back to the past. The era of GameCube and the DS past. Those movies have been out of theaters for a long time. The conventions have long been over, and I have stopped talking to most of those friends in the photos. With that, why do I even bother keeping these fragments of my past?

Even though I cannot go back. I could see how much I have grown and what I accomplished in my life. Not all these items have a sad story, most of them are happy. When I get stuck in the hole of negative thoughts, I can look at these items and tell myself, “Hey, I did some cool stuff. I left my mark on this earth.”