Indulging in music of my adolescence and my early grown up years still serves a very important function. And actually Cosmic Horror, Science Fiction, RPG and all that stuff serves the same function.

Why is that so?

Fundamentally, the “mobile imagery” comes back into play (cf. “My life is like a Mobile“):

Every choice to dive into a different stratum of my life and interacting there has rippling effects to the rest of the mobile, be it the present, my future, or the way I am dealing with the past.

And then, finding out how to tap into the positive effects of using positively connoted memories or those reframed as positive I can tap into like a time capsule to reframing present day incidents and tap into them for future use.

That’s what I did with music intertwined with positive emotions from my youth to attach new the music with good connoted moments in the present to preserve the positive emotional effects of that music (cf. “Music and the drooling savage beast“)

Cosmic Horror, on a more complex level, serves the same purpose, although combining Cosmic Horror with recent developments and activities has more and deeper implications.

But there are other things I can tap into from the past and bring them to the present to utilize them in the future with updated and current variables (or, like we say in German, “sell old wine in new skins”. Well, it is not only selling an old idea in a new sugar coating, but the message is similar).

So, how does it work? Simple.

Let’s take the example of old friendships and hobbies:

I recently had the lucky chance to meet a couple of old friends I hadn’t met in a couple of years. It was very nice to meet those guys and talk about the old days and how much fun we had making music together and play games, watch certain films, go hiking and all that jazz.

The interesting thing here is, that all these positive emotions came back at once. It felt like we hadn’t split for all these years. But we didn’t only indulge in the nostalgia. We planned on getting in touch more often, under updated conditions:

1. we got older: The experience and the different paths we chose can give the whole thing a new impetus.
2. we changed habits. I don’t drink anymore. Couple of my friends married and got divorced. Interests changed, but all this also means different impetus.

I won’t discuss all the changes in detail here, but the message is clear: There have been a couple of things changing in our lives on the one hand, giving the whole thing a different drive.

On the other hand, we are still very familiar with each other and thus we can quickly find back together.

And here’s the (positively reframed) “Putting old wine into new skins”.

Since we have a safe common ground with good emotions attached to our relationship, we have a good, reliable an healthy starting point.

We can bring together our positive and negative developments to help and support each other and renew our friendship in a very positive and sustainable way.

Of course navigating into unknown territories is motivating, especially for ADHD minds like mine. But doing so with a crew of reliable veterans, the new grounds feel easier navigate our ship into.

And, who knows? Sometimes combining this with absolutely new territory is pretty appealing to me.

Until next time, keep up the faith in yourself and take one step at a time.