NEW YEAR, NEW BLUES - Advice #1

We got some letters into the ASK A DUDELADY-SOMEBODY INBOX! Thanks to everyone giving this a shot, very sincerely. If you have questions, send them in! Or just enjoy one of my favorite pastimes in this ridiculous world: endlessly reading advice. Shout-out to our enduro-beginner YK, because we do not deserve Editors Like Her.

So what’s up?

Around the new year, I always start thinking about the passage of time, which leads to stress. Stress about where I am in life, things I haven't done and regrets about what I missed out on. How can I avoid the nostalgia/regret cycle and stay in the present?

-A 

I have been nostalgic since I was a stupid kid. Like, a good friend of mine who knew me at 18 made fun of me for my sentimental nonsense as basically a teenager! Time is never time at all said the only good version of The Smashing Pumpkins (fuck Billy Corgan), in a song I feel a LOT Of nostalgia about, a song about nostalgia! 

New Years is a tough holiday for a lot of people. A lot of it in the 21st century is a scam of crappy passed apps and not terrible cava, but let’s be real: you can go to Trader Joe’s and have a GREAT time on ANY night for way less than that $100 cover. 

I digress. As time keeps passing, you do wonder about every road not taken, which one you didn’t travel by. I would wish you, as the year ends, to maybe think about why it stresses you out. I don’t like thinking about life as a series of accomplishments, but think of all the things you DID this year, starting with: I AM STILL ALIVE. That’s pretty good! Not even talking about COVID here! I don’t know how old you are, but you’ve probably made so many choices and done so many things to get here writing to me. There’s depression and loss and bad luck and making the small choices like eating breakfast or forcing your ass to work every day or keeping the tiny flame of love or art or caretaking alive in you. That is WILD.

There are so many expectations leading to a hard road of thinking about all we missed out on, all that we want to do and worry we’ll never get to, and in honor of my 90’s trend here, All That You Can’t Leave Behind (not their best work!). But there we all are thinking we should be at some party or out in the streets or kissing some cutie or looking superfly to the tune of many dollars and everyone else is doing that. But that is NOT TRUE. Or if it is, you know what? One day, if you want to do any of those things, I bet you can and it’s not going to be some 31st of a month because Pope Gregory was like, ah, better fix some old Roman dude’s calendar. 

What nostalgia or looking back on the past few years leads you to regret? What are the things you are most sad you missed out on, and what are parts of those you think you ACTUALLY might want to do in the future? What don’t you want to really do anymore? You haven’t wasted time or messed up your life! But maybe you just want something to not be the same anymore, and that’s what the present is for, to figure out what will be different tomorrow.

A boy I loved once, when I thought my life would end in marriage at 22 (regrets? I’ve had a few?) had an awesome mom, who I miss TO THIS DAY. She told me whatever decision you made when you made it was the right one. I hold onto that. I mean, even when I KNOW it’s a bad decision, it was obviously the right one for me right then, because it just was. I try not to hate myself for being too risky with my beloved earthly pleasures - they were an answer, and I made those choices to get through the other things I was surviving. Sometimes I had just fierce jolts of fun. We try the best we can. I align with Ghost of Christmas Present Muppet who, of course, appears in the Dickensian past, in a movie from the 90’s, about enjoying where you are.

You have done a good job of living in the present, because the memories that are vivid were made in that time’s present (oh jeez, this is woo). I say to you: nostalgia is okay. You’re living the life you live now, and you were brought here from all the past you’s who didn’t miss out on anything, and if you want some of those things, maybe try and think about how you want to find them tomorrow, or in 2023, or the magical someday. Twelfth Night and Epiphany are stars just ahead, mere five days after the 31st. Maybe that can be an option for you. Maybe you can think about the feasts and famines and some stuff you have learned. Shipwreck yourself on an island where you can’t go back to where you were, but it’s time to explore where you are. Certainly this is an annoying little motif I’ve slid here, but remember you’re always walking through to the next thing, and that’s an impressive road you have there, measured by time, and not a new page on the calendar. Let me know how it goes next year!

Here’s “Tonight, Tonight”. Listen to it loud as you can while you stare out of a train window leaving somewhere important, in a car going fast with your arm out the window crying for some reason, or that moment in the night drunk or sober blissed out where you’re playing the songs you loved and someone goes, “YES! This one.”