Old age, but not that old

Hello duders. Do people use that anymore here?

Recently I decided to open up an old computer circa 2011. It died an untimely death, still not sure what did it but I have a feeling it was my dark depressive aura at the time. The files I needed in order of importance were: Save files, a flac album, wallpapers. What I didn't anticipate was the chaotic nature of my organization. I would create folders inside folders with somewhat descriptive names and put shit that didn't have relation to one another other than perhaps time of creation. In the middle of my File Explorer spelunking I spotted a folder called Notes, nestled inside Docs, in turned nestled inside a folder inexplicably called Green Flashdrive.

I open Notes. I was not prepared.

Fever dream thoughts from a young man who is battling with following creative endeavors while feeling out of place in life, and a dash of depression. Also I was quite poor. The most disconcerting feeling is remembering typing these notes, but at the same time not fully identifying with the person who wrote them. I was this young man, but no longer.

This is what getting old feels like. Enough time has passed that whatever choices I made have sent me on a path so different that I cannot be the same person. My concerns of being broke, lost, unappreciated, and unloved are mostly gone. Career-wise I'm satisfied, my family is content, and thankfully I am no longer broke. I'll end with a quotation from this note which summarizes well what opinion I held of myself in the long forgotten year of 2011.

That's it, there's no happy ending. The year is 2050 and won't even be able to afford to buy the new video games on the Cloud, I hear Half Life 2: Episode Three is about to be released. Giant Bomb will be a long gone memory. The joy that this hobby brought me will always live within me, but for my body it's too late. Years of junk food and alcoholism have finally caught up with me. That stench in the apartment building is my rotting carcass, for weeks it's been sitting there. No one came to my funeral, my parents are dead and my friends are not my friends anymore.

Emo much?

I can't wait to see if by 2050 stream technology will be the preferred way of playing games. I know I no longer enjoy junk food as much as the Bombcast days of yore where stories of burger competitive eating were told. I definitely still like alcohol, but now more socially which hopefully will curve potential addictions. My parents are actually proud of me now... but 2050 won't be too kind to their age. Oh and there are friends now, hopefully some will stick around.

Sorry about Episode Three.

I've done something similar and was likewise hit by the memories of writing the fanfic, but being unable to square in my mind that I was ever that person.

How old are you? If you don't mind me asking.

I ask because i'm 29 and am exactly the same as i was when i was 9.

Don't worry, in the year or 2050 Giantbomb.com will still be around but it will be a site where you get tracker files for Erotic Japanese video games.

I have trouble going back to anything I wrote before 2012. I used to be an incredibly serious and conservative person and am now the polar opposite of that. Everything I wrote back then makes me cringe when I try and read it now. I had a fairly serious family-related event happen at the end of 2011 that put things into perspective and made me realize I was putting far too much weight into things that didn't ultimately matter.

As an example, I took university dead seriously and would get myself so stressed out over midterms that I would end up tanking them and getting bad marks in classes. When I stopped taking them seriously, my marks jumped 15-20%. I went from writing essays on dead serious topics and hating it (and then getting garbage marks as a result) to finding fun stuff to write about for a given topic like cocaine in hip-hop in the 80's and early 90's (I got to quote Snoop Dogg and Too Short! My prof liked the essay so much he made a point to talk to me about it and wanted to use some of the material in future classes). Forcing myself to chill out and have fun probably saved me from dropping out of university.

I'm just as pretentious a little shit as I was when I was writing as a teenager, but at least my spelling is better now.

@cikame: I'm in the same ballpark as you bud. I think I just wanted too many things at the same time and didn't commit to a single objective which led to deep dissatisfaction. Perhaps you found your thing and did it?

I'm certain Giantbomb will endure the great anime wars that are to come.

@warofart: I don't feel like i've found anything, i work 6 days a week for low pay and spend the rest of the time with my passion, gaming, and everything around gaming. I don't have a career in mind and figure as long as i have work of any kind i'll be ok, so far i'm ok, but not having a need for vacations, alcohol, cigarettes or healthcare (yet) helps a lot. I have a few guitars i can sell if things get rough.
Life sucks but time keeps ticking, at least i have video games.