erratic erratum

anyone else consciously divide their life into eras? like phases, or chapters in a book? for me, every few years seems to bring a shift into a new era, with lifestyle changes, new obstacles, and new obligations.

every new era I enter seems to have a mental or emotional theme dictated by the dominant experiences of the period. I had a coming of age and teen angst era, a social butterfly era, an internet recluse era, a falling in love era, a traveling era. each with varying combinations of joy, excitement, sadness, and hardship.

I've also more recently had a debilitating anxiety era, and a healing era. one had starkly negative events impacting my family's quality of life, and one brought more positive experiences as we saw improvements and good fortune.

these eras are, of course, painted by my memories of those times. memories of misfortunes and crises. death, grief, health issues, debt, depression, burnout. these are all adversities that struck within a three year window from 2021 to 2023 - which constitutes my aptly named Anxietas era.

my healing began in 2024. as my family dealt with a death in the extended family, I took steps to manage my anxiety, starting with meds. the improvement was noticeable and brought with it immediate change. I saw positive impacts in both my personal life and professional life. relationships improved, I started advancing at work. I tentatively call this era my Reformation.

it's been a couple of years, and it's starting to feel like this era may be drawing to a close. the theme of this phase of life was healing. recovering from grief and loss, overcoming depression, and finding a viable path forward through the miasma of life. and now, I've found a path. and I'm excited to see where it goes.

I think discovering cyberspace was part of this Reformation. part of this path forward. I've been rediscovering a lot of pieces of my past lately, dwelling on nostalgia and remembering the former elements of experience that used to bring me joy. reconstituting old AIM and mIRC logs, digging up my old myspace templates, extracting data from old hard drives, burned CDs, and floppy disks... and looking back to past phases... to my Dreams of Youth era, my Coming of Age era, my Resurgum era... I've been remembering where to find that joy. it lies sleeping within nostalgia.

a couple years back in one of my online bios, I referred to myself as a "nostalgic technomancer." it was fitting at the time because I was just then starting to look more toward the past. I've always been fascinated by 90s cyberculture, and this place - this cyberspace - obviously screams it. I may be here for a while.

thanks for reading.