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Ian MacKaye semi recently in a talk said something like “I’m not the kind of person who goes through phases, everything I believe in and loved when I was 19 I still believe in today, there’s just more of it.”
I like reflecting on the past and I don’t think that has to infect or damage your ability to be in the present and look forward, in fact, esp thru writing about the past (my kind of crazy life in my late teens thru early 20s), it brings up people that Ive decided, fuck it, I’ll give reconnecting a shot. You shouldn’t be afraid of hitting somebody up you haven’t seen in five or ten years, if you enjoy them, as long as you haven’t become like, nemeses or whatever. And I’m in the Ian MacKaye camp. I’m smarter and more well adjusted at 33 than I was at 18-24 but I forged my taste and values and loves of people then, and those things really haven’t changed much, and I’m glad for that
+3
4d ago
Related Recs
I know this quote is talking about future and present but I like to see it as present and past. I feel like I look back on my teenage years and think it’s so cringe and I was so messy and made so many mistakes. but at this point, I’ve really built a life for myself that teenage me and current me is proud of. If I am worth something now, I was worth something then.
Dec 23, 2024
First of all, this is definitely normal and you’re absolutely not alone in it. But I think you may be ascribing self-actualization and self-assuredness to those a few years younger than you a little too hastily. People who had their middle-school years disrupted by the pandemic also dealt with/continue to deal with the effects of missing out on formative social and personal development, all the while with less developed brains! Not to mention the people you’re seeing are the ones out at shows, not the ones staying home with social anxiety or panic attacks. So although it may seem from your observation that people in this age range are doing just great, it sounds like you’re comparing yourself to a skewed group through an internalized lens of cultural bias towards youth – quite a combo. And that’s just not being fair to yourself. The fact that you are getting back out there is big and needs to be acknowledged. Instead, you’re positively projecting and amplifying, i.e., seeing in them what you are having trouble finding in yourself. But it is in there – the proof is that you’re showing up. Same thing for self-expression – have you seen your own pfp? You seem cool af!
Because of the pandemic, you’ve had a unique and unfortunate generational experience of this “arrested development”, but this also creates an opportunity to further the paradigm shift that royallmonarch focused on in his lovely essay. Societal expectations based around age are out; living your life on your own timeline is in.
Life happens; shit happens. But you’re getting through it and you’re doing great.
Youth/very young adults who make their youth their personality are actually boring people. Adults who pine about their younger days are also boring. Don’t be either! And if it makes you feel any better, I was at my peak “reckless” right at your age; I got a “late” start. You have so much time to keep doing fun stuff and most importantly, to figure out what you like and don’t like. I’m in my 30s and I’m going to a friend’s rave tomorrow. Ok, it’s a well-organized, well-curated event and not some shit-show in the bush, but still. It’s not over for me! Another night, I’ll stay home and pet my cats. Either way, I’m doing whatever the fuck I want. People take up painting or whatever in their 80s. The sooner you get on that vibe, the better.
Ok go have fun!
Jul 11, 2024
I do not recommend. It’s not a milestone people talk about like eighteen, twenty-one or any multiples of ten but as someone who is currently going through it, I’m here to warn you:
Your 43rd is the year that the world begins to blow the dust off the ancient tomes that meant the most to the earliest version of yourself. They hold aloft the formative texts of your adolescence and for the first time you hear your lived experiences breathlessly intoned as historical record. “THE BENDS IS 30 THIRTY YEARS OLD”.
Time slows, the sounds around you fade as you get a tightness in your chest and your tongue goes numb. “The Bends is 30 years old? But that’s the album I put on when Cara Clement doesn’t want to go to the dance with me! The formative fabric of my youthful soul is interwoven into these songs, could 1995 really be that long ago?”
Your mind is reeling now, “…wait, what else came out in 1995? Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness? Liquid Swords? Elliot Smith? What’s the Story Morning Glory? Gangsta’s Paradise? THE BATMAN FOREVER SOUNDTRACK? Oh no… oh no… OH NO” Slowly it dawns on you that you were an impressionable young dreamer coming into your own during what is often regarded as the zenith of the pre-internet music industry.
Obviously the circumstances will be materially different for you if you are not also born in 1982, but rest assured Dear Ones: the year you turned thirteen, as your limbic system heightened every feeling and neuroplasticity worked it way toward your prefrontal cortex shaping the world you live in from the inside out, something was widely regarded as being the best it would ever be and one day, thirty years from that time, a culture preoccupied with reminiscence will rediscover that thing that was your thing and you will feel the invisible hand of progress gently take you by the crook of the elbow and guide your shuffling feet toward the Museum of Old Balls.
Mar 18, 2025
Top Recs from @odradek
Sometimes theres an implicit stank put on my city; on the East Coast there’s a kind of New York Supremacy. People think of Baltimore as a failed state backwater, a curiosity at best. It can be tough living here sometimes, to be sure. But Bmore has, however, easily the most vibrant, exciting, original, diverse and ambitious music and art scene of any small city in the East and from what I can tell, in the entirety of the country. At any rate, this breakout hit from Tate Kobang is quintessential Baltimore popular art. The style of minimalism with hard pulsing snare claps and the parsimonious use of sampled groove bits (which, that’s all Bmore Club style, distinctly), obviously the lyrics too and the settings of the video which tell a story without telling a story, it’s genuinely one of my favorite hip-hop songs, and you gotta watch the video.
2d ago
This shit is worlds cooler than anything Data for Progress does, no offense to DC homies tryna do the good work for that goofy org
3d ago
😃
CANDOR is SPLENDOR. Reject the categories of based and cringe + say exactly the thing that you feel from the gut and heart before you erode those things
Irony is great at the service of jokes and wild pastiche. But don’t let it be a stumbling block. Shoot your shot, be embarrassed, be open like a snow angel and trust the True + Good
4d ago