For over a week now I’ve had this weird kind of nostalgia hanging over me, being whistful about a time that just isn’t anymore, and I don’t know why really.

It started out with me being annoyed at phones, (I know I know, old man yelling at clouds) but I can’t escape the feeling that we were better off in the time before we were all staring down on the black rectangle every day. My tendency to do that also in situations where it really would be better to not to was the reason I’ve decided not to have a data subscription for my phone, I only have internet when I have wifi around, which is generally enough for me.

The thing is, before smartphones there was an “off button” we weren’t always available, always online, it was something that we could escape if we wanted to, not so much anymore, I have kind of created something similar, and it took time to get people used to that I’m not always available but it’s nice.

At the same time it’s really convenient, and I don’t really want to get rid of my phone either, it’s nice being able to download new stuff to listen to on the device itself without having to chain it to a PC, but I did pretty well with it before as well.

Games is another place where I look back, but there as well I’m not sure if what I’m being is not just not wanting to change and looking back to what things was when I was a young’un. I just feel like as we’ve progressed it feels like we have taken away more and more limitations, and I’m a guy that strives under limitations, I’m a person that need them to really manage to work. I’m not good at a wide open task, what I’m good at is taking the limited options that we do have and make the best out of it. And it feels like we’re moving more in the direction of less limitations, maybe I’m just afraid of being left behind, I don’t know.

Maybe it’s also that it’s signs of the time that I used to be more free, the times where I wasn’t chained to my workplace and other commitments, that makes me look at the memory of me walking through the streets of Kobe with my mp3player in my pocket, my ds, and psp in my pocket. Having the time to just go to the arcade and playing a taiko drum game in the arcade just because I wanted it.

There is also a danger of survivorship bias, that I’ve just selectively forgotten the bad things, and remember the good ones, I won’t deny that. Sure there was a ton of bad games before too, they were even more expensive to figure out that they weren’t fun. It was in many ways an inconvenient time, but I don’t know, some times I kind of think that something not being convenient, maybe is not such a bad thing.

So I don’t know, the time that I’ve kind of been longing for in my head the last couple of weeks, it might just not have existed, or it might be just the situation that I was in at that time. But I do kind of wish that I could walk through the train seeing people playing some silly game on their small portable game machine that was weird and fun, things having silly colours, because why not, jump off at some station where I know nobody and just get lost exploring, without a map or idea of where to go. But then again, who knows, at least I can think back on that time in fondness.