What Makes You Feel Nostalgic?- WordPress’ Daily Writing Prompts for January 2023

If you write blog posts on WordPress, then you probably have seen on the blog dashboard (Called My Home) that WordPress has a section called Daily Prompt. In it, they share an idea for a post that you can answer. I considered if I should answer some of the prompts last month, but I didn’t due to Blogmas.

This month, and this year if everything goes well, I decided to answer some of the prompts. These posts will be in addition to any other posts I write on this blog. I want to do this because I sometimes struggle talking about myself on social media. Usually, I talk about my opinions and things I make. Not who I am and what I think about more personal topics. I hope answering these writing prompts will help my blog readers to get to know me better!

The writing prompt for January 2, 2023 is: What Makes You Feel Nostalgic?

To be honest, there are many things that make me feel nostalgic. Sometimes it is a scent or food. Sometimes it is seeing something from my childhood or from an important time in my life.

When I was a teenager, I felt nostalgic more than I probably should’ve. Over time, I began to realize I felt this way for two reasons. The first is due to the economic recession of the 2000’s. This forced me to value things with a different worth. I valued the vacations and places I went to in a different way. I looked at objects differently. Since I was a poor college student at that time, having no money during a recession made me look at the times when I did have access to more money with a renewed sense of worth. Especially at how fleeting that time actually was.

The second reason is because of health issues. I struggled with health throughout my life, but as a teenager my health went from tolerable to bad. At that time doctors diagnosed me with various diseases that caused me to prepare for the worst. I also felt very depressed at that time due to the health issues. When a cure for my health issues came, it was many years later and I was in my mid to late 20’s. As a teen faced with overwhelming health odds, I began to realize that I need to value and cherish the time I had on Earth before it was gone.

This made me very nostalgic for the times when my health was better. I wanted to spend time in the areas where I felt most at home. I wanted to spend time with the people I cared about the most. And I wanted to be surrounded by objects I felt the happiest with. Now that my health is back to normal and I can go on living a normal, healthy life, I don’t feel so nostalgic anymore.

I think my problem is my wonderment and awe of all things nostalgic as a teen caused me to not have the nostalgic feelings as strongly as I once had. Now that I am moving into a new phase in my life, I look at all the things I kept over the years and realized that I don’t need everything. I also know I don’t need to buy new things as well. I love the things I collected over the years. Parting with them will be hard. Not impossible, especially if it means I must do it due to a natural disaster or a similar serious event, but when it comes to buying new things, I don’t really care anymore.

Sometimes, I do miss being more nostalgic than I am today. Yet, now that I am healthy, I am ready to move into the future without worry about missing the past.

Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!