Just like the title says, many of the things I like feel stuck a few years in the past.
The songs I listen to, and even the songs I know, mostly peak around five years ago. I do not really understand recent music. More honestly, I am not even trying to.
A few years ago, I still had the energy and stamina to chase new things. I would look up every new anime that was about to start airing and thoroughly check upcoming game releases.
What about now? Do I actively search for anime that looks interesting, or browse lists of games that are about to come out? No. I do not have the energy for that anymore.
Changing the subject a little, games often have the concepts of HP and MP. Physical damage consumes HP. Magic use, or mental damage, consumes MP. If I put that into Japanese terms, HP is physical stamina and MP is mental energy.
Unfortunately, once you become a working adult and spend five or six days a week working, your physical stamina gets consumed. If you eat and sleep, you recover at least a little, so you can somehow maintain your HP.
But what about mental energy? From interpersonal communication to the work itself, “mental energy” is required for all of it. What happens when you keep living while constantly paying attention to society, to everything outside yourself? Your mental energy gets drained. If you eat and sleep, does your MP recover? No, not really. Mental energy takes time to come back.
In games, there are convenient items called potions that restore HP or MP, but there is no such convenient potion in real life. All you can do is find your own version of a potion. In my case, I suspect I am surviving because games themselves function as an MP potion for me.
When work keeps draining both my physical stamina and my mental energy, I feel like even my sensitivity is getting duller. Most new things require both HP and MP. Work matters, of course, but I want to become someone who can manage both HP and MP for my own sake as well.