# Closing Chapters

Posted: 18 December, 2025

Last Edited: 18 December, 2025

I'm not sure why I'm suddenly writing another blog post. Particularly when I still have an exam to do, for which I need to read two chapters of the textbook.

Perhaps it's because I've just come out of a counselling session, and once again, find something I need to talk about after it's finished.

Perhaps it's because I feel a need to prove to myself that I'm still a good writer, even if I barely pass my Creative Writing course...

Maybe it's because I'm just generally tired but I've been awake long enough that I've progressed into my first period of creative brain waves. Yes, apparently that's a thing.

Anyway, this post's idea stems from the sentiments I've been experiencing since graduating high school.

I feel like I keep wanting to run back to my childhood, as awful as it was in many respects. It's not just my overwhelming fear of death, and general existential dread, it's my nostalgia.

Yesterday, I went to see my old high school band and jazz band perform their annual Holiday Concert. It was great getting to see my old buddies, have a couple laughs while berating the Audio-Visual equipment team for their awful cable management in the few months that I've been gone now.

But, as I listened to them play the biggest set list the band has done since the pandemic, I found myself melancholy. I wanted to be back with them, playing in the pink lighting, learning solos that I couldn't as a result of COVID, setting up equipment, taping cables down to comply with safety policies, digging into the hows and whys of DMX-512, managing my old tech team, shooting the shit.

I can't really do that now.

Picking up the hobbies again, joining a music group on Campus, finding an A/V equipment team to join... it just wouldn't be the same.

I have more demanding courses to come, and I just don't have the time anymore. I, like many others, already treat the Carleton Cybersecurity Club as an extra course.

The workshops; our lectures.

The weekly challenges; our quizzes and textbook readings.

The competitions; our midterms.

After my showing in the past semester alone, it's likely that I'll take on running a couple workshops in the future.

I can keep going back to the band's events, and catch up with old profs during reading week, but for how long?

How long until everyone has moved on? How long until all the staff rotate, and nothing but the U-shape of the building remains?

Even if I step back and question why, why am I so attached to these memories, I don't know.

I know a lot of people who, like myself, left this school having experienced the absolute worst periods of their life.

They never went back. Not for anything.

But I'm practically desperate to return, to jump back in time to grade 9 and fuck everything up again, run through depression, experience the worst days of my dysphoria, and tolerate every bitch and asshole who decided to spend their time splinkling on a bit more shit all the while.

I've run out of things to say at this point. I wish this was better structured than just a brain dump, but I'm too tired and emotional to work on it further.

So, with the loss of my non-existent PG-13 rating, I shall conclude this post, and begin [hopefully] immediately on another post that will outline what I hope to do over the winter break, and what posts I hope to have lined up.

So, to my only reader, stay tuned! I want to get out of the doom and gloom real soon.

OKAY, so, as per usual, I know a guy, FOR EVERYTHING. He's directed me towards contacting another guy on campus who works with A/V stuff. So, maybe I can find a way to keep that chapter open, despite everything else I have going on these days. It also seems that there might be a way to take an elective course that looks into A/V equipment. I will have to hunt around and see if I can fit that into my program

- #AD