I’ve started to really like just mustard and sauerkraut on my hotdogs and racing games over FPS because they’re a little slower paced.
-Here’s the weirdest one: I used to hate the French language (too “mushy”!) and was super excited that my college offered German. I took THREE YEARS of German. Now I’ve forgotten it all, but I’m really into French and actually considering a French immersion program to get more conversational.
-Also, I used to love loud & stimulating environments (metal shows, night clubs, etc.) while now I appreciate tranquility. Gimme a used bookstore or nature walk any day! I went to a drag brunch recently cause it seemed like the kind of thing I should like as a gay-ish Millennial woman. But it was SO not my thing … the lights, blaring music, close bodies, and cell phones documenting every second just ruined all the nice/chill things about brunch. And I can’t survive an actual concert without earplugs.
-Food-wise, I hated seafood as a kid. Now I love it, including oysters and scallops and octopus and sushi/ceviche of any kind.
According to my doctor I’m experiencing severe depression so… Everything changed.
I had doctors for my depression for years, and they would occasionally say things like “some people feel a little better when they exercise. It’s the endorphins”
What I wish they had done instead was grab me by the lapel, slam me agains the wall, slap me a couple of times, and yell “You fool, you’re depressed because your brain has atrophied from lack of movement! Your natural state is very happy but you evolved to be moving your body!”
When I finally did connect those dots, and finally saw the research on hippocampal neurogenesis, I upped my running from 2 miles maybe every other week, to like 30 miles a week.
And the depression was gone. For the first time in decades. The effect was so much more powerful than the meds.
Read up on exercise, BDNF, hippocampal volume, and depression.
Or just trust me, and go run like a caveman chasing a deer to exhaustion.
I used to hate fresh tomatoes. Now I love it. I used to love really spicy hot stuff, but now it makes me sick if it’s too hot.
Smooth Jazz and 80s music. I had to work real hard to like vegetables. It’s an ongoing saga. But one day smooth jazz and 80s music just hit me, and woke something up deep in my spinal column. It’s purely nostalgia, and the initial delivery method was probably Spotify being very liberal with recommendations based on vaporwave and synthwave stuff. But synth and sax and all the stuff I used to find tacky and irritating as a child just made me feel at home. The word nostalgia gets abused these days but my sudden appreciation for the sounds of my childhood and the way they consistently make me feel like I’m nestled snug into the beige carpet of a Huber home, just existing without a care in the world…that’s some deep nostalgia. And it’s also nice to mentally congratulate myself on evolving to appreciate stuff I was too snobby or dense or whatever to like growing up.
Mitch Murder - Then Again
Instantly takes me back 30 years.
