I find myself missing the 90's all the time. Especially in the past year or two. Last year I was off work for two months so I had plenty of time to sit and ponder. It was scary how deep I delve into the past. I've always had a great memory but I started recalling little details and putting things together. I began surrounding myself with period-correct items I still have from back then and hunting down others on eBay, watching old home videos, and listening to 90's alternative almost exclusively. I began seriously considering all the implications of time travel. It started to feel like I was back there again, almost like Somewhere In Time (look up the plot of that movie and you'll understand what I mean.) SXM Lithium has a bumper they play between songs sometimes where the jockey states something along the lines of
"Sometimes life has a tendency to get in the way, make you forget who you are and where you came from. Lithium is here to help remind you." with a mix of song samplings playing in the background, and it hits like a truck every time I hear it. Almost makes me cry.
There's something calming about that 90's alt sound. I'm still a huge new ROCK buff obviously but I listen to 90's stuff a lot. At work we get a lot of helpers who are considerably younger than me and it starts to make me feel old when I hear what year they were born while they sit there watching Tik Tok on their phone. Here I am playing Lithium and Turbo (90's and 2000's hard rock) in the truck and I realize "oh my God. I must be coming off to them as those old guys who only played oldies or classic rock did to me."
On the other side of the coin, I find I don't give the 2000's enough credit. They were every bit if not more of a staple in my growing up as the 90's but for some reason I don't seem to relish them the same way. Maybe they were too "modern" by comparison, maybe my naivety blinders weren't as thick, or maybe they just had that post-9/11 taint. I don't know. Maybe it's the fact that they're kinda caught in the middle between two big eras: now* and the 90's that makes it harder for them to shine through to me, like a neglected middle child. But when I consider how many things that are almost a cornerstone in my current life were derived from the 2000's and how much fun I actually had back then, I appreciate them more. *(For the record, I pretty much consider anything between 2012 and the present as "now", with 2010/11 as kind of a bastard transition. Though 2012-2019 are quickly becoming a whole other personal era on their own.)
But yeah. The future's
ed and there's probably not going to be anything for us to retire into. Hang onto your butts.
