I've got this sentimental heart that beats But I don't really mind that it's starting to get to me ✨📟📱🎧🆓

I came across this nostalgia meme the other day, and I have been ruminating on it a lot. I've also been watching the YouTube channel aestheticsexplained frequently (it's GREAT, honestly), so I have been thinking an awful lot about becoming an adult in 2005 and seeing the rise of all of these aesthetics and social trends.  It's strange to look back on trends when or as you were living in the middle of them.

As previously mentioned several times now, I did not go to my 20th high school reunion.  I still follow our graduating class' Instagram account (shout out to them for being so great and doing such a great job, honestly). They were (and sometimes still will) post some fun nostalgic content, not unlike the above meme. 

It's wild to think about how we were some of the last people to have truly analog childhoods. I  personally didn't have very much computer access until well into my senior year of high school. I had my first LiveJournal and PhotoBucket accounts starting in 2003. They weren't things I checked every moment of every day, there were not apps for them. You just wrote a little blub, attached a photo, and then checked on it some other time. 

I didn't have a cell phone until I was in my second year of college (it was a purple Nokia brick that I bought with my own money). Photos were either taken on disposable cameras and scanned into a computer or a digital camera. I remember when I got my phone, I had wanted a phone without a camera because I was actually disturbed by the idea of those two being connected to each other--although I did get one with a camera, and  I could text photos from it to my email.  I just remember not having to charge it for days at a time. It went for an accidental swim in the ocean, was run over by a car. The thing that took it out was a giant wooden door. It shattered, but my leg was saved in the process. I still have my Nokia, even though it's  completely broken and inoperable. I got my first smart phone in 2012, specifically because I wanted to use Instagram.

It really did feel like our souls were free. The news was horrible, but we weren't bombarded with it every moment of the day. Nothing was immediate. Even things like digital photos were an exhausting multi-step process. MySpace was clumsy, you could only upload so many photos into an album on Facebook at a time, you had to wait for things to upload. I was one of the few people with unlimited texting, but most of my friends didn't, so I had to send  very painstakingly selected messages.

We were not immune from online drama--miscommunications, misunderstands (both unintentional and commitments to misunderstanding). Even though we had issues online (and there were many of them), it didn't feel as immediate, constant, or magnified the way that it is now. The internet was considerably less regulated and, truthfully, dangerous. I spent a lot of time away from the computer. I wasn't in front of a computer all day, I did not have one in my pocket. So if there was drama or something bad, I felt like I could get away from it more easily.

I had a Walkman until almost the end of college. I did have various .mp3 players, mostly off-brand until I got my first iPod. I would still regularly return to my Walkman because it was just so comforting. I finally caved in 2011 and got one of the iPod classics. I still have it, I just don't use it anymore because it's inoperable without being plugged in at all times. I still listen to when I am at home and it's plugged into something.

I just look at the iPod in the meme and think of how exciting it was when music was coming out when those iPod Nanos reigned. I think of how excited we were to go to Borders (RIP) or FYE the day that something new came out, or when we stayed up all night and refresh obsessively to watch something appear in iTunes. New music from our favourite artists was thrilling and something to look forward to. Now I just feel overwhelmed. It has been years, literally almost a decade, I think, where an artist has said they were going to release something and I was excited about it.

Our smart phones now do everything in that meme. I, too, switched from my iPod when it could no longer live without being plugged in at all times. Last winter, I switched to light up Bluetooth headphones and I have never looked back. It's easier to move around without all the wires and being constantly plugged in, it certainly feels more free than constantly being tangled. I like that I can have my headphones be plugged in or not if I want to (there's a jack opening for it), which makes it easy to go back and forth from a microphone to my phone whilst recording.

I remember recording some of my first demos in roughly 2008-2009 when I had my Samsung flip phone (which, again, I still have). I would  make recordings in 30 second intervals of me singing Kate Bush or Tori Amos songs, and dream of writing my own songs.  Now I record little videos and voice memos all the time. I can send them to my opera coaches via email instantly. All the Samsung flip phone recordings are now completely lost to time. 

I was just thinking about how my lack of access to technology as a younger person really made me feel like I am behind. I still feel like I am always behind. I always feel like I am rushing to keep or catch up. This also pertains to music. I feel like I started so late compared to other musicians.

We were really more free in 2006? 2006 was such a strange period of time for me. It was a year of tremendous change. A lot of things I thought I couldn't live without all fell apart. 

I don't know if we, or I, were more free in 2006---But I do remember Sam's Town by The Killers in the Fall of 2006. School had been in session for about a month. I remember we all pooled our resources to buy the cd and share it amongst ourselves. It was so magical and special. Even though I am not in contact with any of those former friends, it was an incredible, seminal communal experience. I will still treasure that moment for the rest of my life. Just a month later, we would have another seminal, communal experience when The Black Parade would come out. We would rush out to buy it with our pooled expenses, and we rushed back to my house to sit reverently in front of the stereo to listen to it together (and laugh because I knew it was Liza Minelli singing on "Mama" before even looking a the liner notes, lmao).

So, was my soul actually more free back then? I don't know. I just know that, despite everything, I am so much happier now than I ever could have been back then.