Back in Time

We gotta go...

I’m seeing lots of calls for a return to a more analogue life in 2026. And let me tell you, I am here for it. Actually, I think GenX is perfectly primed to lead this evolution/revolution. We’re so analogue it is practically in our DNA. The more posts and substacks I read about this collective yearning as a society to return to simpler times, tactile things, community participation, the more excited for it I become.

But Julie, what about the way technology keeps us abridged of all breaking news? How it connects us with people across our years and country. What about having all the information we could ever use at the tips of our fingertips? What about being able to have an entire library stored on one tiny device, or the ability to call up any song our heart desires with just a quick thumbing of the screen?

To all of these questions I say, there is a better way. A more fulfilling one that we discarded for sake of speed and convenience. Just travel back with me and see how we handled these situations.

I think we can all agree, the breaking news cycle is breaking all of us. It comes at us so rapid fire that it is immediately a crisis, and then just as immediately forgotten when the next one hits. We don’t need to know everything immediately. We need the six pm news and a newspaper thrown on our front porch by a scrappy kid looking to make twenty dollars a month by delivering on time. If the news is so important you need to break into my midafternoon re-run marathon, then it better be something headed straight for my town, like the finale of the movie Twister.

Our paper boy was about 30% accurate on actually hitting the porch. But searching for it in the bushes was part of the fun.

Sure, at its origin, Facebook and the like were great for re-connecting us with long lost friends. But it ruined something else. Remember when you’d run into someone you hadn’t seen in years and you got to sincerely catch up? How you walked away swimming in memories of things you hadn’t thought about since they happened. That was the lore people joke about on Instagram nowadays. The wild stories there are no photographic evidence of, but you both remember it down to the last detail, because you lived it. Because our memories used to capture things like now our iPhone cameras do.

You have them all, but be honest, how often do you look at any of them?

Back then you didn’t send someone a message, you picked up the phone and called them to share news or settle an argument. You had real honest to goodness conversations-and some of them were hard. But we survived, in fact we thrived. The closest thing to messenger we had was passing those intricately folded notes, and even those required some time to open, read, respond and refold. Gave you a second to get your wits about you before you replied. Much better than firing off a comment on social media.

Who wants to meet up and try to remember how to fold these things?

Sure, it allows us talk to any and every one we ever knew, but should we be? Isn’t there supposed to be a space for “remembering fondly” not keeping up with? Say, the life of the girl you shared a bunk with for one week at summer camp when you were nine? Do we need to know her recipe for peanut butter bars or her stance on gun control? Where’s the nostalgia in that?

We don’t need all the information at our fingertips. We need a set of Encyclopedia Britanica on the shelves of our wood paneled rec-rooms. Or a librarian who can point you in the direction of the reference books, or show you how to run the microfiche. We need the smell of the ditto machines and the knowledge that it had to sit until the ink was dry if the information you needed was in one of the “it can’t leave the library” books.

Encyclopedias top right shelf. Yes, this is my actual childhood home basement.

And speaking of libraries, we don’t need to have a tablet that holds hundreds of books we buy on impulse and never read because it looked great on TikTok and we are now a culture that has to have instant gratification. (Phew-run on sentance, I know.) We need to pull up the card catalogue, figure out where it will be on the shelf and go and find it. If someone has it checked out, we need to write our name on a waitlist and then, well, WAIT, until it’s our turn.

Remember the feel of those cards on your fingertips?

(Life hack-you don’t have to worry about spoiler alerts if you aren’t putting your reading list onto the World Wide Web so your algorithym sends you posts and reels about it. Because much like junior high mean girls, the apps are talking about you behind your back.)

Same with music. Do I love being able to vaguely remember a song, search the scrap of lyric I remember and then play it immediately when Siri or Alexa figure it out for me? Sure, I do. But is there anything better than the right song coming randomly on the radio when you’re in the car and altering your entire mood? That’s real dopamine baby, not manufactured or curated.

All this to say, I am all in on less technology in 2026—though we do need a better catch phrase—anyone know the people who came up with “have a coke and a smile”? I bet they could give us something good.

Before their were ear buds to share…

I intend to write more letters than posts. See more people face to face. Chat on the phone not send a GIF. Get my books from independent bookstore- which are essentially the Scholastic Book Fair in store form—books, stickers, fun pencils and pens. I bet if you look hard enough you can even find a “hang in there cat poster” …

Words to live by.

And for music, well. That I’ll be scouring my local thrift stores for old albums and cassettes. CDs if I’m feeling modern. Because, having every song at my fingertips can’t compare to the static of the needle, or the snap of end of a cassette.

2026 is our year to shine GenX. We were made for this movement. Who’s with me?