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Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be · The Daily Writer

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend, welcome to The Daily Writer, where we help writers become authors of their own lives.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Today's podcast is for my Gen X and older listeners, but if you're a young whippersnapper, you can still listen in if you want to.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, here we go.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, I get it.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I am a sucker for 80s nostalgia, just like you are.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: The 1980s will go down in history as the greatest decade ever for popular music and movies and so much else that we enjoy in culture.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I will absolutely die on that hill.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: The 60s were great, the 70s were great, uh, the 90s didn't really have that much to offer us, let's be honest.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: It did have a few good movies, but in terms of music, it wasn't that great.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: So the 1980s were really the pinnacle, in my opinion, of pop culture in terms of especially music and movies.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: All you got to do is play the first three seconds of White Snake's song Is This Love?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm instantly back at my junior high dance feeling socially awkward.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, something's never changed.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Nostalgia has a huge emotional pull for sure.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I get it, I really do.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why we've seen a massive amount of social media accounts, movies, music, and other pop culture artifacts geared toward 80s nostalgia over the past 10 or 15 years.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, nostalgia and longing for the quote-unquote good old days is one thing, but I think we can also take it too far by refusing to live in the here and now.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's just be honest.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: We don't live in 1986 anymore.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Times have changed.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Heck, everything has changed, but that's how the passage of time works.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Today we have so many opportunities to impact people with our work, but I also see a lot of resistance to these opportunities, especially among Gen Xers who seem to hate social media, new technology, and fresh ways to engage people.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Which is kind of strange because in the last couple of years I've noticed several YouTube channels that feature people in their 70s, 80s, and even beyond who are fully embracing these trends and they're really leaning into them and they're posting on social media all the time and they're really engaged with all kinds of generations.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And as you probably know, for example, Dick Van Dyke is a hundred years old, and he goes to the gym several times a week to stay active and fit.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, that guy is absolutely my hero for all kinds of reasons.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, to my fellow midlifers who are in the Gen X category, who are struggling with a change of pace and longing for the good old days of the 1980s, hey, we don't have to go back to the 1980s to enjoy life.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: We can appreciate where we've been while also loving our lives right now and embracing all the opportunities around us while at the same time looking forward to what the future holds.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or as Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, life must be remembered backward, but lived forward.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Here's to living forward.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, my friend, thanks for listening.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Keep writing, keep showing up, and I'll see you tomorrow.