It might just be the back to school yearnings that hit every year late August (or it might be that the world feels like an end-of-days shit show) but I've been thinking about the 90's. About my own college experience in that weird time where the internet was only just becoming a thing, but most of us didn't really have access to it. I would never be bold enough to say that it was a better time, because I'm not sure that's true, but there is something comforting about a world where racists and idiots had fewer platforms, or at least those platforms you had to seek out, and not just streaming, full force onto your screen one after another, telling you reject masking and vaccines and instead take livestock medications. I like to feel the world was smarter then, but maybe I am just putting a gold-toned rosey hue over the past.
Occasionally, I'll try to imagine what my life was like then before so much time on screens. I was in school of course, majoring in English and minoring in Theatre, and so much time was spent in classes, reading for classes, and doing various set building and stage managing tasks for the college theatre dept. In between, I spent a lot of time in the library, either upstairs reading bits of things that piqued my interests (Beat poets, Anais Nin, and the Bloomsbury Group) or in the basement reading lit and theatren magazines. The first year, coming off high school habits, I was a joiner--an SGA officer, on the Activities Council, doing some volunteer work. This shifted as I became more focused on theater and had less time for extra curriculars, but these were one way, as an off-campus student, I made friends and connected with people. Otherwise, I was probably at home with my parents. I wrote and read of course, sometimes more than others--my summer's being especially good for more liesurely uses of my time. While I made a little money here and there--set work, running lights, proofreading anthologies for professors--my education was mostly paid for and my living expenses low. My parents threw some cash my way for housework and various tasks, including a few dollars for lunch, which I sometimes hoarded up and bought books instead at the newly opened Barnes & Noble.
For leisure, I liked listening to music and flipping through magazines, Elle, Marie Claire, Cosmo, Glamour-- usually passed off from an aunt with lots of subscriptions (and who also fueled my horror novel addiction.) In many ways, this is probably no different than what I do in my free time on a computer--watching fashion hauls, persuing pinterest, and listening to Taylor Swift on repeat. Just a different mode. Nights, after my parents went to bed, I would lay claim to the single large tv with satellite connection and watch whatever was on (horror / paranomal if I could find it, but sometimes the weather channel or HGTV). Sometimes til dawn, while writing--in my journal, bad poems or short stories. Also plotting out where to submit. and reading copies of Writer's Digest checked out from the public library. Also, not different from my current life, just switch out satellite for streaming and more options.
While most of my social interactions were related to theater friends, my dating life was parse most of time outside a couple crushes and brief ill-concieved hookups, I can't say I spent much more time with people unless we were forced together for creative projects. I did like to hang out with my sister on the weekends,,who was still in highschool, and we would go to movies and the mall, or to B&N to peruse the bargain bin and then to Taco Bell. We'd also hit flea markets, garage sales, and thrift stores with my Mom. But mostly I was home doing my own thing.
At the time, I kept a written journal, in those Mead marbled composition books, which I still have a stack of squirreled away in my apartment. I wrote about the things I was studying and reading, about what I was doing, how my writing efforts were faring. I also kept a notebook filled with cut-outs from magazines--clothes I wanted, hair styles, home decor (my own analog version of pinterest.) Somehow over the years, I threw these out, though I wished I kept them as a way to connect with that girl in the past. I do have a vision board collage I made in 1994 that is a hoot to look at. Also, all the poems I ever wrote, which also paint a fuzzy picture of my obsessions.
Somehow, the 90's feel so vastly different, though by the above, you wouldn't be able to much tell. My parents did not not have a computer in the house until I was well out of it in the early aughts. I myself, though I spent time online at work, did not have a laptop at home til 2005. Culture felt different--more geared toward smart people, though that also may have just been my frame of reference. Somewhere in the 90's is a girl sitting in a room with lava lamps and a black velvet Jim Morrison poster, drinking flavored coffee and reading constantly--everything--, or trying to undertstand her three semesters of philosophy coursework (my interest in those classes less the reading and more the philosophy major dude I was crushing on.). I was convinced I would be smarter if I listed to classical music while I studied, though I would have preferred NIN. One summer I discovered my mother's Janis Ian records and listened to those and Tori Amos cassettes in tandem for three months.
It was a different world, but still sort of the same...
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