Category: Nostalgia
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Nostalgia and the Beautiful Return to Pain
What is nostalgia? How can it help us? How can it hold us back? And what are it’s origins? A song, a smell in the air, a taste in your mouth, or even an image and suddenly a part of you has traveled through time and space. Sometimes we hold these close to us for…
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One Cent Record Clubs and Predatory Discovery
What’s the value of music when your life is falling apart? How did that “ten albums for a penny” deal really work? And could a kid’s mail-order music club from the 1980s have predicted today’s subscription trap? In the summer of 1983, I was a wreck. My grandfather pulled into a RadioShack parking lot and…
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Pee Wee Herman: Lessons From a Manchild
By Rachael Price Nowadays, one does not usually understand the term “manchild” to be a compliment. Whereas it once denoted a young person who had to deal with adult challenges early in life, such as the autobiographical protagonist of Claude Brown’s landmark Civil Rights-era novel Manchild in the Promised Land, it now tends to invoke…
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Surviving the Cold War (Again): A Gen Xer’s Guide
If you were a Gen X kid, you remember the Cold War and may be having a familiar feeling right now. Global tension you didn’t fully understand but could feel. We didn’t learn about the Cold War from history books. We learned it from Sting songs, Stallone movies, and being told by our teachers that…
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Phil Collins and the Long Long Way to Go Now
Is the world too hard to handle? Do we need to face the suffering? What happens when we turn off empathy? Phil Collins’ “Long Long Way to Go” is a punch to the gut, a reminder of the world I came of age in and how it shaped us. Whenever I hear that haunting chorus,…
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Cruising With Gary Neuman on Uncertain Roads!
I couldn’t sleep so I took a drive just now. Then I deleted what I was going to publish, and wrote this instead. I’m not sure what this is going to become, but the drive felt peaceful and I was awash with familiar memories which grounded me to be present. Gary Neuman was on the…
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How to Celebrate National Retro Day
Happy National Retro Day! We talk about healthy and unhealthy nostalgia at Gen X Watch often. Today is the day to have fun with nostalgia, lean into it, and have a little bit of fun. Why Does National Retro Day Exist? In 2018 Hermelinda A. Aguilar and Robert and Tina Duran founded national retro day.…
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Zen and the Art of Origami Texting (Passing Notes)
Before there was texting there was the art of passing notes. Experts who are teachers and teenagers report that the artform has not completely died, but is on life support. What made the notes special and what can we learn from them? Note Genres There were various types of notes that Gen X passed in…
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Hearts of Glass Living in the Real World
Hearts of Glass living in the Real World is almost here! It is the first YA novel in the Hearts of Glass series! 3 books and a series of short stories in an expanded universe based on the Fem Fridays we have written about here at Gen X Watch! It is unique and we need…
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The Beauty and Horror of Groundhog Day!
Groundhog Day is one of the most amazing movies made. This movie was made in 1993 and has endured the test of time and is beloved by many! It has everything. It is a love story, a comedy, science fiction and philosophy that Buddhists love. But it is also a horror movie. Groundhog Day Synopsis…
Recent Posts
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Comments
Thanks for the tour through the bittersweet… Obviously, for everyone that trip back is going to be different even though…
Wow, this article is so well-written! I really enjoyed how you highlighted Tina’s race as a factor that prevented her…