A Love Letter to Yesterday—and a Blueprint for Tomorrow
Part 1: A World That Made Sense
There was a time—not so long ago, really—when the world made just enough sense to trust your instincts without needing to fact-check them against a trending hashtag. It wasn’t perfect. But it was legible. You woke up on a Saturday morning, grabbed a bowl of cereal engineered to rot your teeth by age twelve—looking at you, Cookie Crisp—and parked yourself in front of the TV for a few hours of uninterrupted joy. No on-demand, no skip intro, no algorithm nudging you toward the “next episode.” If you missed your show, you missed it. And you lived. Somehow.
Phones didn’t vibrate in your pocket or track your every move like a clingy ex. They lived on the wall, anchored by coiled cords and shared by the entire house. If someone called and you weren’t home, they left a message. If they didn’t, well—guess it wasn’t that important. You couldn’t ghost anyone, and no one expected you to answer within thirty seconds or be declared clinically dead. You were allowed to be unavailable. Can you imagine? Not ignoring someone—just not being reachable. A form of peace we haven’t known since the Nokia brick went extinct.
And when you were out, you were really out. You didn’t need to broadcast it. You weren’t posting beach selfies with a quote from Rumi. You were riding your bike, building forts in empty lots, or loitering outside 7-Eleven trying to figure out which comic book and slush flavor made the most sense together. No GPS, no notifications, no curated feeds. You had to remember directions, listen when someone gave you instructions, and show up where you said you’d be. Flaking wasn’t a lifestyle—it was a character flaw.
Even boredom had a function. There was no infinite scroll to numb your brain. If you got bored, you got resourceful. You made something. A mixtape. A model plane. A mess. Maybe all three. You picked up a guitar, even if it only had five strings. You read the liner notes of an album like they were sacred texts, squinting at the lyrics printed in six-point font while side B spun in the background. Boredom didn’t mean you needed more stimulation. It meant your imagination was about to kick in.
And oh, the music. We didn’t stream it—we owned it. Or we taped it off the radio and hoped the DJ didn’t talk over the intro. We flipped through LPs in wooden crates at the record store, judging albums by their cover art and the smell of the cardboard sleeve. We learned to drop the needle gently. We knew what side we were on. We listened all the way through. Albums were journeys, not snackable content. And when cassettes took over, we made mixtapes with surgical precision—toggling pause, record, and play like it was brain surgery. A good mixtape was a love letter you could rewind. And the Walkman? That thing was freedom in a plastic shell. Plug in, press play, tune out the world and pretend you were the star of your own music video walking down the street. Just try doing that with Spotify and a cracked AirPod.
Busy meant something different then. It didn’t mean juggling five open chat windows while pretending to pay attention in a Zoom meeting. Busy meant you were out. Playing. Working on a project. Hanging out in a friend’s garage helping them rewire a speaker cabinet or break into their dad’s stash of fireworks. You didn’t need to update your status. You were too busy being one.
We had fewer choices, but somehow more freedom. Fewer ways to talk, but more to say. Life had friction. You had to rewind tapes, fix tangled ribbon with a pinky and a Bic pen. If your remote broke, you got up and turned the knob. If something didn’t work, you didn’t complain—you cracked it open and stared at the insides like a bomb technician. You learned patience, curiosity, problem-solving—three traits currently in the ICU.
The point isn’t to worship the past. It’s to remember what felt good about it. Not because it was better. But because it was real. It was flawed, analog, and completely alive. And maybe we don’t need to go back—but we’d be idiots not to bring some of that with us as we move forward.
Part 2: Analog Lives in a Digital Age
If you grew up in the analog world, you developed a kind of sixth sense—an ability to navigate life without GPS, Google, or group texts. You just knew things. How to get to your buddy’s house by cutting through the park and hopping two fences. What time your favorite song might play on the radio. Whether that cassette deck needed a slap or a flip to start working again. You didn’t need an app to remind you when to eat, breathe, or hydrate—you had your body for that. And when your body said you were hungry, you ate. Usually pizza. Usually cold. And it was fine.
There was texture to life then. You could feel it in the clunk of the VCR buttons or the way a Polaroid photo developed right before your eyes like it had a secret to tell. Your TV made a sound when you turned it on—a subtle crackle, like it had to wake up, too. Devices didn’t whisper silently or hum with polished indifference—they thudded, whirred, clicked. Your stereo had weight, your phone had presence, and your Walkman? That thing was a tank. It didn’t care if you dropped it down a flight of stairs—it would keep playing Def Leppard through the apocalypse. And if it didn’t, well, you had a backup set of AA batteries in your backpack like a responsible human being.
There were no notifications, no unread counts, no invisible tethers vibrating against your thigh every ten seconds. The only ping you cared about was the bell of a microwave or the sound of your mom yelling your name from three blocks away. Communication wasn’t constant—it was intentional. If you called someone and they weren’t home, that was it. Game over. You tried again later. You didn’t panic. You didn’t spiral. You just went outside and lived your life. You weren’t expected to be reachable at all times, and nobody assumed the worst if you went radio silent. You were just busy. And busy wasn’t a dirty word. It meant you had something going on that didn’t involve curated selfies or reacting to drama in real time.
Everything took more effort, which meant it mattered more. You didn’t just stumble into your music library by clicking a heart icon. You earned your collection—taping songs off the radio with surgical timing, hunting for that one LP in a dusty bin at the record store, waiting weeks for a backordered cassette to arrive in the mail. Discovery was an adventure. And when you found something? It became part of you. You didn’t skim it, swipe past it, or toss it onto a playlist you’d never revisit. You wore it out. You played it until the tape stretched and the case cracked. And when your friend borrowed it without asking, you felt it. That wasn’t a file—they took a piece of you.
Even the way we solved problems was different. When something didn’t work, we didn’t open a support ticket or shout into the digital void—we looked under the hood. We grabbed a screwdriver, popped open the casing, stared at the guts of a thing like we could divine the answer through sheer will. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes you made it worse. Either way, you learned something. Now, the minute a device misbehaves, it’s obsolete. Toss it. Replace it. Upgrade. But back then? You fixed it. Or at least you tried. There’s a kind of pride that comes from resurrection—and we used to build entire Saturdays around it.
Maps were made of paper. Arguments were settled face-to-face. If you wanted to flirt with someone, you had to do it without an emoji or a filter. You had to be clever. Or funny. Or charming. Or at least interesting enough to hold their attention longer than the two minutes it took to rewind a tape. You couldn’t hide behind a screen and edit your personality until it was palatable. You had to show up as yourself. And sure, that was terrifying—but it also meant the connection was real when it landed.
We didn’t curate our lives into branded experiences. We just lived them. We made dumb choices. We wore dumb clothes. We had bad hair and braces and acne and no one was airbrushing our faces before sharing them with the world. If someone took your picture and it looked awful? Too bad. It got developed and ended up in a photo album anyway—forever. You were allowed to be imperfect. And no one was building a career on pretending they weren’t.
I’m not anti-tech—I’ve been a professional technologist for almost 40 years. I wouldn’t want to give up the miracle of GPS or the joy of yelling “Alexa, play something I like” and getting an eerily accurate playlist. But I do think we lost something when the analog world faded. We lost the mess. The effort. The humanness of it all. And maybe we need to bring some of that back—not to rewind, but to rebalance. To remind ourselves that we’re not just users. We’re participants. Creators. Storytellers. Humans with thumbs, not just thumbs with dopamine problems.
Part 3: Music Wasn’t Background Noise
Music wasn’t disposable. It wasn’t background noise to fold laundry to or something you clicked through like it owed you entertainment. It was everything. A compass. A confession. A reason to keep flipping through the racks at your local record store, just in case something new showed up in the “J” section. You didn’t stream music—you chased it down, like it might disappear if you didn’t get to it first.
Back home in Canada, my music temple was a place called Discus. It smelled like plastic wrap, old carpet, and teenage independence. When I could scrape together enough cash I’d take the bus—$0.25 would take you anywhere on the island of Montreal and another $0.25 would take you home back then—over, fingers crossed that the album I wanted hadn’t already been picked clean by someone with better timing. But the real memory, the one that lit the fuse, happened on a family trip to Portland, Maine. I wandered into Sam the Record Man, and there it was: Journey – Escape. I didn’t know the band. I didn’t know the songs. All I knew was that the cover art looked like someone had lit a spaceship on fire and told it to go find meaning in the universe. I grabbed it, brought it back to the hotel, and stared at that cover like it was going to tell me who I was supposed to become. And once I finally dropped the needle back home? Game over. That album moved me. Still does.
Now, I didn’t have a real Walkman. What I had was something better: a “Walky Music” player—a gloriously shameless knockoff of the first-gen Sony model, right down to the buttons and badging. But you know what? It worked like a champ. It wasn’t a downgrade. It was freedom. That chunky plastic brick, paired with a set of black headphones sporting the iconic orange foam ear pads, turned me into the star of my own movie. I’d cue up Separate Ways and hit the sidewalk like I had somewhere dramatic to be. The world had a soundtrack, and I got to pick the tracklist.
Mixtapes were magic. We made them for crushes, for breakups, for long bus rides, and for no reason at all. Crafting one was a delicate ritual—toggling pause-record-play with the reflexes of a safecracker, getting the levels right off the radio, dodging the DJ’s voice like a sniper. And if someone made you one? That was practically a marriage proposal. Every track was a message, every transition a wink. Side A had the bangers. Side B had the stuff you didn’t admit made you cry.
And when we listened? We listened. You didn’t shuffle. You didn’t skip. You committed. Start to finish, both sides, because every song mattered—because you mattered. You read the liner notes like they held secrets. You studied the lyrics, the producer credits, the photos. You got to know the band. Not just their music—their vibe. Their story. Their sound was carved into your memory in ways that still catch you off guard when you hear three notes and your chest tightens like it’s 1985 again.
I don’t put on albums the way I used to. Life’s busier. Louder. But thanks to a famous online auction site, I still have two “Walky Music” players. And yeah—I bought a tape-deck off eBay so that I could dump MP3s onto cassette. Best $15 I ever spent. Why? Because music doesn’t feel the same coming out of a Bluetooth speaker. Not the kind that shaped who you were. That kind of music needs tape hiss, slightly wobbly pitch, and the tactile joy of flipping the cassette with a thumb you almost sliced on the clear plastic edge a hundred times before. It needs to live again. And I found a way to make that happen.
What amazes me now is how younger people are rediscovering it all—watching YouTube reaction videos of kids hearing Led Zeppelin, GNR, or Journey for the first time. Their jaws drop. Their eyes widen. It’s like they’ve just stepped out of Plato’s cave and discovered a whole dimension of music with soul. And I want to shake them and say: Yes. That. That’s what we had. That’s what you still can have. If you slow down and actually listen.
Because music wasn’t content. It was communion. It was the moment you heard something and knew, instantly, you’d never be the same.
Part 4: Simpler, Not Dumber
Let’s get something straight: the world wasn’t simpler because we were stupid. It was simpler because not everything needed to be optimized, monetized, or gamified. You didn’t need a subscription to exist. You weren’t being tracked, scored, nudged, and sold in the background of every moment. You just lived. Imperfectly. Uncurated. And free in a way that’s hard to explain to anyone who’s never known anything else.
I think about the summer of 1985. I was training to be a lifeguard, flipping burgers as a short-order cook, and writing my own BBS software in the dead of night because I was hooked on the early online world. Three weekends, 8PM to 2AM, cranking out code on a machine with less power than the wristwatch I wear today—only to have my parents tell me I couldn’t get a dedicated phone line. The frustration was unreal. But looking back now? I wasn’t distracted. I was engaged. I was building something. Creating something. And that focus—that kind of deep, undisturbed attention—is a rare thing these days. Scarce. Precious.
We weren’t glued to screens, and we weren’t constantly “available.” Being unreachable wasn’t a red flag—it was Tuesday. You were at the arcade, or working on your bike in the garage, or lost in some personal obsession. And if someone wanted to find you, they called your house and left a message. Or they didn’t. Either way, the world didn’t end. Plans weren’t broadcast—they were made and kept. Or broken and learned from. That’s how we figured things out.
Video games didn’t need photorealism to feel real. They were side-scrollers and quarter-eaters. You got three lives and no save points. If you beat a game, you weren’t just good—you were a goddamn folk hero. I’ll never forget the day I beat Munch Man on the TI-99/4A. I was deep in the zone when my brother walked in, gave me a nod, and asked, “What level are you on?” “Fifty-five,” I told him. He hung around for a couple more levels, then disappeared. A few minutes later, he came back—with my parents. I was on level fifty-nine. Level sixty? The maze goes blank. By design. You can’t see the path. You have to feel it. No grid. No visual cues. Just memory, instinct, and nerves of steel. And when I finished it—when that last link dropped and the screen rolled back to level one—my whole little entourage cheered. We all knew what had just happened. I played through one or two more levels just to be sure, but that was it. I’d beaten it. Done. Last time I ever played.
You don’t forget a moment like that. You didn’t need a screenshot or a trophy badge to prove you did it. The people in the room saw. That was the proof. That was enough.
And when we bought something—games, movies, music—it was ours. No subscription. No expiration. No corporate overlord flipping a switch and erasing what you paid for. You popped in the tape, hit play, and that was it. Simple. Permanent. Now? You’re lucky if your favorite album doesn’t vanish overnight because someone lost the rights in a licensing scuffle. We have more access than ever—and somehow, less ownership.
And sure—the tech today is wild. I carry more processing power in my pocket than NASA had for Apollo 11. But it also means I’m tethered. Tracked. Poked. Prompted. Asked to rate my own attention span. Want to buy a coffee? Sign up for a rewards program. Watch a movie? Log into four different services. Cancel a subscription? Good luck. And forget calling someone—they’ll just text back, “what’s up?”
But the truth is, we were never lacking. We had imagination. Drive. Space to think. When one of my old boom boxes died last year, I didn’t bin it—I opened it up. Replaced the belts. Cleaned the contacts. Brought it back to life because I could. Because we fixed things. Because we believed we could.
Simple didn’t mean shallow. It meant focused. It meant the thing you were doing was the only thing you were doing. Watching a movie? Lights off, popcorn ready, no second screen. Listening to music? You weren’t folding laundry—you were lying on the carpet with your eyes closed, letting the drums hit your ribs. And once in a while—yeah—I still rewind a cassette tape. Don’t ask. I just do.
Part 5: What We Lost in the Noise
Somewhere along the way, the signal got drowned out by the noise. Maybe it didn’t happen all at once. Maybe it was a slow fade—like a song that starts strong, then gets buried in static until you’re not even sure what you’re hearing anymore. But something shifted. We stopped reaching for truth and started chasing attention. And the world that once felt full of texture and depth suddenly got real loud, real fast—and very, very flat.
We live in an era where everyone has a voice, but nobody’s listening. Dialogue became comment sections. Empathy became emojis. Every disagreement is a war, every nuance a threat. The middle has gone quiet while the extremes hoard the microphones. And we reward it. We feed it. Rage is the currency now. The hotter the take, the higher the engagement. Say something measured, thoughtful, honest—and watch it disappear under a pile of memes and manufactured outrage.
It’s exhausting. We’ve gamified human interaction. We chase likes and followers like they mean something. We polish our personalities for public consumption. We brand ourselves. Package our opinions. Position our pain. We’re encouraged to be marketable first, authentic second—if at all. And it’s easy to pretend this is normal, because everyone’s doing it. But deep down, I think most of us know something is off. Something fundamental has gone missing.
We used to show up for each other. Not performatively. Not with curated hashtags and temporary profile overlays. We just showed up. Someone was sick? You made a casserole and dropped it off on their porch. A friend was hurting? You sat with them. In silence if you had to. No digital applause required. Now, we signal support with digital banners and vanish before the page even reloads. We’ve mistaken awareness for action, reaction for connection.
And worse? We don’t trust each other anymore. Not really. We assume bad faith. We read between lines that were never written. We scan every sentence for offense before we even try to understand it. Everyone’s walking on eggshells while simultaneously shouting at each other. And the more connected we’ve become, the more isolated we feel. We’ve traded physical presence for digital proximity—and it’s not the same. It never will be.
We’ve lost time, too. Not in the abstract—we’ve literally lost it. Hours vanish to the scroll. We consume more than we create. React more than we reflect. We don’t sit in the quiet long enough to think our own thoughts, so we outsource our opinions to influencers and talking heads. We’ve become spectators in our own lives—watching everything, feeling nothing, hoping the algorithm spits out something that makes us feel alive again.
And we’ve lost the ability to be wrong. Or at least to admit it. The moment you say something online, it’s etched in stone—or screen captured before you even have a chance to clarify. So instead of evolving, we dig in. Double down. We’d rather go to war than say, “I see your point.” We’ve confused certainty with strength. But certainty is brittle. And the world is anything but simple.
What scares me most isn’t that we’ve lost these things. It’s that so many people don’t even remember what we had in the first place. They were born into the noise. Into the filter. Into the outrage economy. And they think this is normal. That this is all life has to offer. And unless we stop and ask ourselves what we’re doing—what we’ve become—we risk losing the thread entirely.
Part 6: The Best of Then, the Best of Now
We can’t go back. I know that. I’m not trying to rewind time like it’s a tape that got chewed up in the deck. The past wasn’t perfect. The world wasn’t always kind. But buried in that analog mess was a kind of clarity—a slower rhythm, a human pulse. And we don’t need a flux capacitor to bring that back. We just need to choose better. Choose to carry the good with us. Choose to build something new that remembers where it came from.
Because there are things about now that I love. I won’t pretend otherwise. I can look up any song I’ve ever heard and play it in five seconds. I can video call someone I haven’t seen in twenty years. I can research, learn, share, create—all with a device that fits in my hand. We’ve built tools that would’ve looked like science fiction when we were kids. And when they’re used right, they’re beautiful. They let us connect, empower, discover. That’s not nothing. That’s something.
But those tools don’t come with wisdom. They don’t come with heart. And that’s where we’ve gone sideways. We’ve let the tools steer the ship. We’ve let speed replace depth, quantity replace quality, and noise replace signal. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The past reminds us of a different pace. A different kind of connection. One where eye contact meant more than typing dots. Where presence wasn’t optional. Where truth wasn’t crowdsourced. That spirit? We don’t have to leave it behind.
Imagine a world that blends both—analog soul with digital power. Where we slow down enough to think before we post. Where we create because we care, not because we’re trying to go viral. Where we pick up the phone instead of crafting the perfect text. Where we share photos because we want someone to feel something, not just to collect likes like they’re bottle caps. We have the reach. We have the tools. What we need is the will to use them like people—not just users.
We can teach our kids how to fix things—not just with screwdrivers and soldering irons, but with empathy and intention. We can show them that music isn’t just a playlist, it’s a language. That being busy isn’t the same as being present. That it’s okay to be wrong, to change your mind, to grow. We can model what it means to engage with the world honestly—even if it’s messy. Especially if it’s messy.
We can unplug without disappearing. We can rest without guilt. We can listen—really listen—to someone without needing to frame a reply. We can remember how good it felt to be seen, and offer that to someone else. No filter. No branding. Just human.
The past gave us roots. The present gave us wings. If we can hold onto both, we might just build a future worth waking up for. Not one where we doomscroll until our eyes bleed, or shout into voids hoping someone validates our existence—but one where we show up, in person or not, as ourselves.
The best of then. The best of now. No time machine needed—just a little courage, and maybe a bit of cassette tape hiss in the background to remind us who we are.
Part 7: A Simple Ask
You don’t have to burn your smartphone or swear off the grid. You don’t need to grow a beard, buy a cabin, and start churning butter while listening to Fleetwood Mac on reel-to-reel. That’s not the point. The point is: remember. Remember how it felt to slow down. To be present. To give someone your full attention without checking your watch or refreshing your feed. Remember the warmth of a mixtape, the weight of silence between friends who didn’t need to fill every second with noise. Remember the joy of missing out, because sometimes, the thing you were doing was already enough.
We can carry that forward. We can choose when to plug in and when to tune out. We can ask better questions, tell better stories, and listen like we actually give a damn. We can teach our kids that being connected isn’t the same as being whole. That real life doesn’t need filters. That awkward silences are okay. That not everything is meant to be shared. Some moments belong to us—and us alone.
Next time you’re standing in line, resist the itch to scroll. Look around. Notice something. Next time a song comes on that stirs something in your gut, don’t skip it—feel it. Let it take you back. Let it remind you that you’re a mosaic of every moment you’ve ever lived. And maybe—just maybe—tell someone else about it. Not on a post. In a conversation. One that leaves both of you feeling just a little more human.
Pick up the phone and call that person you’ve been “meaning to text.” Put on a record—or dump an MP3 to cassette if you’re as stubborn as I am. Watch a movie without checking your phone. Let yourself get bored. Let your mind wander. And if you’re lucky enough to share a couch with someone at the end of a long day, be there. Not next to them. With them.
We don’t need to abandon the future to rediscover what mattered. We just need to carry the best of our past like a compass. Use it when things get loud. When you forget who you are. When the noise gets too thick and you can’t hear yourself think.
Back when the world made sense, we didn’t know how good we had it. But we know now. And that means we can build something better. Something more true. Something we won’t need to escape from.
So here’s my ask: unplug sometimes. Speak honestly. Listen fully. Laugh hard. Feel everything. Miss things on purpose. And for the love of all that’s fucking sacred—make a mixtape.
Then, go share it with someone who needs to remember too.
END