I really don't know what triggered it--maybe a message from a friend reminding that it was 20 years ago when Kylie Minogue released "Put Yourself in My Place" or the Nirvana/Kurt Cobain tributes of late--but I have suddenly remembered the '90s.
Not all of the '90s, mind you, but just certain moments, mostly related through pop music.
It was 23 years ago that I left Washington for greener pastures. It was 21 years ago that went to grad school to be a librarian. It was 19 years ago that I accepted my first library job and moved to Texas.
I was aged 30 to 33 during that era. I went to my first (and only) rave. I hung out with kids younger than me in grad school. I was one of the younger people in management when I made it up the ranks of my career ladder. And yet I felt old then, or at least older than the people I would have considered my contemporaries--new library school grads, new librarians, many of my friends.
Imagine me now: Twenty years later, I feel positively ancient.
It is what it is, and I think I'm coping with getting older these days, much better than I did when I turned 50 a couple of years back.
Nevertheless, I'm feeling a little nostalgic for early '90s music and style (I would have totally worn D:Ream's windowpane check suit, although 10 years earlier), trying to remember myself then before things got busy, I moved around a lot, and 20 years slipped by in a blink.
Perhaps, too, it's a way to come to grips with the middling present. In some ways, relationship-wise, I'm happier and more satisfied than I've ever been. In others--the lack of friends nearby, the sense that the culture has changed too much and has passed me by, and work, above all else, work--I am not so happy.
So a return to 1990-1995 is in order. It's a way to help me remember who I was then, compare it to who I am now, and try to remember what I wanted out of my life.
Before another 20 years passes me by. Before it's too late to do anything about it.
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