Energy

During the blustery blizzard that overtook our city this past February, I had been stuck in my house, as so many others, trying to keep myself busy. Of course Facebook was a successful outlet for many of us, and I happened to be talking to my friend AJ one evening on the Facebook chat.

He was telling me that Facebook kept sending him alerts to reconnect with a particular friend. The problem was, this friend happened to have passed away right before Christmas. I asked him how he knew her. He said that when he was the overnight DJ on 105.9 The X, back in the mid to late 90s, she used to call him on the DJ line every night. Apparently she had some crap job that kept her up all night so they would talk about music, life, etc. AJ said she had great taste in music and was nice. She was a friend. I thought that was way cool.

Then I started to think about it. I told AJ that life doesn't seem to be like that anymore, and he agreed. I said that sometimes I think its because I'm older, but I'm about the same age now, as AJ was then. Mostly though, I think it was the energy of that particular time, it seemed magical, at least it did to my friends and I. So quickly, however, it slipped away and I'm not really sure why. I asked AJ what he thought of this and he said,

"I think all this social networking and text messaging bullshit has zapped us of our personality and creativity. I used to sit and tell stories, now I type out one-liners in 140 characters or less."

There is definitely something to be said for that. Back then, the mid 90s, very few of us had computers, no cell phones, and if we were still playing video games it was on our old Nintendo systems we had gotten in the 1980s. In the summer there were local concerts galore, we walked everywhere, we took pictures of our expeditions on disposable cameras not to post them on Facebook, but for our own enjoyment. In the winter we retreated to our rooms or basements to listen to music, play music, make up goofy games or adventures that would make us happy, all while waiting for the next all ages concert to pop up.

Life was good, and it felt good, even though I was a teenager and AJ was in his 20s, we were on the same page. It seemed that everyone was on the same page, and everyone was happy. We could feel how great things were and how much greater they were going to get, then something fell apart, people stopped believing. Those of us who kept believing were left in the dark, waiting for that amazing time to come back to us.

Someone once told me that timing is everything. And I believe it to be true, to an extent. Timing IS everything, but eventually you have to start making your own time. And all of us who lived the glory of the amazing energy of the 90s are ready to make that time again.