Not Nostalgia. Recovery.
So here we are now — stuck between the day-job grind, the responsibilities of fatherhood, and the ambitions that never quite faded. In my case, those ambitions were always built on music.
Growing older shouldn’t feel like being buried alive, yet here it is: a mountain of routines, bills, and a culture engineered for distraction, hyper-capitalism, and permanent noise.
That is likely why the 90s still glow. Were they really better? Of course not. We lacked the tools that define our lives today. But somewhere in the technological leap, something human — a specific glimpse of hope — got lost.
Bitter Sweet Symphony
Is this just a GenX perception? On paper, the world is better off now: crime has gone down, and poverty and hunger have decreased. A lot was happening back then: The Wall had fallen. The Eastern bloc crumbled, the Cold War was over. Apartheid ended, Europe looked like it might finally come together and the world seemed to agree that they could tackle a major global challenge—climate change—together. The web opened new horizons. Science moved fast. Culture exploded – even the Beatles sort of “reunited”. Amazement was here, there, everywhere. “Globalization” was key. The world seemed to be on a Love Parade.
But the decade carried its own brutality. The Gulf War. The Balkans. Rwanda. Mid-way through, the light dimmed: the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin dealt a blow to the peace process in the Middle East. Mass shootings and market crashes proved that instability was always lurking. And we know now that while feminism finally reached the public eye, the exploitation of women remained rampant.
Kurt Cobain’s suicide silenced the voice of a generation. Princess Diana’s death shook the world.
Still, why does the spirit of the 90s feel so unattainable now?
Smells Like Teen Spirit
The magic was the rawness. Styles were still forming. Scenes had edges. You could inhabit grunge and dance culture, alienation and hedonism, depth and nonsense — often all at once. Life was an exploration: spontaneous parties, concert trips, and long talks deep into the night. We followed impulses, not algorithms. We gathered in loose, chaotic crowds. Even the internet was a playground for stumbling across things, not a machine for performance and constant self-display.
There was more space to be unfinished. More curiosity. More joy. Things meant something.
Human Behaviour
This isn’t an “old guy” rant about everything going down the drain. It’s about recovery. It’s about reclaiming the drive to try things out before they are polished and made marketable.
What’s missing today isn’t the past; it’s the permission to be raw and the will to embrace the new without needing to own it. That creates a better understanding of each other — and more empathy for each other’s path.
Keep openness up. Embrace exploration. Right about now!
That’s Daddy Grunge.