What are you doing to satisfy those nostalgic feelings?

Posted by YukonSunset@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 62 comments

My mom is a baby boomer, and I remember when I was around 12/13, she told me that I'd someday feel a pull to my childhood times, missing things I had or music I once listened to, etc. At that age, I didn't get it. I just wanted to be an adult.

But I never forgot that strange premonition, and now here we are, and she was right.

I was born in 1974, and it's been hitting me really hard in the last couple of years. I've been scrambling on eBay to find lost items to once again own, watching old TV shows I used to love from the 70s/80s. Compiling playlists to shuffle/repeat. I even went on TOMT on Reddit to find an old childhood fairytale book (found, and obtained with success!).

I know my mom went through something similar with her Boomer nostalgia, and it seems I've now been hit with my own generational pull to relive the memories again.

Is anyone else feeling like this lately?

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CynfullyDelicious@reddit

I’ve had fun watching reaction videos for music and movies from “our” era. Brings back the feels and when a reaction is genuine, it’s great seeing someone go apeshit watching or listening to something that is beloved.

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inot72@reddit

Yeah, this is a good time.

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Sad_Tank4121@reddit

Same!! So much fun remembering hearing a song for the first time on the radio cruising! And calling the station to play it over and over!😊

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inot72@reddit

I'm listening to a lot of music I listened to in my preteen years.

I'm listening to things that I haven't heard in 30 or more years. It's been fun but also shameful. I listened to a lot of crap.

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RedditSkippy@reddit

This is such a great question.

Basically I let the nostalgia happen and continually remind myself that the old days weren’t always good and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems. Um…sorry.

About a decade ago, in late August and early September I was nostalgic for school! Back to fucking school! School was a terrible time in my life! There was absolutely no reason why I should be nostalgic for it!

I was in therapy at the time, and my therapist suggested that I wasn’t necessarily nostalgic for back to school, but I just needed some escape from the present. Honestly he was probably right. I was going through a really tough time. I lost a dear, dear family member. I was probably perimenopausal.

Sometimes, I just look up crap I used to have on eBay. Sometimes I just look up contemporary stories about events I remember.

I listen to old music!

Last year, I realized that a very important event in my college years happened 30 years ago. How did 30 years even go by?

in some ways that time seems like a long long time ago and in some ways it feels like last week that’s what I really don’t understand about getting older.

Lately what I’ve been thinking is that 30 years ago I didn’t ever think I would be nostalgic for those times. So what I have to do now is really, really, really be present, because if I’m lucky to be alive in 30 years, I’ll probably be nostalgic for now.

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YukonSunset@reddit (OP)

I completely understand about school. I actually disliked it very much, even elementary school. High school most of all for the social pressure.

However, my early teen years were quite fun, outside of school. The relief of the after-school feeling coming over me. Knowing I could come home and watch Video Hits. Talk on the phone with friends. Go shopping with either my mom or my friends. Movies. Hanging out in someone's basement. The mall hang outs. My first-times with partying, and the summer breaks when every night felt like a Saturday night. No cares. Just making sure I had good fluffy hair and my make-up was on-point. :)

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HOUS2000IAN@reddit

Truly lovely response, and a lot of this resonates with me. I try to stay in the present by learning new things, listening to new music, watching new shows… which helps avoid the inevitable pull of the past.

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Edith_Keelers_Shoes@reddit

I started hitting up nostalgia hard when I got a stage 4 diagnosis in 2020. Also spent a lot of time on eBay buying old magazines, old movies, old TV shows. I'd pick a year, Google Billboard's top 100 songs of the year, and make a playlist - one per year. I later learned that nostalgia can play a crucial role in healing - and it worked for me, as I'm still here and cancer free six years later.

Anything that evokes an emotional and physical response to a time when we felt very safe and full of vitality is a good thing.

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YukonSunset@reddit (OP)

This is the best post I've seen in ages!

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GlitterKitten666@reddit

I don't go looking for it, but I run into it from time to time.

This one hits https://weather.com/retro/

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YukonSunset@reddit (OP)

That's so cool! Thank you for sharing that.

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squirtloaf@reddit

I collect radio airchecks, which are just recordings made from radio broadcasts...they have the music, DJs, commercials, news \~all of it.

Throw on a couple hours of those on a long drive and it takes you right back in time. Had a 3 hour drive last night, and I was listening to 1976 top 40 the whole way.

If you are curious, archive dot org has a bunch you can listen to and download (I throw them on thumb drives for the car). Some sound better than others, but that is part of the charm \~they sound exactly like you would have heard them on the radio in the seventies.

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worstpartyever@reddit

You must have worked in broadcasting. These were basically audio resumes

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squirtloaf@reddit

Nooo. And the ones I look for are "uscoped". "Scoped" ones are the resumes, where they cut out the songs.

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AKABrokenArrow@reddit

That’s awesome, I’ll have to check some of those out. I just listened to a little Dan Ingram, took me right back to cruising around in mom’s Imperial. 🙂

For me, I’ve been enjoying watching commercials from the 70s and 80s on YouTube. I especially like the ones from the tri-state area, where I grew up. Some great jingles that I forgot but I can finish the first sentence.

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wifewantscake@reddit

I also do this and with old episodes of coast to coast AM from the late 90s

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takisara@reddit

Im watching Dallas....was never allowed to as a kid, but I am hooked snd loving it.

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exor0110@reddit

I rely on my memories. I thought about getting vintage items of eBay or something, but they’re just things. They won’t bring back the time or people I associate them with. So…I just reminisce.

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Natural_King2704@reddit

I like to drive to Newport Beach and Huntington Beach for a couple of days every summer. I wear my OP tee shirt and OP board shorts, along with my Vans. I'm going on 62, but am still brave (foolish) enough to get on a surfboard.

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nearfignewton@reddit

Every once in a while I’ll get my Stomper out and wind my wife’s hair up in its wheels like when it happened to my sister when I was a kid.

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PoolRamen@reddit

I try not to chase nostalgia in terms of things that aren't tangible, and even in that case only things that still hold up.

Instead I do regularly engage in retrofutalgia... i.e. experiencing current retrofuturism as nostalgia while not letting it overlap with my memories. A good example is me loving CHVRCHES.

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sas317@reddit

I've been listening to a lot of '80s-' 90s pop and rock music and 2000s teen pop. Catchy songs are the only thing that gives me a dopamine hit when I'm bored.

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F-Cloud@reddit

Lately I've been poring over historical photos of the neighborhood and city I grew up in and using real estate sites to view home interiors. There's much that I was unaware of when I was a child. There are historical homes just down the street from my house that were built in the 1910s, 30 years before my childhood home was constructed. I thought those homes were haunted when I was a kid! I'm finding many other, absolutely gorgeous properties that I rode past on my BMX bike all the time, never realizing what charming dwellings they were on the inside.

I'm also using Google Earth to view places my friends and I would hike to, places we tried to build secret forts, that kind of thing. The old neighborhood is the ony place I can really call home, I'd do anything to move back there.

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YukonSunset@reddit (OP)

There's much that I was unaware of when I was a child.

I recently had an itch to find out who or what my elementary school was named after. As you might figure, as a kid I didn't know/care who or what my school was named after back then. Suddenly I got this urge at age 50 to find out. Problem is, no one knew.

I called the school, the school district, the heritage society (and neighbouring societies), city hall, archives, the library, various historians at our universities... you name it, I hassled them to help me find this information. My school is now over 100 years old and I was stunned that NO ONE knew what it was named after.

Finally, I figured it out. I was so impressed with myself that I told many of my friends who I'm still in touch with who went to that school. They were happy to know about it, but it wasn't like me. A dog with a bone.

I feel like now at this age, I'm scurrying to find stuff out that I never knew before.

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F-Cloud@reddit

Interesting, I admire your perseverance! The historical itch is worth scratching, there's a lot of interesting things one can uncover. As a child local history wouldn't have been too interesting but with age those stories have taken on meaning.

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ripper4444@reddit

I love seeing this post pop up on here on today of all days. When I was a kid I was huge into model railroading. Before I moved out I packaged it all up and it was set aside in my old room. By the time I was married and we had a house that would accommodate my layout my parents sold off most of my cars and engines. In what was sold was a wind up Marx train set that was my uncles from when he was a kid in the 50’s. I was devastated. Fast forward to today I went to a toy train show for the for the first time since I was a teen and there was an old man there that only dealt in old Marx trains. And I bought a nice little set that was almost identical (the engine is) to my uncles. This time it gets its own shadow box on the wall. Oh happy day.

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ripper4444@reddit

She’s a beaut.

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ripper4444@reddit

She’s a beaut.

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ripper4444@reddit

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RaccoonHaunting9638@reddit

I like going on Pinterest and looking up 80's themed everything! The fashions, the furniture and decor, even from my grandparents house times , like the wall paper they all had? That thick shag that was in, ....then theres all the products we used ! The roller lip glosses, tv shows, popular toys, hair styles ...here's i.e

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worstpartyever@reddit

Hot rollers and Aqua Net!

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Sad_Tank4121@reddit

ALL THE FEELS! 80S were the best!

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Oxjrnine@reddit

The only thing I get nostalgic about is not being able to pick up a pencil I dropped without sounding like I’m 90 years old.

It’s a good thing to enjoy memories from time to time, but I consider nostalgia just as toxic as regret. You will notice that people who live in the moment and stay current are the healthiest older people you will ever meet.

When I look fondly on the past, I focus more on how it has made me the person that I am today, and how it can either benefit or hurt me being able to enjoy my life today.

We are supposed to experience different things at different ages and different places. Too much nostalgia can wreck havoc and create stagnation.

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StereotypicallBarbie@reddit

I’ve been watching old tv sitcoms..

So weird to see people smoking indoors so casually.. in doctors offices even!

Maybe that was a British tv show thing?

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worstpartyever@reddit

LIKE CHIMNEYS. In movies and tv.

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anosmia1974@reddit

Also a ’74er and the nostalgia train rammed into me early!

As we prepared to enter the ‘90s, I remember buying an issue of Life magazine dedicated to the ‘80s, as well as recording (on my family’s VCR, natch) a decade-in-review special that one of the main networks ran. I felt a sad nostalgia for what was slipping away, even though I was excited for the new decade. In 1993, while home from college on winter break, I threw an ‘80s-themed party.

I, too, enjoy watching the old shows on YouTube and Tubi and listening to Casey Kasem’s AT40 episodes on the ‘70s channel. (I wish the ‘80s channel would follow suit, but I guess they won’t do that because they have the weekly countdown with the MTV VJs.) I like looking at my hometown’s old newspapers online and seeing ads for the businesses that no longer exist. When movies from the ‘70s and ‘80s are rereleased in theaters for milestone anniversaries, I usually go. I saw Pretty in Pink on the big screen this past Valentine’s Day. I guess ‘90s movies will enter the fray soon; I saw that Silence of the Lambs will be returning to theaters next week for its 35th anniversary.

As one of my 50th birthday gifts to myself, I rebooted my childhood sticker collection, even buying a replica of one of my original sticker books. I have a whole section of Gen X stickers on there!

I think nostalgia is fine as long as a person doesn’t dwell in it constantly and disconnect themself from the present and future.

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RedditSkippy@reddit

One of the things I bought for my 50th birthday for myself was a copy of a 1969 Betty Crocker cookbook that I used growing up. My mom still has her copy. I just wanted one of my own!

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coffeeplease1972@reddit

Recently bought photo essay books

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TheSilentC@reddit

I mean, nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be

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YukonSunset@reddit (OP)

LOL!!

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DumberBlonde@reddit

I recently reread Nothings Fair in Fifth Grade.

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maximusdm77@reddit

Watching old tv shows, old movies, and old anime

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EddieKroman@reddit

Music is a big one. I’m starting to think about air cooled VW Beetles again, it’s the only car I drove until my mid 20’s. I’m fortunate enough to own the house I spent my teenage years in, since we bought it from Mom in 2002. I’ll sometimes go to the town where I was born, a lot of that area is very much the same, and is very steeped in its 20th century history and growth.

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Azipcoder@reddit

I felt the same and collected until I moved. Moving broke me of the habit. Certain things I’ll hang on to, like physical media and games. Some of it you can’t find, even on eBay. A lot of the plastic stuff is a burden and fragile now that it’s older. I would say Facebook and eBay are great to scratch the itch, just resist the bigger stuff. And anything to do with food is not worth getting. The Snoopy snow cone maker, for instance. Resist!

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AdditionalTip865@reddit

Of course!

I listen to classic music and new music by old bands (They Might Be Giants have a new album out! It's really good!), mess around with emulators for classic music and video games. There's a pinball museum in Pawtucket, RI that has an amazing number of classic 70s and 80s pinballs. Last summer I went to Busch Gardens Williamsburg and rode the Loch Ness Monster for the first time in over 30 years. It's still going and it still holds up!

I have to remind myself, I don't have to believe everything about those times was better to enjoy what was good.

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Tinyberzerker@reddit

I get melancholy sometimes. What's great is my son is now 21 and loves old heavy metal so we go to every show we can. He's rocking my old Kill 'em All back patch on his vest. Some of the clubs are still open here in Austin that I went to as a teen so that's been cool too.

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tommymat@reddit

Staying close with friends. Reading and upvoting all your posts. Watching the classics.

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JediKrys@reddit

I have a play list of my old faves from childhood. I watch dirty dancing. I go for a bike ride and try not to think of anything but not going home.

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sigmpxshooter@reddit

I heard a phrase that fits me well. "Homesick for a time and place that doesn't exist anymore". I'm from a small town in the Midwest where we would go uptown and "cruise". I miss that carefree time when I didn't have a worry in the world and my dream girl in the passenger seat. The dream girl and I went our separate ways when I joined the military but reconnected in 2016. Happily married and living our best life but I still miss those days and have a lot more to worry about as a grown up.

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Thirty_Helens_Agree@reddit

Old music, Casey Kasem reruns on Sunday mornings, the occasional visit to my old college campus.

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umeboshiplumpaste@reddit

I also love listening to the reruns on Sundays! It's a tradition now that gives me so much comfort.

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umeboshiplumpaste@reddit

Same x 23947239847. Also 1974 here. Grieving a lot on many levels and crying a lot (daily). For me, it's a combo of healthy nostalgia + missing times before all the childhood trauma that I'm still dealing with + parents getting ready to leave the planet + life just being so different + reconnecting with my inner child and all the little things that brought me joy back then.

You're not alone, for sure. <3

Interestingly enough, I have spent the last 48 hours rereading long letters and cards my long-gone grandma sent me from 1988-1990. She wrote so much about being nostalgic for her own childhood in the 1930s. Memories of the house she was in, and little things she cherished with her own family and grandma (who died before I was born). I don't know if people thousands of years ago were nostalgic, but I have to think it's just part of being a human for everyone. Though with the age of photos, videos, the internet, etc., it's much more painful.

I heard a therapist say once that humans were not meant to see things from the past--that our brain is not wired to be capable of seeing the past in photos and videos, and that doing so "invented" a new type of trauma for humanity. I think about the concept of that often.

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Goldie1976@reddit

Last week I saw a snowmobile come up on auction and it was like the one my dad gave us rides on when we were kids. I've always kind of wanted to have one like it. So I bid on it and I got it

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No_Maintenance_9608@reddit

I’ve been going to quite a few concerts the past few years, especially to see new wave groups. I’ve base Duran Duran in Vegas three years ago and I really enjoyed it. I will be in. Eggs again in June and I plan to see The Human League.

First Wave and Lithium are my favorite SiriusXM channels.

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18ekko@reddit

Some things I have done for a nostalgia fix this month:

I Want My 80s on MTV Classic

Original Casey Kasem American Top 40 shows from the 80s on I Heart Radio (alternates between 70s and 80s)

Watching the classics on retro channels (H&I, StartTV, AntennaTV, TVLand), watching MacGyver right now.

Youtube compilations of sitcoms and sci fi shows from the 80s

Grabbing lunch at In N Out, except for the prices, has not changed in 40 years.

Playing old 80s arcade games on browser.

Listening to the original MTV VJs on 80s on 8 on SiriusXM.

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wordstogetherrandom@reddit

Hearing 1980's popular radio in my head.