In my late twenties, working the same job at the same Rite Aid store since 2003. I hated that job at that point; the latest person to get put in store manager position was an awful boss. I was taking classes at community college just hopping around trying to figure out what the hell I could do to move on to some other employment.

I ultimately did not quit that job until about six years later.

I graduated high school in '08. It was also around the time I got my first cell phone. It was also maybe a year or two after I lost my faith in Mormonism. I was depressed as fuck and it would be another decade or so before I came out as gay.

I was struggling in college. Substitute teaching part time, and playing a whole lot of dungeons and dragons.

I was also realizing that I was not a man.

Watching the Finale of the European championship Spain Vs. Germany.

Shitty year, honestly. Was technically the beginning of the end to the current climate. Pre 9/11 was the last good era.

I was a junior in highschool eating lunch in the art classroom alone

I remember being very confident and optimistic. I had just started college, and nerd shit had just become the dominant force in our culture.

People were joining the internet and connecting via Facebook which I thought would lead to world peace.

Bush was out of office and Obama had won.

The iPhone meant I could use the internet and apps whenever I was.

Everything was becoming higher quality. The fast food restaurants were all remodeled to look like actual buildings. TVs in waiting rooms became all flatscreen, something I associated with the very wealthy.

Every brand was trying to copy apple so everything became a lot more white and clean. Simplified.

I had discovered reddit which felt like cheat codes for knowledge, especially since I was the only person I knew in real life who knew it existed.

I have no idea because I was 1 year old

Juuuust out of college, perfectly in time for the housing bubble to burst and all the jobs evaporate.

I was halfway through college. My degree is in Theatre so I was mostly studying theatre or hanging out with theatre nerds.

I was 5 years married, 12 years out of high school. I was still young and stupid and didn’t understand how the world worked yet. But for the most part life was good at least better than now. Future felt hopeful and promosing.

College. Having fun with friends. Economy was crashing. Jobs, if you could find one, were trash. Democracy was still safe though. The dumbest members of society weren’t dictating our future.

So just kind of a mix of fun and stressful, with less existential dread.

The housing crisis and recession was in full swing, and my wife had to close her retail business as a consequence. Shitty times, but absolute bliss compared to today.

I was in elementary school, parents took me to Ron Paul rally which was pretty cringe. Reading Warriors books, watching Star Wars the Clone Wars, mascot for older sisters robotics team.

I’m 16. My dad gave me his old Ranger, so I can drive my friends to Taco Bell (most of them just jumping in the bed) for our lunch break. Bean burritos cost $.89, so I eat one of those for lunch since it’s cheap enough that I can buy one almost every day as long as I keep stealing pocket change from the dish in my parents closet. My high school adopted an IB program into it in order to boost failing test scores, so I’m pulling up to the Taco Bell parking lot in the US South, and out of my bed jump 2 black kids from the hood, a chinese kid, an indian kid, and a gay guy - like some kinda after school special.

Or sometimes we would drive over to the Publix, where I would buy a loaf of bread, then walk over to the tables outside the Starbucks in the same strip mall and eat it with other friends who had got a coffee. I remember feeling like both of these things - bread that actually had some texture to it, that wasn’t pre-sliced, and buying coffee from a shop that only sold coffee - were very fancy. A taste of an exciting world that was breaking through the boring, prefabricated, and onerously corporate life I’d been cloistered in for too long.

In class, I half listen to my teachers drone on while desperately trying to do the homework for my next class which is due next period - I’m a huge procrastinator. Actually, this seems to be one of the main things my classmates and I bond over - our habits of chronic procrastination and sleep deprivation.

In a break between classes, I find a water fountain and awkwardly tilt my plastic 1L nalgene bottle to the side to fill it. I still remember people saying that buying bottled water like Dasani was dumb and weird since “you can get water for free from the tap”. Carrying a reusable water bottle around with you and refilling it is a fad that is just a few years old - but I’ve adopted it because I’ve sworn off all soda for more than two years now. This makes me weird, but I don’t care, because I’ve been slowly losing the weight that made me a fat kid in middle school. Ironically, we would find out a few years later that the plastic in that bottle might cause cancer.

After school, I head to swim practice. I don’t like swimming. I’m not good at it. I dislike how cold the water is every day, the smell of chlorine, the constant lack of air, and the boredom of staring at a black line on the floor of the pool. But I need to participate in some sport to get my IB degree, which will get me a college scholarship, and my sister was on the team so I defaulted to it. And anyway, at least it’s not the football team where I would be bullied to no end. And I get to look at girls in swim suits. And think about what if one of them could maybe, possibly, someday, impossibly, like me.

After school, I drive home. Looking back, I regret this choice, since I could have gone anywhere else and done anything else with that time - and home was always where I was most miserable. But I’d had the habit built in, so I guess it never occurred to me. Once I got home, I would play video games or fuck around on the internet (I had a desktop pc in my room) until dinner. My folks usually worked late, so dinner for me was often, say, a frozen stouffer’s meal heated up in the microwave. I might eat it while watching The Daily Show or the Colbert Report on the TV in the living room - probably my first foray into real political thought and current events.

Then it is time for bed. Or, it is the time when a reasonable person would go to bed. I spend that time endlessly scrolling the internet some more. Or playing my Xbox. Or reading fantasy novels late in the night until my mom pounds on my door and screams at me to go to sleep. So I turn out the light, wait 5 minutes, and then go right back to doing what I was doing.

Around 2 or 3 am, I get tired enough to want to sleep. And I lay down in bed and think about shit. About how I can stop being miserable all the time. About getting the fuck out of this house and this town. About how I can get girls to like me. And then I pass out, only to feel like I’ve been punched in the face a few hours later by the piercing bleet of my digital alarm clock.

So, yaknow. Some good, some bad