bring back print magazines!

& other ways I'm living like it's 2006

Lately, I’ve been leaning hard into living like it’s 2006 again. Not in a tying up my t-shirt with a hair tie and updating my Facebook status kind of way, but in a softer, slower way that has involved listening to a concerning amount of Sade and reconnecting with all the little things I loved as a little girl.

Maybe it’s because I’m tired of feeling like every second of my life has to be productive or documented in order for it to feel meaningful. Or maybe it’s because I’m insanely nostalgic and overly sentimental and constantly trying to romanticize my own life. Either way, I’ve found myself craving the kinds of things that used to feel normal before we all became permanently reachable.

Something about New York makes this feeling even worse (or better). A Sunday brunch suddenly feels like a scene from Sex and the City because the diner has an old TV in the corner playing the news while someone carries over a stack of pancakes and the coffee tastes slightly burnt in the best possible way. Reading a book on the subway feels weirdly retro now, especially because phone connection is nowhere to be found underground. You walk into a thrift store to escape the cold for five minutes and The Cranberries are playing on the radio while somebody digs through leather jackets beside you, and suddenly you’re convinced you were meant to live in the West Village in 2004.

A sneaky drunk cigarette on the fire escape with friends while conversation from another building echoes faintly through the apartment window. The smell of spring rain hitting the pavement after spending too long wandering around downtown. Buying a magazine from a newsstand just because the cover is pretty and stuffing it into your bag next to tangled headphones and cherry lip gloss. Sitting in Central Park in the afternoon and eating lunch you grabbed from the bodega next door. Walking home a little delirious after a late night movie with the city still buzzing around you.

Tiny moments that feel so much more exciting than whatever’s happening on my phone.

And honestly? I forgot how fun life feels when you stop trying to consume every moment and actually just live it.

So in honor of my accidental return to 2006, here’s a list of things currently making me feel deeply alive, slightly nostalgic, and like the chic rom-com journalist in a 2000s movie with a guaranteed happy ending.

buying print magazines

There is genuinely nothing more chic to me right now than buying an actual magazine and throwing it in my bag. I want folded pages. I want dramatic perfume ads. I want to sit in the park pretending I’m interviewing someone for Vogue while drinking $1.50 coffee from the bodega.

putting my phone on Do Not Disturb

This has changed my life in the same way people say Pilates changes their life. Every app wants something from me all the time. Turning my phone off for a few hours and suddenly remembering I’m a person with hobbies and thoughts and a physical body? Fab.

going to the movie theater

Movie theaters are still magic to me. The giant popcorn. The sticky floors. The overly dramatic previews. Sitting in a dark room with strangers and collectively gasping at the same scene feels weirdly intimate now. It also helps that the theater near my place is frozen in time in 1985.

keeping an actual address book for postcards and birthday cards

There’s something so chic and so wonderful about sending and receiving physical mail. Like I’m one step away from sealing envelopes with wax and sending postcards from cities I’m just emotionally visiting. It feels very “supporting character in a 2000s rom-com who remembers everyone’s birthday and wears a good coat.”

going to arcades with my friends

I’m sorry but maybe adulthood is actually supposed to be playing air hockey at 10 p.m. and getting way too competitive over basketball games that give you tickets. Maybe the best nights are the least curated ones and maybe we really do need to pitch in and get a lava lamp.

sitting in the park for absolutely no reason

This one is huge for me lately. Just laying in the grass listening to music and talking for hours with no real plan. Last weekend my friends and I were doing cartwheels in the park and I genuinely think that healed something in me.

making playlists for hyper-specific moods

I don’t care if this is insane behavior. I need playlists titled things like “2000s journalist lead on assignment in Midtown” and “power walking through Midtown in kitten heels like I have an editor waiting on line one.” The amount of K.T. Tunstall I have been listening to might be concerning, but let’s call it world-building.

being a little unreachable

I miss when people were just unavailable sometimes. Like sorry she can’t answer, she’s wandering around a bookstore with her phone dead and no sense of urgency. Lately I’ve been leaving my phone in my bag more and honestly? Missing a text because you’re busy having fun feels incredibly cool.

At this stage in my life, I think I’m just craving things that feel real. Fun, slightly chaotic, and a little less online. And to me, right now, that means slowing things down and reading New York Magazine on the 6 train.