Oh my. I just realized that if I'm going to do annual #90sWeek this year, I've got less than a week to prepare!
I've been too busy altering my lifestyle to notice my yearly experiment of intentionally altering my lifestyle....
It might be redundant at this point? And I'm kinda busy with said permanent lifestyle changes?
OTOH I'm sentimental and have been doing this now for what, 4-5 years. I don't want to just skip it...
@neil @sherlock_holmes I do #90sWeek one week every January. No media or tech (reasonable equivalences are ok — I don't own a CD player) made after 2001. As close as I can get. It's refreshing.
@TorontoStar: To wrap up #90sWeek, Nick Krewen caught up with the great k.d. lang, who is set to be inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame.
https://t.co/HaUFzRqB4t -https://twitter.com/TorontoStar/status/1829562396794376532
@TorontoStar: RT @TorontoStarLife: As #90sWeek wraps up, we want to hear from you.
What are the best — and worst — songs of the ‘90s? Answer below:👇
htt… -https://twitter.com/TorontoStar/status/1829513507362193760
@TorontoStar: RT @TorontoStarLife: From ‘Gremlins 2’ to ‘Blair Witch’ — these 10 movies shaped the ‘90s
🖋️ @brofromanother #90sWeek
https://t.co/L5oR2… -https://twitter.com/TorontoStar/status/1828899663497621922
Lol nope it’s back up. They said it wouldn’t be.
It’s not like I can go to Blockbuster. And at least with my New Years #90sWeek challenge, I’m allowed to stream 90s shows.
Unintentional surprise enforced #90sWeek(end) for me. Internet is down-down, and not expected up till at least Sunday.
Very disruptive to weekend rest routine. But maybe it will be good.
I’ve also had success on slowly weening myself off my electronic compulsions, which are now often boring. (That is one of the goals of my annual #90sWeek challenge. The enshitification of the mobile idle game market has also helped because is so hard to find an engaging, playable idle game these days.)
That’s making space for reading. I’m optimistic but don’t want to set myself up for disappointment again.
We explore the criminally underrated Marvel Knights Inhuman series in the final piece for 90s Week. A story that played more like a political chess game than a superhero drama. https://www.howtolovecomics.com/2024/02/25/marvel-knights-inhumans/
#Comics #ComicBooks #Marvel #MarvelComics #Inhumans #90sWeek
90s Week continues! We examine the "bad girl" comics trend from the 90s, which consisted of plenty of cheesecake, skimpy outfits, and violence. https://www.howtolovecomics.com/2024/02/24/the-origin-of-the-bad-girl-comic-90s-week/
#Comics #ComicBooks #Witchblade #Vampirella #90sWeek #Catwoman #BadGirls
This massive reading order chronicles the Superman Triangle Era, giving readers a resource for this unique numbering system from the 90s and early 2000s. https://www.howtolovecomics.com/2024/02/23/superman-triangle-number-era-reading-order/
#Comics #DCComics #Superman #ComicBooks #TriangleEra #90sWeek
For #90sWeek, we look back at Emerald Twilight, the controversial 1994 Green Lantern story that explores loss and the Hal Jordan’s villainous reaction to it. https://www.howtolovecomics.com/2024/02/20/green-lantern-emerald-twilight/
#Comics #ComicBooks #DCComics #GreenLantern #Superhero #EmeraldTwilight
The Clone Saga was a massive Spider-Man story, taking in well over 100 comics. Find out how to read this divisive tale from the 1990s with this handy reading order. https://www.howtolovecomics.com/2024/02/19/spider-man-clone-saga-reading-order/
#Comics #ComicsBooks #1990s #Reading #Books #MarvelComics #90sWeek #Marvel #SpiderMan #Clones
One thing I can say for sure, though, is that my compulsive evening routine is no longer so compulsive. Basically, it's an evening routine I started after I left my abuser that involves getting very high and then distracting myself as much as possible by rotating through idle games and TV shows on my iPad, in a certain order, with certain goals to meet. (I'd get pretty severe anxiety before if this routine was disrupted. It borders on OCD, which is an anxiety disorder.)
Part of the reason I started #90sWeek in 2021 was to help me break that routine, or at least find its edges. That's one reason it was less impactful and easier this year, is because I've already chipped away at those compulsions. Oh, I'll still do the routine. But it's become more flexible and healthy.
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I might add more thoughts to this thread as things come to me.
Previous 90s Weeks have helped me become more mindful of how I use technology, which has made it easier to use technology in more healthy ways throughout the rest of the year. The more I've adjusted my life to be less online, the less #90sWeek changes me, at least in its current form. This means it's working to effect changes year-long.
For the next one, I'll have to think through if I should make any changes to the rules.
I'm still running into barriers with my mental health, because I don't have my 90s brain. Most 90s activities require the ability to concentrate for long periods of time on stuff that's slightly less exciting than I've grown used to. So "reading for hours" might be my goal, and it is certainly easier without the distractions, but I could still only manage for a short time. 90s Week is a good test of how far I've come in rebuilding.
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↝ I finally saw Leaving Las Vegas. I would not have understood had I seen it at any point in the 90s. I was a highly sheltered Mormon when it came out, and while less sheltered later in the decade, I was still Mormon until '01 and hadn't experienced much of the world.
I really liked it. It took the trope of "middle-aged washed up problematic white man is saved by a quirky or socially misfit woman" and laid waste to it. Not only does she NOT save him by *honoring* his request that she not save him, but she is the protagonist driving the story. It was produced by two women even though the writer/director was a man. It's notable for the complete absence of moral judgement by the lens, which is difficult given this film's subject matter: alcoholism and sex work. The film intentionally refuses to answer the question it repeatedly asks: Why is he like this? We get only hints.
I loved the movie so much that if I were still into writing media analysis, I'd deconstruct this one.
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↝ I had a long conversation with my mom yesterday. I found it easier to do when the week had been so slow and my nights so boring. 😂 (There really was less dopamine to go around back then.)
She was receptive and we covered a lot of ground. She only got emotional once, when I started talking about fascism within the Republican party. She was trying to say that the only bad republicans were the ones who were secretly left-leaning socialists, like Mitt Romney 🙄 (She got caught up on her own words when she tried to explain how fascism is the same as socialism. I did not use this weakness to attack.)
I instead redirected her easily by saying that racism doesn't care what party you are, they'll use whatever means they can to create a fascist state where slavery can be legal again. It was a long conversation, but good, and she mostly trusted what I told her. I went around the "back way," and spoke to our shared values, because the front doors caused her to be defensive.
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↝ While it sucked that my back was out the whole time (which prevented my plans to channel that boredom into cleaning up around here), it was ... nicely nostalgic in the sense that I had a lot more lower back pain in the 90s than I've had in the last two decades, so. I learned ergonomics. (Now I'm more likely to get get neck, bicep, and shoulder problems.)
↝ My So-Called Life is a really good show. Of the 4 pre-2001 shows I picked, this is my favorite.
↝ My theory about culture shifting to value "authenticity" over all else in the 90s continues to bear out. Almost all 90s media I consumed this week (much of it new to me) had themes of authenticity. I feel this was GenX's Great Contribution, and like us, is overlooked, but without which, the positive changes we're seeing now wouldn't have been possible. This is true of almost all media made for teens and 20-somethings. I can just pick something and press play, and there it is again: The conversation about authenticity.
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#90sWeek is over! Thoughts from out of time:
↝ This 90s Week wasn't as powerfully impactful as the last two I did. There are a number of reasons for this. For one thing, I indulged in deep nostalgia without the 90s Week rules back in Oct/Nov to help me cope, and I'd kind of had my fill. It's also no longer a fresh and new challenge, and each time I do it I peel off another layer of the bad things I'm trying to get rid of. There are fewer layers to peel back now, so it's less directly obvious.
Nevertheless, I do feel some slow shifts that got started which I expect to cause some changes in me over the next few weeks.
↝ I found it was much faster and easier to "detox" from the 2020s (previous years took a couple of days just to stop reaching for my phone and feeling anxious). But I did feel "antsy" a lot more often, a lot further into the experiment. A mild but persistent annoyance and impatience to give up, even as late as Saturday (6 days in).
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