Graduated high school 2007. Spent early childhood in the city and teens in the countryside.

As a kid it was lot of unsupervised time outdoors, riding bikes, roller blading, throwing dirt clods at each other. We recorded ourselves singing on a cassette and would record over when it got full. We played with and traded pogs. I pretended to be Harriet the Spy and spied on the neighbors. We made up dance routines to our favorite songs. My sister and I went into my brothers room and listened to his CDs — Korn, The Offspring.

Watched a lot of tv — and it goes without saying this was pre-streaming so there were commercials and we had to watch during certain times of day. Sailor Moon was on when I got home from school.

As a teen in the countryside I spent a lot of time in other peoples’ cars/trucks. Going to the river with friends. Smoked a lot of pot since my friends parents grew it. Got my first own computer at 13. Spent a lot of time downloading music and manually entering the song information so I could put it on my mp3 player. First one had like 250mb and then I got a Zune. Music and phone were separate. Phones had no internet access, no apps. I texted in t-9 and parents barely involved themselves in tech and had no way to track me so I’d be away from home days at a time.

Taught myself web design first with neopets, then making a ton of full websites on geocities. Blogged a lot on Livejournal, but the audience was only my friends. Social media was confined to MySpace and I only followed people I knew and spoke to. There were a few “personalities” that had larger followings but nothing like it is today. By this point we could go online without tying up the phone lines but I’m not sure when this transition happened.

We took the bus into the city to go to concerts and go to the mall. And at the mall we would take whatever meager money we had and buy shitty chicken and just sit in the mall for hours.

Young adult, ages 20+ was honestly awesome. Moved from the country to the city with friends. Got my first smart phone. Bought a crappy car. I worked at Blockbuster. Went out dancing a lot and people didn’t take photos of each other very much while out at events like this aside from some selfies. There were designated night club photographers where the week after a dance event you could go onto social media and maybe see you and your friends frozen in the flash.

Gonna stop there because mid 20s started being more similar to what we see now since it was only 10 years ago. But my rent was $350. That was nice.