Project 2004: We Have to Go Back

There's a whole genre of content about how terrible the 2020s are: TikToks about the "Zoomer Stare" and other antisocial and downright dangerous behavior from the younger cohort; Furious screeds on X about the humiliation ritual of air travel; Thirty- to fifty-minute YouTube videos that compile TikToks about hyperconsumerism, Gen Alpha's illiteracy, and the horrific relationship and dating landscape.

The diagnosis is in: Society sucks, people suck, and all we can do is watch reruns of Friends and The X-Files with tears in our eyes, longing for how things used to be.

But I disagree. Though there are some aspects of life in 2026 that cannot be escaped (the economic conditions being a major one), we can actually pinpoint when our way of life went spectacularly to shit, and we have the power, at least in small ways, to wind the clock back.

I will pine for nothing. I will make it so.

Project 2004 Begins Now

via GIPHY

I've long said that the only people we have control over are ourselves, so that's what this project is about. So when I quote Jack from Lost "We have to go back!" What I really mean is I intend to go back. And if you like, you can come along.

The underlying project is unglamorous: a series of small decisions, made one by one, in a different direction than the one I'd been drifting in for years without ever consciously choosing it. The first of those decisions is targeting my deteriorating attention span, love of reading and writing, and general ability to tolerate quiet and boredom.