Answer me honestly: how do you know you're well? Do you throw off the duvet in the morning excited for the day ahead? Are your energy levels at 3pm as high as they were at 7am? Do you take an active interest in your toilet habits? TMI? Sorry. Or are you tracking, testing and noting every element of your life through a little device attached to your body? Your sleep, your heart rate, your stress levels, your step count: the list goes on. I've personally yo-yoed between the two camps for quite some time.
But while technology has broken through many an incredible boundary in the health space (AI in cancer detection being just one example), it's also easy to argue that in other areas it's gone too far, stunting our intuition and adding an extra barrier to what should really feel basic. So I bring you the latest solution slowly gaining traction: the art of going 90s.
No new supplement, no snazzy device, no must-have health food you have to try. Simply live like you did thirty-ish years ago and maybe, just maybe, you'll start to feel a little more like yourself. Think calling people on the phone over texting. Swapping scrolling social media for time with a book or a magazine (hopefully Grounded, once our first print issue drops next year). Heading out onto the high street rather than relying on Amazon next-day delivery, because bookshops, garden centres and haberdasheries could all do with the boost. Taking meetings in person over a coffee rather than another Zoom call, ideally knowing your local barista by name, with bonus points if they remember yours back. Shopping in person with your friends rather than online, turning a chore into an afternoon. And that's just the start.
The 90s way of life essentially stretches to reducing our now normal, always-on, screen-focused lives in favour of something slower, steadier and less overloaded with stuff, in every sense of the word. It's less about nostalgia for dial-up tones and disposable cameras, and more about reclaiming the pace that came with them. Yes, it takes more effort, or "friction", if you've come across the new friction-maxxing trend, where we deliberately avoid the easiest routes in life in favour of the more time-consuming ones. But the result is hopefully a little less stress over the small things and a lot more connection and breathing space. It's time to give tasks our full attention again, whether that's writing an email, cooking from scratch or simply sitting with your own thoughts on a walk without a podcast filling the silence.
Stepping back to a slower rhythm isn't about rejecting progress. It's about deciding, on your own terms, which parts of it actually make your life better and which are quietly making it worse.
Though that's not to say stop having fun. In fact, it's sort of the opposite. As Charley Williams-Howitt recently wrote, the most radical form of self-care could just be a room full of strangers and a really good bassline. And few eras raved quite like the 90s.
