Anyway, 1990s teenagers had no leisure to...

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Anyway, 1990s teenagers had no leisure to appreciate the luxury they were given; they were preoccupied with inflating minor existential crises, fixating on dark, romantic love-suicide imagery, and glamorizing drugs and mental illness. In short, we spent all our time being very emotional. After all, we had little else to do. Whereas our parents accepted the common ‘go to school and get a job’ maxim unquestioningly, we had the space to nurture the vague flicker of an idea that we might want some kind of creative employment, some ‘alternative’ to the manic march of the 1980s. Our mothers madly climbed gym equipment to nowhere; we decided we maybe just didn’t have the energy for goals we didn’t personally elect.

Leigh Alexander, How To Be 1990s on Thought Catalog

02/10/12