The Analogue Ghosts & Digital Overload….

Born in 1983. It’s a date that plants me firmly in the “elder millennial” camp, a micro-generation sometimes called “Xennials,” forever caught between two worlds. We are the generation that remembers the satisfying clunk of a rotary phone, the ritual of recording songs off the radio onto cassette tapes, and the weighty authority of an encyclopedia set. Ours was an analogue childhood, defined by delayed gratification and physical media.

Then, the world shifted beneath our feet. Not gradually, but with the screeching, chaotic arrival of dial-up internet sometime during our teens. We navigated the Wild West of AIM chat rooms, curated our identities on nascent platforms like MySpace, and marvelled at the magic (and illegality) of Napster and Limewire. We didn’t just use the burgeoning digital world; we beta-tested it, fumbling through its early iterations, becoming unintentional pioneers of the online age! We learned to type quickly, code basic HTML for our profiles, and troubleshoot connection issues with a patience that seems almost mythical now.

This transition alone would be enough to define a generation – the straddling of the tangible past and the hyper-connected present. But for those of us born in the early 80s, it was just the opening act. Our coming-of-age, our entry into adulthood, unfolded against a backdrop of relentless, seismic global events, each branded “unprecedented.”

For me, the shift was brutally specific. I was getting ready for high school band practice on September 11th, 2001, watching the news unfold live. I saw the second plane hit the South Tower before heading to rehearsal, flute case in hand. There was a surreal disconnect – carrying on with scales and symphonies while unimaginable horror was broadcast across the globe. By the time I returned home a few hours later, the towers, those symbols of permanence, had fallen. The world map of certainty wasn’t just redrawn; it felt shattered. That shared, televised trauma, punctuated by the bizarre continuation of routine, ushered in an era of anxiety, security theatre, and seemingly endless wars that became the background noise to our university years and early careers.

Just as we started to find our footing, perhaps daring to dream of stability, the 2008 financial crisis hit. The “Great Recession”. I was living and working in Prague at the time, navigating the early stages of my teaching career. While buffered slightly by distance, the ripple effects were undeniable – a tightening job market even internationally, friends back home losing jobs, and the unsettling feeling that the traditional markers of adult success were built on foundations far shakier than our parents experienced, no matter where in the world you stood. We learned to hustle, to adapt, to accept precariousness as the new normal, even from afar.

The years blurred after the recession’s initial shockwaves subsided, but the sense of stability never quite returned. Instead, the backdrop felt persistently unsettled, coloured by the ongoing wars that spun out from 9/11 and a steady hum of violence filtering through the news cycle. We witnessed the explosion of social media, transforming from a novelty to an omnipresent force shaping communication, politics, and self-perception. Then came 2016 and the election of Donald Trump, a moment that felt like watching history painfully repeat itself, dramatically intensifying political polarisation and turning everyday conversations into potential minefields.For many of us, myself included, there’s been a distinct feeling of things not being quite ‘normal’ ever since. Climate change warnings also grew louder, morphing from distant concerns into present-day anxieties about the future we’re leaving behind. Each event, each crisis, each worrying trend piled onto the last, leaving little room to breathe or process before the next wave hit.

And then came COVID-19. Another “unprecedented” event, but this time, it permeated every aspect of daily life on a global scale simultaneously. My experience was layered with the complexities of being an expatriate; I was living and working as a teacher in Vietnam when the pandemic shut down the world. Connection relied heavily on screens – long video calls became lifelines to family back home, especially to my vulnerable Granny. Navigating strict lockdowns, shifting regulations, the anxieties of being far from family, and the unique challenges of teaching remotely in that specific context added another dimension to the shared global disruption. Life continued its relentless pace even amidst the chaos; I managed a beautiful, precious final summer with my Granny before relocating to Tanzania shortly afterward. She passed away in August 2021, adding a profound layer of personal grief to that strange, disconnected period. It was the culmination of living in a state of high alert, but amplified, inescapable, and filtered through the lenses of distance, loss, and life continuing in a foreign country during a worldwide crisis. We juggled work, health fears, and profound isolation, all mediated through the screens that had come to define our adulthood, regardless of our latitude or longitude.

Is it any wonder, then, that so many of us talk about brain fog? It’s more than just tiredness. It’s a persistent mental haze, a difficulty concentrating, a feeling that the cognitive hard drive is fragmented after years of processing crisis after crisis, toggling between analogue memories and digital saturation. We’ve absorbed wave after wave of shocking news, felt the ground shift with political earthquakes, navigated economic precarity from various corners of the globe, managed personal grief amidst global pandemics, and adapted to paradigm-shifting technologies, all while trying to build lives. The constant need to pivot, adapt, and process the sheer volume of information and emotional turmoil takes a toll.That “fog” feels less like a personal failing and more like a collective symptom of navigating decades of turbulence.

Being an elder millennial means being a translator between the pre-internet world and the hyper-digital age. It means carrying the ghosts of analogue routines in our pockets alongside smartphones buzzing with endless notifications. It means possessing a unique resilience forged in the fires of repeated “once-in-a-lifetime” events experienced both at home and abroad, woven through with personal joys and sorrows. We remember the ‘before’, navigate the ‘now’ often feeling far from ‘normal’, and look towards the future with a perspective shaped by profound, relentless change, forever searching for clarity through the fog.