January 5th, 1986 / 2026

January 5th, 1986 was a Sunday, which already tells you something important. Time still had edges back then. Weeks ended. Stores closed. If you needed something and did not already own it, you simply did not have it until Monday. Nobody called that “intentional living.” It was just how gravity worked.

The world ran on plastic clocks with red LED numbers that were always slightly wrong. Phones were attached to walls by cords thick enough to tow a car. If the phone rang, it rang for everyone. Privacy was solved by distance and mild social shame.

Computers existed, but only in very specific rooms, and they were clearly machines. Beige, loud, and unimpressed by your feelings. If you wanted one to do something new, you typed commands and hoped you remembered them correctly. When it broke, it did not apologize or update itself. It simply stopped, like a stubborn mule.

Music came from objects. Vinyl, cassette, maybe a brand new CD if you knew someone rich or reckless. You listened to an album because that was what you bought, not because an algorithm nudged it into your afternoon. Skipping a song required effort and judgment. Sometimes you just let the bad track play and thought about your life for four minutes.

News arrived once or twice a day and then stayed put. If something terrible happened at 10 a.m., you might not know until dinner. This did not make people ignorant. It made them calmer. Panic had to wait its turn.

January 5th, 2026 wakes up already tired.

The clocks are perfect now, synchronized to atomic certainty, and somehow that makes everything feel late. Phones are no longer attached to walls. They are attached to us. They do not ring, they vibrate, flash, whisper, buzz, and occasionally shame us for not responding quickly enough.

Computers are everywhere and nowhere. They live in pockets, ceilings, cars, and other people’s buildings. They pretend to be friendly. They are still machines, but now they smile while breaking.

Music is infinite and disposable. You can hear anything ever recorded, instantly, and somehow still complain there is nothing to listen to. Albums are suggestions. Attention is rented in fifteen second increments.

News never stops arriving and never finishes arriving. Everything is urgent. Everything is breaking. Everything happened five minutes ago and you should already have an opinion. Silence is suspicious.

In 1986, if something went wrong, it was usually obvious. The TV did not turn on. The phone was dead. The car would not start. In 2026, everything technically works while functionally failing. The call connects but nobody hears anything. The system is up but wrong. The dashboard is green while the building burns.

Back then, the future felt like a place we were heading toward. Now it feels like a background process that never quite completes.

January 5th, 1986 did not know what January 5th, 2026 would look like, and honestly it would probably hate it for a few minutes, then get distracted by something shiny and move on. January 5th, 2026 spends a lot of time fantasizing about January 5th, 1986 without wanting to give up indoor plumbing or antibiotics.

Both days have their own nonsense. One just packaged it better.

The funny part is not that things changed.

The funny part is that we are still sitting here, staring at blinking lights, trying to make sense of the noise, pretending we are surprised that the future turned out exactly as weird as it did.

Somewhere, a red LED clock is still wrong. Somewhere else, an atomic clock is perfectly right.

Neither one tells you what to do next.

-Never Know Where My Writing Will End Up
--Bryan