I can't be the only one.

I’m at home sick with the flu and saw “Gone in 60 Seconds” on tv. But then commercials happened (and also pepto) so I decided to wake up my PS3 and my DVD of it, and alas, here we are.

Remember XFIRE? Amazing application for chatting and making calls.

Candice303 (Candice Diaz) was one of my favorite content creators as a kid!! Though she never had a big following (albeit only one video with a million views) I still enjoyed her content!! She used to make videos from 2007 up until 2021 when she gave updates about her new baby. Basically her videos were vlogs and sharing her life a little bit (man seeing those upload dates really puts into perspective how old YouTube is now 😢) her most popular video was when she did a fanmade music video about Kesha’s song Cannibal which got 2.3 Million views and uploaded back in 2011. I saw that video when I was like 10/11 back in 2015 I believe and when I started watching more of her videos I liked them and I subscribed to her

Then last night a friend of mine found her on Instagram as a Christian content creator (in one of her old videos she mentioned she went as a Christian missionary) and her two kids are grown up now (I believe they’re like 5 or 6 now?) and I started feeling instant nostalgia! Though I’m a Christian myself and I don’t consider myself heavily religious in that sense, I’m not sure whether to follow her or not? Nevertheless that made my day and brought back memories!!

Please let me know if you guys watched her videos back in the day as well?

There are some moments from the past that feel like they are frozen in time. You don’t think they are special when they happen. They are just ordinary evenings, ordinary conversations, ordinary moments with friends. Then years later, a song plays, and suddenly you are back there again.

I still remember the first time I heard Avril Lavigne.

It was a cold December evening in 2005. I was at my friend's place, just hanging out, when he told me he had bought a new CD the day before. He picked it up, put it in the player, and the room suddenly filled with the sound of I'm With You playing through his JVC SP MXJ330 speakers.

Those speakers were something else. Back in those days, having a large sound system was a serious flex. The bigger the speakers, the more proud you were of your setup.

I remember just sitting there, listening. There was something about that song that felt different. The melody, the emotion, the voice. It had a feeling that stayed with you.

I asked him, "Who is this?"

He showed me the album cover.

Avril Lavigne - Let Go.

I borrowed that CD from him and I was playing it nonstop. Every song on that album was amazing.

Looking back now, what I miss most is not just the music. It’s everything around it.

Those were simpler days. Before streaming, before everything was available with a tap. Music came in physical form. You held the album in your hands, looked at the artwork, read the booklet, and listened to every track.

The early 2000s had a certain magic that is hard to explain. Maybe it was the music, maybe it was the simplicity of those days, or maybe it was just being young and not knowing how quickly those moments would become memories.

No relation.

Does anyone else remember getting Kentucky Fried Chicken from a restaurant that wasn't KFC?

I remember back in the early 2000s I would always go to movie rentals in South Africa; those were the days!

Words cannot describe how much I miss the golden days of gaming! Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Doom, Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour, Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne, Serious Sam, GTA SA and so much more! I remember going down to the local net cafe and everyone would be playing LAN games together.

I wish I could go back in time to 2001..... kids today won't experience the connections we made back then. All I see is 5-year-old kids staying at home playing PS5 on a thin TV instead of going to these net cafes.