Saving my Sanity & Putting my Life Into 90's Mode.
How I'm reprioritising amongst *gestures wildly* all of this.
In this issue:
The conversation that totally changed my perspective
Taking control back amongst the chaos
The 7 actions and priorities I’m taking
Welcome to Figuring It Out—my weekly love letter on life, self-discovery, interiors, books, beauty, and whatever I’m obsessing over at 6am (I’m a psycho early bird). It’s thoughtful, scarily honest, and written with you in mind. If you’re into it and want to support the magic, becoming a paid subscriber gives you access to the deeper posts, helps me keep writing from the heart, and creating even more! If a recurring payment is too much right now, but you’d still like to contribute, it would still mean the absolute world if you wanted to leave a little hat-tip via my ko-fi. I’m so glad you’re here.
In September 2020, I had to spend two weeks, around the clock, in a hotel room without setting a foot outside the door. Australians will remember this well, but for those who don’t know: during COVID, anyone returning to the country from overseas was required to complete a two-week hotel quarantine. I was living in LA at the time, but with my dad not doing well (I ended up moving home permanently a year later because of it), I decided to spend seven weeks at home — two of which were perched high up in a hotel room, overlooking Sydney’s ghostly downtown below.
On my first day locked up, my grandmother called me on the hotel phone from across the country. It ended up being a conversation I’d never forget:
Me: I can’t believe the state of the world right now. Everything going on is crazy. But… I guess we’ve seen this level of chaos before. I mean, you lived through World War Two after all…
Her: Yeah, I did... but we didn’t really know what was going on at the time. We only had the newspapers, really, and it all felt so far away.
Her perspective hit me like a ton of bricks — to realise that while terrible things have always happened throughout human history, the current (over?)connectedness of our culture means we’re in every. single. event. like never before. We have the details — and the images — of everything, true or false, in 4K, even from thousands of kilometres away.
Unfortunately for me, I’m a news junkie. I was raised in a household with copies of international newspapers; Time Magazine and The Economist were left on the kitchen table every week. I would peruse them over my cereal since there was nothing better to do, and unfortunately, that habit has turned me into the kind of person who has to know what’s happening in the world. A passionate historian (possibly my nerdiest trait), I’ve been quietly wringing my hands and pointing out “the signs” for at least five years. And now that we’re on the precipice of big societal change, I can see it’s time to protect my mental health and personal priorities by setting boundaries with the world — and not getting distracted or drained by habits that don’t serve me.
Lately, I’ve been reminding myself of a simple idea: just because I know something, that doesn’t fix it. So, do I need to be incredibly well-informed? Or am I compulsively up to date because it gives me the illusion of control?
I’ve started wondering whether we’re all collectively overexposed to the harsh realities of life on this floating rock, which is clearly taking a mental health toll on us all. At the same time, we’re often less connected to our own communities and the needs in our own backyards.
So I’ve been piecing this idea together like a magpie: taking a small concept from TikTok here… adding an idea from a photo there… letting it percolate through conversations with friends… to arrive at what I’m calling “putting my life into 90s mode.”
Ummm so, what is 90s mode? You’ll be relieved to know it has nothing to do with fashion trends — it’s actually about human connection, and tapping into the warm nostalgia of that last decade before technology totally took over. Funnily enough, when I think of all of my favourite things in life, almost none of them are based on technology (bar Substack with you amazing people, maybe Pinterest?). Instead, they are the physical — long lunches with friends, a book that totally absorbs me, planning a trip, or cooking on a Sunday afternoon.
So, with all that said, I propose the manifesto as follows:
Reinstating a landline (using your smartphone, don’t worry!)
Radio over Netflix
Plans you cannot flake on
Offline leisure
Phone calls & snail mail
Set news sources and times of day
Local community
☎️ Reinstating a Landline (sorta)
I first saw this idea on TikTok, from a creator called Kassadi who has small kids and essentially created a ‘landline’ mode for her phone, and ensures it’s kept in the same area and used specifically when she needs it. Landline mode involves only letting phone calls, messages and calendar reminders come through, silencing everything else when you’re at home. What this looks like for me:
Leave it in one room only (for me it’s the kitchen bench.)
Screen-free mornings: no scroll before breakfast.
Use it when you have a specific reason to (like checking something you wrote in your notes app)
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If you want to dive deeper into this idea, this Substack post is worth checking out:
Radio over Netflix
I — probably like you — am so guilty of using Netflix as “background noise.” When I’m cooking, tidying, working from home, I switch on a favourite show and stay productive by not actually paying attention to it. How bizarre (but normalised) is this behaviour? It’s content I’m not even consuming, yet somehow I find it comforting. But depending on what you’ve switched on, it does nothing to keep your nervous system in check.
I’m taking the Boomer route now and switching on the radio instead — which has been a total game changer. It’s equal parts soothing, informative, and blissfully ad-free. The presenters’ voices on these stations are so calming. I actually learn something. It’s mellow. And there are no valley girl accents trying to sell overpriced supplements that don’t work.
Specifically, I turn to:
The ABC
The BBC
NPR
No Spotify!
I’ve wanted a Roberts Radio for about a decade - do I finally pull the trigger?!
No Flake Zone
Don’t you love watching 90s sitcoms and movies and marvelling at the situations characters find themselves in simply because they don’t have cell phones? The pagers and the answering machines, so adorable! Now? We know we’re all collectively exhausted, and our phones make it *effortless* to cancel plans and disconnect when we’re feeling overwhelmed (which is every other day, right?). Sometimes that’s valid — but sometimes, doing the thing we’ve already committed to is exactly what we need to reconnect with ourselves and get out of our own head.
Offline Leisure
Free time = offline time. Says the chronically online girl.
Spending my time on this Substack totally aside, I’ve been getting clearer on what this looks like for me — though what you do will likely look entirely different. Maybe it’s art, maybe it’s board games, maybe it’s singing, cleaning, or joining a run club. Ideally, the bar is: AI can’t do this.
Currently, my mix is:
Reading books and magazines I borrow from the library
Physically, creatively writing in my notebook instead of on my laptop (I’ve found it’s freeing up my prose)
Knitting (it’s winter here, after all, and I have some blankets to make for friends’ newborns)
Phone Calls & Mail
Recently, I mailed a letter and some stickers to my three-year-old niece who lives in Europe, along with a note saying I hoped she liked them and to make sure she shares them. It was the cutest thing in the world to receive an excited thank-you video back — because, in truth, who isn’t an excited three-year-old when you see a good piece of mail in your letterbox? I’m a huge believer in sending snail mail notes (and personalised stationery — people seem to love it) and in the power of phone calls over FaceTime. Going out of your way to reach out to someone you know or love in this way is even more powerful in 2025 than it was in 1995.
Set News Sources, With an AM & PM Check-In.
Think about it. In the 90s, we had newspapers. And the 6 o’clock news. Then Ted Turner invented CNN, Rupert Murdoch created Fox, and social media brought in doomscrolling. A trifecta of hell.
It’s not just that we’re dealing with propaganda and fake news, it’s that the whole system is now designed to spike our anxiety. I’ll never be one of those people who avoids it altogether, but my solution? A morning check, an evening check, and that’s it.
Local Community
I was reminded of how much power community holds this past weekend. I was having one of those long lunches with old friends that had been in the calendar for months, and at one point, the conversation turned to my friend’s friend — a single mum by choice who was pregnant with her second child while solo travelling around Europe with her toddler.
“Wow,” I said. “I don’t think I could manage that all by myself.”
“Yeah,” my friend replied, “but she’s so involved in the community — she had 40 people at her kid’s first birthday party, all there to support her. She never even has to hire a babysitter, she has that many people putting their hand up to support her.” My friend went on to explain that this woman was active in a couple of local community groups, like her surf life saving club and more.
It reminded me that when you put your hand up and put yourself out there, other people will show up when you need it. But it doesn’t happen without you taking the first step. Sounds incredibly cheesy, but with the right community, you can face some of life’s toughest challenges.
Overall this is not about going back to the past, as it is about remembering what matters most.
About me: I’m Gabriella Singh, a marketing career gal by day (usually selling some of your favourite interior design or beauty brands) and writer in all the other hours. I’m based in Sydney, Australia and write about self-development, manifestation, interior design, beauty products, books, and cooking (or, to summarise, building a beautiful life, inside and out).
Here for 90s mode, let’s have the best summer ever 😎
This was so lovely to read! I also adopted 90s mode for this summer while I'm on break from teaching. I put my phone in a box in a cabinet in the living room every evening (before enjoying a tv show so I'm not scrolling), and I don't retrieve it until after I'm done my creative work in the morning, including working on my second novel. I bought a dvd player from a neighbor and get dvds from the public library. I've been reading a ton and going swimming. I want to try your radio idea. 💖