January 1981 opens with a reset that feels imposed rather than chosen.

Ronald Reagan has just taken the oath of office, promising a “morning in America” while the Cold War hums beneath the optimism and the Iran hostages have only just come home.

The adults around us are talking about interest rates, patriotism, and “getting ahead,” as if life is something you win by following the rules in the right order.

For GenX kids, that message landed early. Guidance counselors asked what we wanted to be, not what we were drawn to. Goals were framed as responsibility. Practicality was praised as maturity.

And yet, in bedrooms and basements, something quieter was forming. Lyrics scribbled in notebooks. Comics drawn in the margins. Fingers learning chords, code, or dance steps. We didn’t call it purpose or soul yet, but we knew the difference between what we were told to chase and what kept pulling at us anyway.

Forty-plus years later, January feels less like a clean slate and more like a check-in with that original pull.

This week’s rewind looks at the gap between the goals we were taught to set and the callings that never quite let us go.

Let’s dive in.

This Mixtape Memory Lane is sponsored by 50 Ways to Keep Your Lover.

“The Tide Is High” — Blondie
A breezy melody masking the tension of waiting and wanting more. Debbie Harry sounds patient but not passive, hopeful without being naive. It’s a song about holding your ground while the future figures itself out.

“Keep On Loving You” — REO Speedwagon
Stubborn devotion wrapped in arena rock. The song treats commitment as a choice you make even when logic says otherwise. For a generation learning loyalty early, it hit harder than it let on.

“Celebration” — Kool & The Gang
Pure joy on the surface, but also a declaration. In an uncertain moment, this song insisted that gathering, dancing, and marking milestones still mattered. It turned optimism into a communal act.

“Woman in Love” — Barbra Streisand
Vulnerability without apology. Streisand’s delivery made emotional risk sound powerful rather than weak. It modeled intensity at a time when restraint was often rewarded.

“I Love a Rainy Night” — Eddie Rabbitt
Light, playful, and oddly comforting. This song found pleasure in conditions others complained about. A reminder that attitude could be a form of quiet rebellion.

👇 Watch the full throwback video playlist on YouTube Music. https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAP5Oj7iUBp0stvVSLZdV5hDv0jpm7V3b&si=Mr6VQAuqHzblrf9V

In theaters, 9 to 5 was still riding its late-1980 momentum into the new year. Watching Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton take on workplace sexism with humor and strategy felt radical, especially for girls being told to manage expectations rather than challenge systems.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, The Cannonball Run leaned into excess and absurdity. Fast cars, celebrity cameos, and rule-breaking bravado offered a fantasy of escape. It suggested that life didn’t have to be orderly to be fun, or approved to be worth living.

Meanwhile, Ordinary People continued to resonate quietly. Its restrained portrayal of grief, family pressure, and emotional silence offered a rare look at inner turmoil. It showed that being “fine” on the outside often meant very little.

On television, The Dukes of Hazzard was in full swing, glorifying rebellion in the safest way possible. The rules were bent, authority was mocked, and the consequences were minimal, a comforting fantasy for kids living under strict routines.

M*A*S*H balanced humor with moral weight, teaching us that comedy could coexist with critique. Long before we had language for it, the show modeled emotional intelligence and ethical complexity.

And Three’s Company played with misunderstanding and performance, stretching the idea of pretending to be something you weren’t just to stay housed. It was sillier than it was profound, but the subtext landed anyway.

This was still the pre-MTV world, so music lived on scheduled television, not on demand. Solid Gold, American Bandstand, and Soul Train weren’t just shows… they were appointments. You didn’t scroll past performances; you waited for them. Fashion, choreography, and attitude were absorbed in real time, week by week, shaping taste slowly and collectively.

If you missed it, you missed it. And that scarcity made the music feel bigger, more communal, and strangely more intimate. We weren’t just hearing songs… we were watching identity take shape in living rooms across the country.

This Life Reboot is sponsored by La’Merde Designs apparel.

GenX was raised on goals. Clear targets. Measurable progress. Practical outcomes. It was the language of responsibility, and for a long time, it worked.

But callings play by different rules.

A calling isn’t about productivity or applause. It’s the thing you return to after the payoff fades. The pursuit that keeps resurfacing, even when it never quite fit into a five-year plan.

Midlife exposes the limits of goal-setting because you’ve already achieved some of what you were told to want. And yet, something still feels unfinished.

This January, instead of asking what you should aim for, try asking what refuses to let go of you.

Not everything you abandoned was a failure. Some things were simply waiting for a season when you could hear them again.

If you want to reboot from goals to callings this year, try three practical moves.

1. Revisit one “failed” attempt.
Think of something you started and stopped… a project, a skill, an idea. Ignore how it ended. Focus on how it felt while you were doing it. Energy is a better clue than outcomes.

2. Strip the costume off the dream.
Ask yourself what you were really drawn to. Not the title or the lifestyle, but the action underneath it… teaching, making, organizing, performing, caring, solving. That verb matters more than the role.

3. Give it a small, protected space.
Not a grand plan. Just a container you can keep. Twenty minutes. One afternoon a week. One month-long experiment. Callings don’t need drama… they need consistency.

Goals expire. Callings don’t.
They just get quieter until you’re finally ready to hear them again.

This museum isn’t filled with artifacts. It’s filled with recognition.

Each display represents a dream that didn’t disappear, it just got deferred. The rock star who became responsible. The athlete who chose stability. The dancer, the writer, the builder who followed the sensible path instead.

This isn’t about regret. It’s about honesty.

Some dreams shape us even more because we didn’t live them. And in a culture obsessed with resolutions, there’s something grounding about naming what still matters, even quietly.

Life Reboot is sponsored by La’Merde Designs.

Mixtape Memory Lane is sponsored by 50 Ways to Keep Your Lover.

By now, most of us know how this goes.
Goals get rewritten. Resolutions fade. Life intervenes.

But the things that mattered most back then… the interests, curiosities, and quiet ambitions we never fully shook… they don’t disappear. They just wait.

As one truth keeps resurfacing for our generation:
Your calling doesn’t care about your resume. It just keeps whispering until you finally listen.

Maybe this January isn’t about becoming someone new. Maybe it’s about remembering who you already were… before practicality took over.

A question that lands differently in midlife was spoken by Dolly Parton’s character in 9 to 5, “Why do people always think they have to choose?”

For GenX, we were taught early that adulthood meant picking one lane and staying in it… career or creativity, responsibility or joy, stability or soul. 9 to 5 quietly pushed back on that idea, long before we had language for balance or integration.

The real tension wasn’t about choosing the “right” path. It was about being told that honoring what mattered to us had to come at the expense of being taken seriously. Maybe the work now isn’t choosing differently. Maybe it’s finally refusing the false choice altogether.

If this rewind stirred something… a song, a show, a dream you thought you’d outgrown… share this edition with someone who would recognize that feeling too.

And if you’re not subscribed yet, join us. Each week, The GenX Edit rewinds the culture and reconnects it to the life we’re actually living now.

Until next time, keep the mixtape playing.