Flashback: October 12, 1993

Round One: Fight!

Choose your fighter and step into the arena. This week, we're throwing down in October 12, 1993. The match has begun, and here's what was happening when the bell rang.

While you were busy perfecting your flannel layering technique and deciding whether Nirvana or Pearl Jam reigned supreme, the world kept spinning with its own brand of '90s magic.

This was the sweet spot…grunge was still having its moment, R&B was smooth as silk, and we were all blissfully unaware that in just a few years, our dial-up modems would be “singing us the song of their people.”

Just six days earlier, Michael Jordan had shocked the world by retiring from basketball at the peak of his career, leaving every sports fan wondering what could possibly make someone walk away from greatness. While baseball rumors were already swirling, the news was still reverberating through every barbershop, locker room, and water cooler conversation.

This particular week in '93 found us somewhere between caring deeply about everything and pretending we didn't care at all. It was a time when you could actually afford concert tickets and when the biggest decision of your week was which movie to rent at Blockbuster.

Let's step into that world.

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

Mixtape Memory Lane 

Here's what was dominating the Billboard Hot 100 the week of October 12, 1993:

🎧 "Dreamlover" – Mariah Carey

Mariah was riding high with this breezy, sample-heavy track that had us all wishing we could hit those whistle notes. Built on a Emotions sample, this song was everywhere from car radios, mall speakers, to your friend's older sister's bedroom.

🎧 "The River of Dreams" – Billy Joel

The Piano Man was still dominating the charts with this spiritual journey disguised as a pop-rock anthem. Billy was singing about searching for something he'd lost, and we were all nodding along like we totally understood the metaphor (even if we were really just thinking about finding our lost Discman).

🎧 "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" – Meat Loaf

Meat Loaf's epic power ballad was climbing the charts and confusing everyone about what exactly "that" was. At nearly 12 minutes long, this was the song you'd put on to avoid having to change the tape during your commute.

🎧 "If" – Janet Jackson

Janet was serving up sultry confidence with this Prince-influenced track. The song was pure '90s Janet…edgy, independent, and impossible not to move to.

🎧 "Whomp! (There It Is)" – Tag Team

Nothing says 1993 quite like this party anthem. Every wedding DJ, every school dance, every roller rink…this song was inescapable, and we weren't mad about it.

👆 Watch the full throwback video playlist on YouTube Music.

Screen Time Rewind 

October 1993 was a strange and wonderful time at the movies and on our screens. Cool Runnings had audiences cheering for the underdog Jamaican bobsled team while John Candy stole every scene.

Meanwhile, Demolition Man was serving up Sly Stallone and Wesley Snipes in a future where Taco Bell won the franchise wars and the three seashells became the mystery we're still trying to solve three decades later.

The Nightmare Before Christmas arrived to completely confuse everyone about whether it was a Halloween or Christmas movie. Tim Burton's stop-motion masterpiece would become a Hot Topic lifestyle brand before we even knew what Hot Topic was.

Rudy had us ugly-crying over a kid who just wanted to play football for Notre Dame. It proved that sometimes the most inspiring sports movies are about the guys who barely got to play.

On the small screen, television was in the middle of a revolution we didn't quite recognize yet. The X-Files was just a month into its first season, airing on Friday nights when most of us were out, but a cult following was already forming around Mulder and Scully's paranormal investigations.

Frasier had just debuted in September, and by October, Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce were proving that intellectual snobbery and tossed salads could be primetime gold.

NYPD Blue was causing parents everywhere to clutch their pearls over Dennis Franz's bare backside and gritty realism that network television had never shown before.

In the world of gaming, Mortal Kombat II was dominating arcades with its gore and fatalities, so popular that the Senate would hold hearings about video game violence before the year was out.

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

Life Reboot: Soul

Finding Your Frequency in the Static

Let's talk about soul, not the music genre (though we've got plenty of that above), but that thing inside you that keeps whispering when everything else is screaming. Back in October 1993, we were young enough to still believe in possibilities but old enough to start feeling the weight of expectations.

Here's the thing about soul work that nobody tells you when you're younger: it's not about finding yourself…you're not lost. It's about remembering yourself before the world told you who to be. That person who sang into hairbrushes, who built elaborate stories with action figures, who believed they could do anything.

But somewhere along the way, life happened. The bills started piling up. The "real world" demanded we get serious, get practical, get realistic. We traded passion for paychecks, dreams for dental insurance, spontaneity for 401(k) contributions. We learned to fit in, to play the game, to be responsible adults.

The good news? That authentic self didn't disappear. It's been waiting patiently, ready to remind you of who you really are.

This week’s challenge:

• Resurrect Your Forgotten Dreams. Pull out that old journal, that dusty guitar, those half-finished stories. What lit you up before you learned to dim your light? You don't have to quit your job and become a rock star (though if you do, let us know how that works out). But you can make space for the things that make you feel alive. Even if it's just 15 minutes before bed, even if you're terrible at it, even if nobody ever sees it. Do it for you.

• Create a "Soul Resume." Forget your LinkedIn profile for a minute. Make a list of the moments when you felt most yourself…not your most successful, not your most impressive, but your most YOU. That road trip where everything went wrong but somehow felt right. That conversation that lasted until 4am. That time you stood up for something even though your voice shook. These moments are your compass when you've lost your way.

• Schedule Non-Negotiable Joy. Remember when we used to do things just because they were fun? Before everything needed to be productive or profitable or Instagram-worthy? Block off time in your calendar (yes, actually write it down) for something that serves no purpose except making you feel good. Blast some '90s hip-hop and dance like nobody's watching (because hopefully they're not). Build that ridiculous LEGO set. Binge-watch The X-Files from the beginning. Your soul doesn't need optimization; it needs permission to just be.

The truth is, we spent our twenties trying to find ourselves, our thirties trying to establish ourselves, and now we're realizing that maybe the point is to simply be ourselves…messy, complicated, still-figuring-it-out ourselves. And that's not just okay. That's exactly as it should be.

Visual Feature: Then vs. Now

Life Reboot is sponsored by La’Merde Designs.

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

Finish Him!

And just like that, we've delivered the finishing move on our trip back to October 12, 1993. We were young, we were hungry, and we thought flannel would never go out of style (spoiler alert: it didn't, it just got more expensive and called "heritage workwear").

This week was about finding our rhythm in a world that was spinning faster than we realized. Looking back, maybe that's what our entire generation has been doing…trying to hold onto our soul while navigating a world that keeps insisting we grow up already.

But here's the secret: we don't have to choose. We can be responsible AND ridiculous. We can pay our mortgages AND blast Tag Team at inappropriate volumes. We can be adults who still remember what it felt like to believe in something bigger than our to-do lists.

As Michael Jordan said just days before: "I don't believe in 'never.'" And neither should we. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is walk away from what everyone expects and chase what your soul actually wants.

Until next week…