I have no idea if this is a disappointment or a relief, but this timeline experiment seems to be leading to redoing everything I thought I regretted.
Or at least could be improved upon.

Last year I started a project of living 35 years ago, but this wasn’t my first timeline project.

In 2019 I already had one, going back 25 years, where I translated my real (2019) life to what the events would have looked like in 1994.

Two most striking elements (and, in al fairness, the only two that were consistent) were to translate my affair with someone I had up until then written about as “Mr.Big” to 1994, where he would be a 20-something called Bear.
And the other one was of course making this Lauren 1994 a diarist and aspiring published writer.

When that project had slowly fizzled out, I did not choose to reboot that timeline, but to create a new one.

Instead of continuing in the year 2000, I set it back to 1990.

Lauren was having a leap year, so she had not yet started university, and it was unclear if she ever would.

And instead of having an affair with Bear she had chosen to stay alone.

This new Lauren 1990 was not a writer nor a diarist, and I was sure this time would be different.

By cleaning up my online behavior I did what I could to get a sense of the holy grail of feeling like 1990.
And yet, this whole offline life thing stayed so, so flat…

Until I realized 1990 wasn’t just about removing;
It was about adding.

Because interaction with boys, later with men, has always been pretty much my whole reason for existing.
Which was magnified when I started writing about it as well.

So to come to life, 18 year old Lauren did not need me to substract anything, but to add 2 things;
1. A lover
2. A diary

And the diary was optional.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

The story behind this time travel project has been added below, and adjusted to the format it will have in 2026..