What If This Is the Golden Era?

There was a time when I was a yes girl. Flying through time zones, crossing state lines, surviving on three hours of sleep and pure adrenaline. My outfits were tiny and deliberately extra, with a carry-on strictly devoted to all things sparkly and metallic. I made friends in bathroom lines. Soulmates on the dance floor. Frolicked in the desert until the sun came up. It was the peak of my festival career. I don’t even remember the word maybe being part of my vocabulary. I was just always down.

That was 2016.

It was loud and bright and wild and messy. Back then, it felt like freedom.

And I guess that’s why everyone is obsessed with it.

If I’m being honest, I don’t fully understand the infatuation. It was a great chapter. I was there. I loved her, that girl.

I just don't hold onto it the way everyone else seems to.

People talk about 2016 like it was the last good year. And maybe in some ways it was. For the culture, for the chaos, for the way everything felt lighter and less complicated. But the more I listen, the more I realize we’re not really mourning a year.

We’re mourning the version of ourselves who didn’t know what was coming.

The feeling that anything could happen.

That we hadn’t been disappointed yet.

That maybe we never would be.

But that was then.

We never name the good years while living them. We’re too busy chasing the next thing. The next plan. The next event. It’s like we’re still at the party, only halfway through, already asking, where are we going after this? 

Refusing to believe that this could be it. This apartment. This phase. This stretch of time that feels too ordinary to be worth remembering.

But what if it isn’t?

What if this is the golden hour?

We’re at the start of a new year, and instead of leaning into it, everyone’s busy facing the rearview. Holding onto something that already had its moment. And that’s what got me thinking. Not because I want it back.

But because I don’t.

What if ten years from now, I look back at this season, with all its friction and clarity, and feel the same kind of ache? Not because it was perfect, but because it was real. Because I was becoming. Because I finally stopped chasing something I already had.

I’m still me. Still a little chaotic. Still, with too many tabs open. But now I protect my peace the way I used to protect my phone battery at festivals. I don't need every night to be a story. I know that joy doesn’t always have to be loud to be real.

Maybe that’s the truth.

We don’t know when the golden era is happening. We just live it. We show up for it. And one day, we realize we were in it all along.

2016 was fun.

But I’m not interested in reruns.

Happy New Year.

Valley of Fire  © Rosie Hernández 2026