Honestly, looking back at the start of January 2019 feels like peering into a different geological era. It was the last "normal" year. We didn't know it then, obviously. We were too busy worrying about the Marie Kondo craze and whether or not our "sparking joy" was actually just a fancy way to throw out perfectly good socks. But Happy New Year 2019 wasn't just another calendar flip; it was a cultural tipping point that set the stage for the chaotic decade we’re living in now.
People were hopeful.
The global economy was humming along, and the "Great Decoupling" from reality hadn't quite hit the mainstream psyche yet. When we toasted to 2019, we were toasting to a year that would eventually give us the first photo of a black hole and the end of Game of Thrones. It was a year of endings, though we treated it like a massive beginning.
What Actually Happened When We Said Happy New Year 2019?
The transition into 2019 was marked by a weirdly specific energy. If you remember the vibe, it was the year of the "VSCO girl" and the peak of the influencer aesthetic before it got all cynical and meta.
On a more serious note, 2019 started with a literal bang in the tech and space world. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew by Ultima Thule (now officially named Arrokoth) on New Year’s Day. It was the most distant object ever explored by a spacecraft. Think about that for a second. While most of us were nursing hangovers and promising to hit the gym, scientists were receiving data from four billion miles away. It was a peak moment for human curiosity.
The social atmosphere was... loud.
TikTok was beginning its relentless climb to the top of the app store, having merged with Musical.ly only a few months prior. If you weren't on it yet, you were definitely hearing about it from your younger cousins. By the time people were wishing each other a Happy New Year 2019, the digital landscape was shifting from curated Instagram grids to the raw, chaotic energy of short-form video. It changed how we communicated. Forever.
The Resolution Trap of 2019
Everyone was obsessed with "The 10-Year Challenge" right around the start of the year. Remember that? You’d post a photo of yourself from 2009 next to one from 2019. It was a massive data-mining goldmine for facial recognition AI, sure, but for the average person, it was a moment of intense nostalgia.
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We were obsessed with progress.
According to data from Strava, "Quitters Day"—the day most people give up on their New Year resolutions—hit on January 19th in 2019. It’s a fascinating look at human psychology. We enter these years with such high expectations, particularly in 2019, because it felt like the "final" year of the teens. There was a subconscious pressure to get things right before the 2020s arrived.
The Pop Culture That Defined the Start of the Year
If you walked into a coffee shop in January 2019, you were likely hearing people argue about Bird Box. The Netflix movie had just dropped, and the "Bird Box Challenge" was everywhere. It was dangerous. It was silly. It was perfectly 2019.
Musically, we were living in the era of "7 Rings" by Ariana Grande.
The song dropped shortly after the new year and basically became the anthem for a specific type of late-stage capitalism fueled by retail therapy. It's wild to think how much that specific sound—trap beats mixed with pop—dominated the headspace of that year. We weren't just saying Happy New Year 2019; we were living in a very specific, high-gloss version of reality.
Then there was the egg.
On January 4, 2019, an account posted a picture of a single brown egg on Instagram with the sole purpose of beating Kylie Jenner’s record for the most-liked photo. It worked. By mid-January, a literal egg was the most popular thing on the planet. It was a harmless bit of internet absurdity that feels almost quaint now. It represented a time when the internet could still rally behind something meaningless just for the sake of a joke.
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Real Shifts in the Business World
On the corporate side, the beginning of 2019 was tense.
The US government was actually in the middle of its longest shutdown in history when the year started. It lasted 35 days. For hundreds of thousands of federal workers, the "happy" part of the new year was overshadowed by missed paychecks and uncertainty. It’s a detail people often forget when they look back with rose-colored glasses.
At the same time, the "streaming wars" were escalating. Disney+ hadn't launched yet, but the announcement was looming over the industry. Every major media company was clawing back its content from Netflix. The fragmentation of our attention started right here. We moved from "everything is in one place" to "I need five subscriptions to watch my favorite sitcoms."
Why 2019 Was the Peak of "Normal"
Psychologically, 2019 represents the last year where the world felt predictable. We had our problems, sure. Politics were polarizing, and climate change was at the forefront of the conversation—especially with Greta Thunberg gaining international prominence—but the fundamental structure of daily life felt stable.
Travel was at an all-time high.
In 2019, the aviation industry saw record numbers. People were flying everywhere. "Overtourism" was the big buzzword in travel sections of newspapers. Cities like Venice and Amsterdam were literally begging people to stop coming. It’s a stark contrast to what happened just twelve months later.
When we look at Happy New Year 2019 through the lens of today, it’s basically a time capsule of a world that was moving at a thousand miles an hour without a brake pedal in sight. We were obsessed with "hustle culture." The Wing, the women-only co-working space, was at its peak. WeWork was still a unicorn. We believed in the infinite growth of everything.
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The Misconception About 2019's Energy
A lot of people think 2019 was just a "filler" year.
It wasn't. It was the year of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. It was the year of the Notre-Dame fire. These events were massive cultural shocks that reminded us that nothing—not our political systems, not our historical monuments—is permanent.
We often forget how much the start of 2019 was defined by a sense of urgency. The "Extinction Rebellion" protests were starting to make serious waves. The conversation around the environment shifted from "maybe we should recycle" to "the planet is literally on fire." The Amazon rainforest fires later that year would only solidify this.
Lessons We Can Still Use from the 2019 Mindset
So, what do we actually do with this nostalgia?
Looking back at 2019 isn't just about missing the "before times." It's about realizing that many of the habits we formed then—the digital burnout, the obsession with efficiency, the reliance on social media for validation—are things we are still untangling today.
- Audit your digital intake. In 2019, we let the algorithms take the wheel. Reclaiming that focus is the best way to move forward.
- Prioritize physical experiences. The "year of the egg" proved how much we value collective experiences, even if they're silly. Find real-world communities that don't depend on a "like" button.
- Acknowledge the shift. Understand that your life and the world changed fundamentally after 2019. It's okay to let go of the expectations you had for yourself back then.
Moving Forward with Intent
The best way to honor the spirit of that time is to stop waiting for "normal" to return. It's gone.
Instead, take the optimism we had when we yelled Happy New Year 2019 and apply it to a world that is much more complicated. We are more resilient now. We’ve seen what happens when the world stops, and we’ve seen how to build it back.
Next Steps for Today:
- Review your 5-year goals: Many of the plans we made in early 2019 were derailed. Sit down and look at what you wanted then versus what you want now. Delete the stuff that no longer fits.
- Declutter your digital footprint: Go back to your 2019 photos. Not for a "challenge," but to see who you were spending time with and what you were doing. Reconnect with one person from that era you've lost touch with.
- Invest in "slow" hobbies: 2019 was the peak of "fast" everything. Counteract that today by picking up something that takes time—reading a physical book, gardening, or long-form writing.