While cleaning out my old bedroom before moving out of my parents' house, I came across a box filled with old MP3 players. Looking at them, I thought to myself: why not recreate the exact music I was listening to back then? So I started tracking down the songs one by one. And from the very first tracks, something came back to life.

This playlist is a return to my teenage years. Back then, I wasn't the loudest person in the classroom. I was usually pretty quiet, often in my own world, with my headphones never too far away. Music was a bigger part of my daily life than I realized at the time. I listened to it while walking to school, working on homework, chatting on MSN after class, or simply spending time in my room. It was always somewhere in the background. One day, I heard a lyric that said:

"When he looks back, he realizes all the days he suffered were the best days of his life... because they made him who he became."

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At the time, I didn't fully understand what it meant. Today, I understand it a little better. Because looking back, it isn't only the songs that I remember. I also remember the moments that came with them.

The routines, the habits, the small worries of that age, and the feeling that adulthood still seemed far away. Back then, I thought my MP3 player was just a device filled with music. Today, I see it more as a time capsule. Every song brings me back to a younger version of myself.

This playlist is more than a collection of songs. It's also a small trip back in time. A way to revisit a chapter of my life through the music that accompanied it. And if it inspires you to revisit some of your own musical memories, then that's a nice bonus.

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EXTRA

I've also included a few objects and photos from those years.

The first one?

A floppy disk.

Yes, the ones we used in computer class to save our school projects long before USB drives and cloud storage existed.