5 Signs You Need Nostalgia: Finding Balance in Burnout.

If you’ve been feeling drained, here are 5 signs you need nostalgia to recharge and find balance, and yes, it starts with the smell of fried puff puff.

5 Signs You Need Nostalgia in Your Life Right Now

The smell of fried puff puff hit me before I even saw the street vendor. Golden, round, and warm, it wasn’t just food. It was a time machine. Suddenly, I was nine years old again, standing in front of Mama Sade’s kiosk after school with fifty naira in my palm, already tasting the sugary bliss in my mind.

But life isn’t like that anymore. Now, I eat puff puff on the go, between emails, errands, and endless deadlines. The taste is the same, but the joy… somehow smaller.

Maybe that’s the thing about growing up. We still encounter the pieces of our childhood, the games, the snacks, the songs, but we experience them differently.

They no longer slow us down. They no longer stretch time the way they used to. I didn’t notice this at first. But I began catching myself longing for little things:

• Staring at clouds just to find shapes.

• Playing Gameboy with friends, queuing for a turn, with my snacks in hand, the appease the owner.

• Sitting on the corridor steps while NEPA had “taken light,” laughing with neighbours.

These weren’t just memories. They were signs.

Therefore, nostalgia isn’t just a random mood. It’s your mind telling you,

“You’ve been running for too long. Slow down. Breathe. Remember when joy was simple?”

5 Signs You Need Nostalgia

And honestly, that’s when I realised life has no balance, but I honestly need the balance. That balance sometimes comes in the form of doing something you loved as a child.

You may need to pause in the middle of a busy day and let an old song, an old game, or an old smell carry you away. Remember that once upon a time, you didn’t measure a day’s success by how much you achieved, but by how much you enjoyed it.

Here are 5 signs nostalgia is calling:

1. You feel emotionally tired, even after sleeping well. Your body is rested, but your soul feels heavy. That’s not laziness. That’s burnout. Nostalgia reminds you what joy used to feel like.

2. You keep scrolling through old photos or childhood memes. That’s your inner child reaching out. Saying, “Remember me?”

3. New things don’t excite you like they used to because your heart is hungry for familiar memories. For comfort. For something that feels like home.

4. You miss things you never thought you cared about. Flip phones. Paper letters. Saturday morning cartoons. A whole vibe.

5. You crave stillness and softness but don’t know where to find it.

Spoiler: it’s not always at rest. Sometimes, it’s in remembering.

So today, give yourself permission:

1. Notice the signs that tug in your chest when a childhood scent floats by, or when an old jingle pops into your head.
2. Indulge it: play that game, fry that dodo, hum that cartoon theme song.
3. Revisit the joy, scroll through our page at NostaliTech. You just might find something that brings those memories to life again.

Let nostalgia be the quiet hug you give yourself in the middle of all this noise. And if you ever need a place to remember what joy used to feel like, you know where to find us.

5 Signs You Need Nostalgia