One of the lead front-page stories, second section, in the redoubtable Wall Street Journal this past weekend was all about how much is too much jewelry to wear to your private yoga lessons in New York City; really, there is a competition for who’s the most bejeweled. But the question was, when does it start to get in the way of “downward dog?”

Is this what we’ve really come to? Flip through a few more pages and the question is, “How much, really, should a diner tip on wine?” And then there was the fashion question hovering around $100-plus khaki pants or $1,000 jackets of “how to look like you haven’t tried too hard… to master the throw-it-on-and-still-look-cool dressing… to be artfully rumpled.”

Another story was about how to dress for job interviews in which one Manhattan, midtown Gen-Z offered this advice. He avoids wearing big logos for job interviews, trying to keep the logos small. Hmm.

OK, so maybe this is just too much New York, LA or Miami you say? The millennial generation nationwide seems to have a problem now with working seven days a week. It’s like three to four days a week is what’s in demand, and preferably not to include Friday or Mondays, and of course still pay me my seven-day per week pay, but most important, because of inflation, I need a pay raise.

Obviously, the pandemic had something to do with all of this. People vacated their offices in droves, learned to love to work from home, that is, when they weren’t gaming when they should have been working, shopping when they should have been selling, and doing it all in the supreme comfort of their favorite sherpa-lined PJs.

Maybe I’m coming down too hard on city folks or what I guess some call the metro-sexual lifestyle.

How about this. People used to ride bicycles for the exercise, the leisurely pump and glide over hill and over dale in the neighborhood, or even for a workout on the city streets. Now it’s all about electric bikes. I was recently in New York to see a show and was nearly run over several times by daredevil food delivery bikers careening down “bike” lanes at freeway speeds expecting you to yield the right of way to the nostalgic and timeless beauty of the passing cyclist.

When I was growing up there were four TV channels — NBC, CBS, ABC — all for free, and something called Channel 13 which was a prelude to what we now call public television. It was all so simple then. Now we have hundreds of channels that are mostly vacant and unused.

Movies are now an actual crime scene, a real robbery of your disposable income. I remember how I used to enjoy looking at the newspaper to see what was playing at the movies, and if we were lucky we’d find a double feature with two good films for the price of one. Now, if a movie comes out that you want to see you’ll likely discover that it’s only available on Disney Plus, or Amazon Prime, maybe Paramount Plus, sometimes Netflix, Peacock, Hulu, Sling or Slam, and if you want to make sure you’re completely covered it’ll cost you hundreds a month for the privilege of being able to see any movie you want on any given day, and that doesn’t include the panoramic screen or the cost of access to the internet

Have you noticed that some college playoff football and NFL games are becoming pay-per-view? Can’t watch Thursday night football anymore unless you’re an Amazon Prime member? I can feel the trend. Folks, it’s only going to get worse.

As teenagers we used to meet girlfriends at the movies, or at parties at our parents’ houses where we discreetly asked parents to quietly vanish for the evening. Now they look for dates online. That’s the same digital medium that evokes “likes” and “hates,” induces stress and destroys self-esteem. That’s the same technological social-media wonder that hypnotically monopolizes free and productive time.

Maybe I’m just getting old, nostalgic and cynical, but does it really make sense to pile on the gold necklaces for yoga? I liked going to work at my office with my colleagues. I once bicycled through the wine country of Tuscany, Italy, grabbing grapes off the vines as I lunched on my baguettes and chunks of cheese. Touring bicycles everywhere yet no place to charge an electric bike battery in San Gimignano. I put my arm around a girl for the first time in the dimly-lit seats of the Pickwick Movie Theater in Greenwich, Connecticut, and trust me, she wasn’t some digital avatar. And yes, there were only four channels on our home TV, but the Saturday morning cartoons, the movies and the football games were all fabulously free. So were the memories.

Bill Sims is a Hillsboro resident, retired president of the Denver Council on Foreign Relations, an author and runs a small farm in Berrysville with his wife. He is a former educator, executive and foundation president.