10 years ago

There is a meme on twitter right now, #10yearsago.




This, well, it gave me pause, an epiphany-type moment. What I didn’t realize on December 31, 1999, was how much my life was about to change. I was aware in some obvious ways. I had just quit my job in Advertising and, in the New Year, was starting a new job and a new career in recruiting. I was in the midst of a messy, complicated break up. And I was contemplating a move out of the house I was currently living in.

What I didn’t know, what I couldn’t know, was that that was only the beginning. I had no concept of how different my life would be in only a few short months, and certainly within a year. Because 2000 was not only the year I started a new career. It was also the year I moved to New York. A move I wasn’t planning on and wasn’t expecting. It was a move that shaped my life in ways I couldn’t expect. A move that affected me, not only in terms of my day to day to life, but also shaped who I’ve become.

At the end of the 90’s I was looking back on a decade in which I graduated from High School, went away to college, graduated from college, fell in love for the first time, fell in love the second time, fell in love for the third time, lived on my own, started a career, made my first “adult-life-after-school” friends, become an adult (even if whether or not I’m effective at it is still debatable).

My memory of the end of the century was all the Y2K mania (seems so naïve now doesn’t it?) and forging into a new century, that I didn’t truly contemplate all the transitions and transformations that I (and my life) had been through in that decade.

I knew and expected that there would be changes to come. But I did not see or expect that changes that did.

It’s been quite a decade. There has been a lot of loss in my life, a lot of sadness, especially in the last half of the decade. But I’m remembering now that there was a lot of joy.

Lately I’ve been very sad, very frustrated with my life. I’ve been treading water in a mild depression. Frustrated with so many things. But for the first time, looking back at what I had no idea was in store for me ten years ago, gives me hope, optimism and even enthusiasm. I’m excited to see what the next decade has in store for me. All the things that I can’t even imagine, couldn’t even predict, have no idea that are about to happen to my life.

Goodbye to the Aughts

Before Christmas I started to draft a decade retrospective blog entry. A listing of the things I said goodbye to in the last decade. Things like an answering machine, a landline, DC, New York, and people lost. I had envisioned it being part nostalgic, part sentimental, part, sad, part funny.



But seriously, just the number of funerals that I went to in the past decade, was depressing. (btw, that number is 7). I just couldn't lighten it up enough.

Rather than a quippy retrospective, this is what I have:

In sum, the past decade, I switched careers, moved to NYC, entered my thirties, switched careers again, moved to Chicago, did some traveling (Spain, Morocco, Italy, London, Dublin), had some boyfriends, made some friends, lost some people, had some stories published, grew to appreciate my family (and the few really amazing friends that I have known for decades) and their love.

It is time to say GoodBye to this decade.

I'm ready for the tweens.

update: I forgot to add, started a blog.