One more month of the 10s

[tory]

There is one more month to go of this decade. 

What did you achieve?

What did you fail at?

What did you enjoy?

What did you dislike?

What did you regret?

What did you celebrate?

[hippopotamus]

Likely just because of my age, this decade has probably been the best I will ever have.
Although, consider in just this last year I've managed to cross off some major life events (get engaged, get married, buy house, have baby) it has a lot to answer for.


What did you achieve?
At the beginning of the decade I was in panic mode finishing my my PhD thesis. My funding was running out, and within months I was couch surfing and then moved back home to finish writing. I had recently ended a 5 year relationship (which wasn't to end for REAL AND PROPER for a couple of years) and I was devastated. I was single for the first time since my teens and that was tough.

But in the next couple years, I finished my PhD and got into medical school (not in that order). I PASSED medical school, and set my sights on paediatrics as my specialty. I moved 3 different countries. I got the job of my dreams, as a part time academic/paediatric specialty doctor. I moved again. I went through three significant relationships.

Then last year I ran three marathons. I bought house and met the man I was going to marry a year later. We moved in January this year. We had 3 wedding celebrations (in three countries). We went on a lovely honeymoon, and I became a paediatric registrar (a slightly less junior, junior doctor). And I'm about to have a baby.


What did you fail at?
The first year of the decade was probably my most active as a singer. I've done less and less as the years have worn on. Now I don't sing at all. I haven't learnt German (despite duolingo and Goethe course). I've not written up my Scientific papers from my PhD (this weighs on me, like you wouldn't believe).

What did you enjoy?
I loved living in Ireland.

I very much enjoyed getting into running, and I am sad I haven't done much in the last 6 months... but I think I've managed to make it something that even if I take a temporary break from, I will always come back to.

Obviously getting married to the best person I've ever met is definitely a highlight.

I also really love working with babies and children.

What did you dislike?
I miss singing

What did you regret?
Maybe taking the most expensive medical degree there was without thinking enough about it... but at the time I just wanted to make it happen.

What did you celebrate?

My sister waited 4 years to go to her PhD graduation so we could celebrate both of ours together and so that we could have our whole family there and not just be limited to 3 seats.

We've celebrated any number of weddings and holidays with my family, and I'm very grateful we are still so close. It's been a good decade for us.

I celebrated my graduation from Medical school and toured Ireland.

And Celebrating our wedding was really wonderful. We managed to have a really cozy affair when we signed the registry with just 3 witnesses, and a party with our friend in Liverpool. Then we had the big old Ridiculous wedding of my dreams. It exploded in purple and Orange. My friends managed to pull off singing the Act 1 finale of Mikado, played by my cousin Tom on the ricketiest organ he's ever seen (we walked down the aisle to the wedding song from Sound of Music). I sang La Vie en Rose for him, he sang the ENTIRETY of The Elements song for me. It was enormous and joyous and lovely. Then we had a reception on Vancouver Island, at the farm of a close friend with 100 of my husband's best friends and family (and mine having traveled across the world to be there) we dressed in Hockey Jersey's and his uncle made cedar-smoked salmon that he had caught himself for all the guests. And my brother and my husband's parents formed an impromptu blue-grass band that played throughout the day.

Just couldn't have asked for more.

It's been a pretty great 10 years.

[Deleted]

The whole decade was a blur - my daughter went from 13 to 23 and my son from 7 to 17. That should tell you. It's been 10 years of dealing with puberty.

I've had four jobs, one layoff, dealt with a drinking problem, got divorced, sold my record collection to pay for it, lived with my Alzheimer's father out of a gym bag for two years in the house I grew up in until he died, moved back across the Bay. I also dealt with health problems as I crossed into my 50s. Had to stop playing hoops, one of my loves, because I'm just too fucking old. When I walk into job interviews these days I can tell by the look on their faces that I am now an old man in prospective employers' eyes like a former co-worker said would happen.

I had lunch recently with a friend who's going through a tough patch and he said one of the things that keeps him going is how I dealt with a bad hand, some of it my own making (and his). Even when I thought things couldn't get worse and they did, I'd tell myself that they had to get better. The only thing I didn't get was cancer and I had a brief scare with that too - they noticed spots on my lungs, but luckily it was nothing.

That was 2010-2020.

Good fucking riddance.

Playing guitar was kinda fun.

[quaco]

I'm just glad we'll have a decade we can refer to as "the ___'s" again. The "zeroes", the "two thousands", the "tens" -- all awkward. Like trying to pronounce "Wednesday" correctly every time.

[Reactionary Rage]

What did you achieve?

Stability I guess. I’m now settled with my gf and I have a permanent job which I’ve never really had in my life (I’ve been offered them but they were always compromises). I bought a flat too and started to learn an instrument. I mean, not exactly huge achievements but….I move slowly.

What did you fail at?

BCB. Convincing people Corbyn isn’t someone you should be voting for. Staying off weed.

What did you enjoy?

The last decade covers most of my 30s and I had a great time really. Best decade of my life. It’s all downhill from here I guess so I best saviour it.

What did you dislike?

Where do you begin? I mean politically we have issues and that’s been depressing. The impact of social media. The rise of “” culture and a general anti “expert”/science backlash. The madness of identity politics. Fucking Marvel movies. There’s been quite a lot to dislike.

What did you regret?

I regret nothing! NOTHING!

What did you celebrate?

I feel I’ve celebrated food a whole lot more this decade.

[fonz]

Brilliant decade.
After a decade or do of being told I couldn’t father a child, with the predictably grim effect that might have on my mental health, relationships etc I became a dad, with the help of medical advances and an amazing wife.

Truly blessed.


Started a new band (guitar), played maybe 100 gigs- all cover versions mind, I jacked that in cause of tinnitus.
Then started playing piano: new challenge, new perspectives.

Watched some great telly, drank some ace beers, ate top grub, travelled to nice places.

Family still healthy

Wife gets sexier


I am blessed, and I know it.

( the noughties, at least the first half, were really shitty, so maybe it’s part of the cosmic balancing act)

[loveless]

I was newly 40 when it started, and I'll just be 50 by the end of December, so...although I haven't really thought of it as a decade until now, clearly it is about as delineated and bookended as a decade could be.

That said - "your forties"...the excitement of milestones and experiences isn't guaranteed to maintain the accelerated rate of previous decades.

It's the first decade I've gone through from start to finish with a wife and two kids, so...it tends to feel and seem a great deal less autonomous than I remember the 80s, 90s, or 00s. For everything gained, something is lost.

Overall, less constant transition. In a "grass is always greener" kind of way, that seems both good and bad.

What did you achieve?



Truth be told, I'm a classic underachiever, so...the good news is that I can accomplish very little and feel that I've done a hell of a lot.

I stopped smoking a little over five years ago.

I started the decade in pretty deep denial about an alcohol problem that had really taken undue and indefensible prominence in my life. I wouldn't seek to do anything about it until nearly midway through the decade, but...I did. Though I only really managed two full years of complete abstinence, it may as well have been a decade for all that was gained. You can sort through a hell of a lot of (other) recidivist shit once you stop crashing your car into the same tree for more than a minute or two. The subsequent years of occasional indulgence feel and look and mean something very different than the constant punishing hangover of the five years before I pressed pause.

Creatively, I hit a certain stride. To even come near that in one's forties (quick: favorite song Townshend wrote after 35) seems nothing short of statistically miraculous. Assuredly, there's a sense of "making shit count" that creeps in during middle age, and...I managed to act on it a few times.

I got to perform in Europe/UK for the first time in nearly a decade and a half. Eye of the beholder, for sure - but it meant a hell of a lot to me, personally.

Visited Canada for the first time. That was another "you can't possibly know how cool it is until you experience it" moment.

What did you fail at?


My weight is an issue. No excuses here, but...I started putting it on in my late 30s and my efforts to manage it have been "halting", I suppose.

Personal finance? An ongoing tension.

Consistent ambition/execution? Still something of a pipe dream, really.

And, yes - while I absolutely love marriage and fatherhood, it's not remotely some easy breezy voyage through the tropics. "Failure" is considerably overstating it, but...there are aspects of parenting that I continue to fumble. Our oldest son (mine by adoption) is "neuro-diverse" and has all sorts of cognitive delays that I am really struggling to best accommodate as he goes through puberty. Getting a useful and accurate beat on how to best respond, assist, react? I'm not sure I'm even in the ballpark. That's a tough one. My youngest is ten now and is increasingly displaying a lot of emotional instability that concerns me. When both parents have histories of depression and any number of sub-optimal habits and routines, it's difficult not to look at your children and RECOGNIZE some shit.  



What did you enjoy?


Family. The hardest bits of it are nothing compared to the constant, ongoing, overflowing rewards. Those fucking kids, man! James was 5 months old when the decade started, JB was 4 - and now...well, those were some really fun years to go through! Years of "darnedest", one milestone after another, so many joys as they discover one thing after another. You never imagine that you could possibly adore anyone to such an extent until it happens. All the shit we got to do together, their own emerging friendship as brothers, every one of their triumphs and accomplishments just seeming so much more major than anything I've personally mustered. I'm going to be the worst kind of empty nester, and I suspect my wife is too. 

Marriage. It was ROUGH at the start of the decade. I married at 38, but in terms of lifestyle and temperament, I may as well have been 10. And she as well. That we survived the first five years of being married to each other seems improbable. We both had horrible relationship habits, I had a good dozen coke dealers numbers in my phone, and...maybe we didn't have all of the greatest things in common. As the decade began, I was pretty into the idea of "straying from the marriage". Openly so. It's absolutely for the best that I didn't, but...as a measure of how far from on the right track we were...the impulse speaks for itself. 

How and when we hit open water is difficult to pinpoint, but...something happened along the way (maybe a gradual re-shifting of contents), and at some point we just found this very warm, happy, bonded-as-fuck, zen version of our friendship, love and life together. Just...getting so much pleasure out of each other's company, and woe to the budding juvenile delinquent who crosses my wife/her husband. I'm glad we didn't get lost along the way, cause this all just feels like the payoff to a long and uncertain project. It's not like we suddenly stopped ever being cross with each other at some point two or three years ago, but...that type of periodic discomfort just seems so MINOR when it surfaces these days. It doesn't grow or fester, and the ever expanding sense of "Honey, I want to join the circus." "Okay, sweetheart - should I pack you a lunch?" that we've been able to unflinchingly apply to each other's goals and dreams is to be treasured.

Music. It's what nourishes me. I like to make it, I like to hear it, I like to breathe it. And I've gotten to do all of this in abundance over these past ten years. Whether I was onstage, in the audience, in the studio, playing my own music, playing someone else's, cranking up the stereo. It just keeps coming. I've gotten better at intuiting which projects to take and which to decline, and...some good songs, some good gigs, some good records. I got to share it with the kids a lot (James and I have been onstage together several times now, BOTH boys and I have been to dozens of concerts together in any number of configurations).



What did you dislike?


There were a few premature deaths earlier in the decade that really seemed unjust. A dear friend of mine died very suddenly at 47 (family history of "heart stuff") in 2010. And then my dear aunt (as close to me, my wife, and my children as any family member - this includes my own parents and siblings) received a cancer diagnosis about a year later and, despite fighting as hard as anyone could, was gone two years later. It's easy enough to be stoic about this sort of thing (and I have been), but...in reality, if ANYONE was a young 72, it was her (she had taken enormously good care of herself over a lifetime, and had worked so hard and lived so selflessly that she was the sort of person who really deserved to enjoy her long awaited retirement to its fullest). When people are gone, they are gone, but it's a bit of a ripoff when you consider what they (and you) ultimately missed out on. I think she'd have had an amazing relationship with my children as they continued growing up over these past X number of years, and if I'm honest, few people (if any) advised me as consistently and usefully as she had.

In terms of politics and world events, I can't say the current swing of the pendulum fills me with any great joy. It's ugly as sin.


What did you regret?


Eh. I fuck up like everyone else. There were a few times I zigged when I should have zagged, personally and professionally speaking. Some of this is real inevitable "You are going to crash into these specific rocks no matter what. Period." kinda shit, and some is more "Nah - that was my failing." There isn't any one real "You really shouldn't have done that" event, but...yes, there are a couple of things that, with hindsight, I might have gotten out in front of.


What did you celebrate?

Little victories. Friends' milestones and triumphs. Overcoming long odds once or twice. I mean, there's nothing quite like "We landed on the moon" there, but...on a slightly more modest scale, a lot of things went right.

[Deleted]

Nov 19, 2019 8:34:36 GMT Reactionary Rage said:

What did you achieve?

Stability I guess. I’m now settled with my gf and I have a permanent job which I’ve never really had in my life (I’ve been offered them but they were always compromises). I bought a flat too and started to learn an instrument. I mean, not exactly huge achievements but….I move slowly.

What did you fail at?

BCB. Convincing people Corbyn isn’t someone you should be voting for. Staying off weed.

What did you enjoy?

The last decade covers most of my 30s and I had a great time really. Best decade of my life. It’s all downhill from here I guess so I best saviour it.

What did you dislike?

Where do you begin? I mean politically we have issues and that’s been depressing. The impact of social media. The rise of “” culture and a general anti “expert”/science backlash. The madness of identity politics. Fucking Marvel movies. There’s been quite a lot to dislike.

What did you regret?

I regret nothing! NOTHING!

Not even taking the time to hook up with me when you were visiting San Francisco?

Maybe you'll stick with your first answer.