2010

We are just about at the end of the aughts. I look forward to being able to say some time in the future, "back in aught-one...", but I am also a little anxious to have this decade in my rear view mirror. It was a tough one for a lot of folks. This article suggests we call the decade the "Big Zero".

A couple of New Year's ago, friends chanted "everything will be great in 2008!", but most of us fell well short of that. The next year it was a more tepid "everything will be fine in 2009", but we couldn't even muster that. This year's phrase may be appropriately "starting over again in 2010." I think we can manage to clear that bar.

This has been a really tough year for so many people, and one of my worst personally. At the start of the year, I had a wife, a house and a job. Now, not so much. But I had it easy compared to so many. In working my way through my own challenges, I have rediscovered how fortunate I am in my family, my friends, my life.

After the last couple of years, it feels like we and the nation need to have a great reset. After this latest crash, I hope we can see and do things differently in the new year. We need to refocus on what is really important - Family, community, passion and compassion. Seeking long term success over short term gain, building something we are proud of instead of chasing the next paper profit, living within in our means instead of piling up shiny things, seeking understanding in our differences instead of feeling contempt.

I look at my posts around new year's a year ago, and my goals were to change many small things, hoping to add up to something big. I was deliberately a bit vague in the details as I wasn't sharing our marriage struggles at that point. I feel that I have made some significant changes this year, and I hope to make them stick while I break new ground in other areas. I don't have a list just yet, but will be setting certain specific goals soon.

I am starting over professionally and personally. I don't even know where I will be working, much less living in a few months. But I am trying to look toward the future as a wide open possibility. I hope to recapture some of the passion I let fall away.

Let us hang on to what is important while striving to make ourselves and our community a little bit better. Anything can happen, anything is possible.

Tomorrow, we get another shot.