For whatever reason, I have not been overwhelmed with this whole change in decade. I vaguely remember the start of the 1980s, but I think that was mostly because I got the Death Star playset that Christmas. (And when I got it, my dad joked that I should just leave it in the box because it would be worth more. And if I would have, I could sell the damn thing now and pay off my mortgage.) I also remember the 1989/1990 change, mostly because I was home for college, and this girlfriend I had back then came up from Bloomington to visit me, and we fought constantly for the entire week she visited. And I guess we all remember the whole Y2K thing, mostly because we were all waiting for jets to fall from the sky at midnight, and nothing happened.
This decade change is pretty anticlimactic, though. I think part of it is the addition of numbers behind that big 20 prefix doesn’t seem to have as much impact. 2012 and 2001 and 2112 and 2010 and 2020 all seem too similar to me. Another possibility is that I’m so apathetic, I just don’t give a shit anymore. I remember back when my first car hit 140,000 miles, and me and Tom Sample pulled over on the side of US33 and danced around the car like idiots because all of those zeroes came up at the same time. My car just hit 30,000 miles, and I didn’t even notice it. Maybe that’s because it’s just an LCD display now, and not actual dials of numbers. Or, once again, apathy.
I also don’t make many new year’s resolutions, because all of the big things I do or plan never happen to land on even numbers like that. But here are some vague ideas of resolutions I may or may not do this year:
- Not gain back any weight. I managed to stay below my goal weight for all of 2009, and I need to keep that up. Actually, it wouldn’t hurt me to lose about five more pounds, but as long as I stay the same pant size so I don’t have to go out and buy more, I’m fine.
- Publish Air in the Paragraph Line #13.
- Try to write here more.
- Try to write more, period.
- Kill a dolphin with a spear gun from a helicopter.
- Learn a dead language, and teach it to several of my coworkers, so we can talk about other people behind their backs.
- Only eat hot dogs at baseball games. I think I ruined this by eating a char dog at Midway airport, but come to think of it, that was still 2009, so who cares.
- Memorize one page of a dictionary word-for-word, and then tell everyone I memorized the entire dictionary, and when they ask, I start reading off that one page and everyone thinks I’m a goddamn genius.
- Be in an emergency situation where someone asks if there’s a doctor because someone collapsed or something, and say “yes, I’m a doctor”, and when they ask me to do CPR or something, tell them I actually have a Doctor of Divinity degree and tell that dead guy to suck it.
- Keep hand-shaking to a minimum.
I should actually make one of those giant 101 goals lists and put it on here, but these guys are doing a much better job at that idea.