a decade under the influence

I’m big on marking time and noting anniversaries, so of course the end of the decade is a thing that speaks to me. Like countless people and publications, I’m making lists: songs, albums, books, movies. All the things I’ve consumed in the past ten years, things that gave me joy, lifted me up, made me cry, think, feel. I love a good list and the end of the decade is the perfect time to make some.

One thing I don’t want to make a list of is my accomplishments of the past ten years. Not because I don’t have many, but because it’s so self serving. And maybe depressing. There are things I wanted to accomplish that I never did, projects that went by the wayside, efforts that just weren’t enough. But I do want to take a look back at how my life evolved over these years. Because it didn’t start off great, but it’s ending on a positive note and there’s a story to how I — we — got here.

I use my tumblr archives when I want to reminisce. I wrote a lot there for a while, and it’s a very good history of my life in this decade. There’s a lot of angst, a lot of depression and anxiety, some anger, a little hopelessness. By the time I got to the part where everything was good again, I had more or less given up on tumblr. But those years are so much easier to remember, so much better to recall than the previous years.

A recurring theme on my posts from those years is about keeping your head above water when you’re caught in a flood. Dreams, metaphors, whole damn essays about treading water, about drowning, about need a life…