Welcome 2010!

2010. It just looks futuristic. Just a few years ago (or what seems just a few years ago, but was actually 15 years ago), 2010 seemed so far away. And, now here we are - really entering the future.

For me, personally, this was an amazing decade of growth and love and accomplishment. I came awfully close to becoming the person I always wanted to be, and that's a great feeling.

Ten years ago today, I was loving my life in South Beach, working at the Front Porch Cafe on Ocean Drive, and just hanging out a lot with Jason and Laura, and Shawn, Murphy, Phoenix and Jody.  Stimpy had just found his way back to South Beach, Olga and Brandie were new friends, and I hadn't yet met a lot of people who have become such central characters in my story - Rodrigo, Pablo, Brian, Andrea - and, of course, Tony.  A decade ago, I had not yet met my biological mother, and my adoptive father had just died.  I had, still fairly recently, gotten my life on track after a few lost and dark years of meth addiction, and was opening my life up to the possibilities of the Universe at Miami-Dade Community College.  I had no idea that I was capable of finishing a few years later with a Master's Degree thesis, and I had no idea I had the strength to become who I wanted to be.  

Now, at the end of the decade, I'm in the fifth year of sharing my journey with Tony, my  beautiful and silly and smarter-than-average Prince Charming.  We're living in Atlanta, I'm enjoying my work as an account manager, and hanging out a lot with Stimpy and Jody, Jamie and Ashley, Ryan, Alicia and Stacey.  We just bought an awesome, Brady Bunch-esque house with a forest for a back yard, and we're adjusting to life in the inner 'burbs.  I'm now closer to my adoptive family than I ever thought possible, and I've been able to sustain a lot of decades-old friendships.  The 00s were unbelievably good to me.

Of course, historically speaking, we all know that this decade will go down as one of the worst in the history of this nation. Starting with the election meltdown in Florida, through September 11th, Afghanistan, Anthrax, Iraq, Guantanamo, Donald Rumsfeld, Britney's meltdown, Abu Ghraib, the rise of "reality" tv, Fox News, the 2004 Tsunami, melting polar ice caps, mass extinctions, Hurricane Katrina, the real estate bubble, the real estate collapse, Twittering, Bernie Madoff, auto-tuning, the Great Recession, and Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and their Teabaggers - it's been a decade of war, disaster, fear, anger, ignorance, hate and bad, bad pop music.

But, I am hopeful that 2010 will be the start of a much better era.  There have been a lot of seeds planted this year that just might bloom in the new decade.  I definitely want to avoid stepping into the shoes of those Hollywood "psychic" New Year's Eve prognosticators - so I won't make any "2010 predictions."  But, I do think that much of the fear, anger, and ignorance crowd has eaten itself, and despite some missteps and massive criticism from every corner of the political spectrum, President Obama has moved our nation more than a few big steps in the right direction. 

And, possibly more importantly, Lady Gaga has single-handedly revived the idea of a creative, interesting, thoughtful, cutting edge pop star.  And, that definitely bodes well for the future that's now here.