Giant Decade Chicken

(A what? A chicken.)

So there I was minding my own business, writing my pithy 2009 blog wrap up….and then I saw something that terrified me.

Oh sure, on the surface it looks just like a beautiful photograph, and a list of the accomplishments of a creative and thoughtful person. (Who happens to be a crazy-amazing photographer, btw.)

But it struck fear and blackness into my heart. Which (of course) instantly made me feel compelled to do a decade wrap up too.

2000-2009

This past year was great, I can look back on that with no problems. Totally exciting and chock full of positive growth and big, good changes.

But the entire decade?

Eeep.

That’s a different story.

If I had to pick a theme for this decade (which I guess I don’t have to do anything but I’m going to anyway) it would be:

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. ”
–Nelson Mandela

I actually started this decade in a very similar situation to where I am now. But a lot happened in between. It took so much to get me back to where I was, only completely altered.

The Moments

Some moments I can recall quickly and with perfect detail, as if I could click and open them in iPhoto.

In 2000, sleeping in my tent in Nebraska during a solo cross country trip.
In 2001, riding my bike home from work in downtown DC on September 11.
In 2004, receiving bad news in a hospital, twice.
In 2006, reading an email that changed everything.
In 2009, making a promise in the candlelight of a copper hall.

But the really important stuff is what happened in between. The amorphous, squishy stuff. The slow shifts, the two-steps-forward/one-step-back that got me from here to there and back again. This decade was about the spaces in between (oh! I have lots more to say about “spaces in between” but that should be its own post).

In a way, moments are easy. They’re dramatic, memorable, poetic. They demand your attention, and everything else falls away. It’s much harder to stay awake for what happens before and after.

The Hard

Depression
(subtitle: Self Loathing) There was a lot of thinking I was headed elsewhere, but ending up right back where I started. Tired and aching from the journey but unaltered. I spent a good portion of the decade feeling like I was in an endless loop and there was no way out.

Drama
When you feel like you’re in the endless loop you end up doing a lot of stuff you wish you hadn’t. (Not sure where this “you” stuff is coming from, I mean “I”.) Oh, and by the way this tends to lead to more self-loathing (and repeat.)

Loss
In addition to self-manufactured hardness, there were things that happened that just plain sucked. Oh-my-god-tragic kind of sucked.

The sort of stuff you don’t talk about much, because people tend to look at you with that weird conversation-stopping awkward-pity in their eyes. And then you feel end up feeling bad for them, because they don’t know what to say about your bad thing. So you know, much easier not to mention it.

The Good

Growing Up
This sounds weird but since the 2000s found me at ages 25-35, this was the first full decade of me being an adult, not in school full-time. And let me tell you it totally rocks. I’ll accept (carefully covered) grey hairs in exchange for making my own money, being in control of where I live, what I do, and who I spend time with, any day.

(Gratuitous link to this needs to go here.)

Recovering from Depression
I’ve already said a lot about this but it definitely defined the decade for me. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, and (ick, I know) ended up being such an enormous gift. Just living through some days required a fuckton of courage.

Having that experience colors everything that has come afterwards, in a holy-crap-am-I-glad-to-be-alive sort of way. It has made me feel awake and present in ways I never could have imagined before.

Acceptance
The ongoing, gradual, excruciating process.  Of letting go of things as I imagine they should be, or as I’m trying to white-knuckle-will them to be.

This was the best of the good, those times when I could accept what was.

What I was.

What I am.

Do you have a Chicken for the ’00s?
(I promise I won’t be irritated by it, I’m genuinely curious …feel free to share a link in comments!)

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