So I guess the ending of any year with a “9” at the end prompts the obligatory pondering of the past. It hadn’t really occurred to me that the decade was ending until a couple of days ago when the media started going crazy with retrospective pieces.   As I let the realization of where we are in the space-time-continuum sink in a little, it seems odder and odder, and makes me feel older and older, that the awful ’00s are finally over.

We started this decade in Tucson, me in grad school, Jason working for one of many doomed-to-failure start-ups, living in a tiny, old  house, next door to some crotchety neighbors who hated us, with Evil Jo, Kyler the one-eyed cat and a very sweet dog with a penchant for escaping from our 6-ft fence-enclosed yard. We had no money but lots of time. No kids, undemanding jobs, short commutes, simple house.   Life was good. We spoiled the dog like our baby and I stressed about coming up with some sort of dissertation topic.     I taught classes and worried about people taking me seriously.   Jason played Frisbee, even commuting up to Phoenix to play.   We were   young.

Fast forward 10 years and now we have lived in our current house for almost 10 years.   It’s bigger, more complicated, takes more work.   We have a pool.   And bills.   A new very sweet dog, and a cat with two eyes.   A long list of cats who have come and gone in that time   (Smudge, meatplow, endo, slim, diego, argos…).   Jo has moved on.   Two kids.   Long commutes.   Stressful jobs that pay well.   We have found professional success, but at the cost of giving up the flexibility that comes with less stressful careers.   We have guilt about daycare.   We tag-team on childcare so we don’t spend any time together.   Jason no longer defines his life by Frisbee, but has successfully filled that hole full with a new obsession, bikes.     I run marathons.   I have wrinkles.   Jason’s hair is getting grayer.   We’ve both gotten thin, then fat, then thin, then (now) fat again.

These changes have been so gradual, a little bit every month or day, an incremental change with each new decision that builds on the last decision until one day you wake up and your life is unrecognizable from where you started.     I now understand the mid-life crisis.   I also understand the unexplainable joy that comes with the unconditional love of   your child.  

Pain and pleasure, risk and reward.   Those very things that generate the most stress are the same things that give the most happiness.   What a decade.