Decade in Review: 2000 to 2010

Champagne flutes kids and I decorated - one of many projects we did this decade.

I remember the Y2K as if it was yesterday.

Now, a decade later, without any sign of a duck tape nor from a bunker stocked up with emergency rations, I’m wondering where did the decade go? Is it really true that once you hit the big four “0″, the time flies twice as fast? My mom used to complain about that. She’d sigh and go, “Where did the time go?”.

But I vowed to be different. I thought statements like that meant, you weren’t really “present” during that time and missed the experience or didn’t remember the experience. And that the whole time, the duration, the experience  would have been, all for naught.

Nope. I want to know where “the time went.”

And yet, here I am, wondering, where did the decade go?

So, I decided, before I forget, before I can actually lip those words, I decided to write them down.

Here is how my decade went down.

The Decade in Review

• My son is a college freshman…. he is in C.O.L.L.E.G.E!! You know, the place where the boys and girls try to become men and women? A place where drinking is as common as brushing your teeth? A place where they don’t brush their teeth because they can get away with it? A place where these drunken boys pretending to be men with bad breaths are suppose to get trained to become our future leaders? Wait a minute, they ARE our leaders now!
• My daughter started Kindergarten a decade ago and I felt utterly abandoned. But now she’s in High School and I had to ask her yesterday how to calculate a circumference of a circle. She snickered at me as she rattled off the formula. It involved a thingy called “pi” and no, it wasn’t the kind you put in your mouth. Although, she’s could whip one up, topped with home made Creme Fraiche, with her eyes closed.
• My husband, you know, “the accidental recycler”? well, he’s still trying. He’s putting up with all the “stuff” I accumulate to “repurpose” later and he’s having a coronary every time I yell, “Don’t throw that away!!” or “I can use that”. Then, I swear, he does throw some of them away when I’m not looking because I still can’t find a cord of jute that I saved last year. He denies vehemently that he even saw it. Hmmmm…where did it go, if he didn’t throw it away?
• The biggest change in the last decade was retiring from my Chiropractic practice and deciding to stay home to be with my kids. The challenge of work/family balance was weighing heavily on the ‘family’ side and I had to make a decision what to do with the scale. I couldn’t be at two places at once – physically – and mentally? I was not a happy camper. I felt like I wasn’t being the best that I could be in neither places. I felt horrible to my patients when I had to close the office because I had a family matter to attend to. And it became more obvious to me that I needed to make a decision when a patient said, “Doc, you take more vacations (that’s what they called when my office was closed although I was home with a sick child) then work.”  I’m sure he said it with a smile on his face but he wasn’t that far from the truth that I took a lot of time off from work because I had to be a ‘mom’. And vice versa was also true when I’d be working late, being a doctor, and one of the kids would be struggling with homework or a project, needing my help. I needed to make a decision that was best for the patients as well as for my family.  And truthfully, for my sanity and guilt complex. So, I decided to quit while I was ahead, before I lost all  my patients or before my family fired me. My decision to sell the practice was meant to be as a wonderful doctor bought my practice, stock and barrel, within a month. And I haven’t looked back ever since.
• Fast forward…..I became an online shop owner, green blogger, tree hugger, pescatarian, Eco Etsy Team leader, blog/social media consultant , and eco friendly handmade crafter.

You didn’t think I was going to outline every year of my life for the decade, did you? No, I wouldn’t do that to people I love.

I only outlined the most important accomplishments in my last decade because everything else that happened in between were the “effect” of the “cause-effect” equation. But the “cause” part of the equation is this….A simple desire to make things ‘happen’ for me and my family.

Where am I going with this?

It’s about the next decade. It’s about learning from my (our) last decade for the next. Yeah, we had many sad events and horrible disasters in the last decade. But we can do better. We can absolutely make things happen for the better. Better for our lives. Better for humanity. Better for the environment. Better for our families. Better for our loved ones. But we have to make conscious decisions to make things happen.

When I look back the past decade in my own life, my conscious decision to make something happened caused the events following that decision. Call it karma. Call it fate. Call it macaroni.

The fact is, I. made. it. happen.

And that, my friends, is how my next decade will roll. This is how all our decade should roll.

Together, we can do it.

So, repeat after me.

I will make things happen for the planet we live in.

I will refuse unnecessary items that I won’t need.

I will reduce what I have in possession.

I will reuse what I already have.

I will recycle what I throw out.

I will live a simpler life.

I will make it happen.

Have a Happy New Year and a Kick Ass Decade!!