The end of the decade

Someone asked me recently what my ambitions were for 2020. “To survive,”  I said. They thought it was  a joke. It wasn’t.

Someone in my business network (!) recently wrote a blog post on their achievements in 2019. It was all about developing their business and networking and lots of “travel” (ie foreign holidays). This is not my world.

Someone on Twitter started asking people about their achievements during the decade. I hadn’t even realised it was the end of a decade. Or that “achievements” were what mattered in life.

Suddenly we’re a fifth of the way through the 21st century. How did that happen? I still haven’t got used to not having a 19 at the beginning of the year. And I still haven’t got used to it being the 21st century. I was nervous of it when it started (I remember a Guardian magazine at the millennium, full of sci-fi scariness) and it’s got increasingly dystopian as it’s progressed. You don’t need me to tell you why.

But I have had some “achievements”. First, freedom: I escaped a toxic workplace (I was going to say “a job I hated”, but I liked the actual job, and was good at it). I’ve now been working for myself for seven years and so far, so good.

Then, self-knowledge: I worked out that I was autistic, and had it confirmed officially.

Then, seniority, thrust on me at the age of 60 when my mother died. I didn’t expect that.

I’ve shed a lot of tears over the past ten years. There have been unexpected struggles, and pain, and loss. But that’s life.

And I’m still here. I’ve survived.

There have been good things, too: new friendships, on and offline, and deepening family relationships. And being able to share my experiences and know that they strike a chord with other people: that’s the joy of having this blog. At the beginning of the decade it was two years old; now, it’s part of my life.

So, if you want to know what I’ve achieved in the 2010s, it’s writing about this stuff:

2010

 2010: Watching Mad Men; remembering Ari Up. Ranting about feminism, generation theory and austerity.

Best blog post: Two tribes

2011

2011: Listening to Sounds of the 20th Century, watching Case Histories and deciding that Twitter was the new rock’n’roll.

Best blog post: Rave on, John Donne: why Amy Winehouse's death diminishes me

2012

2012: Watching Punk Britannia, not watching the Olympics.

Best blog post: My year on Twitter, and a thank-you letter to my invisible friends

2013

2013: Becoming a “senior entrepreneur”, discovering ageism, pondering armchair anger.

Best blog post: Bob Dylan, Steve Earle and why you don’t need to learn poetry

2014

  

2014: Music books, Ramones T-shirts, a punk reunion.

Best blog post: It's taken 50 years, but I've finally discovered the generation gap

2015

2015: Peter Capaldi, Grayson Perry and the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival. Bloody hipsters. And another election.

Best blog post: Margate and me

2016

2016: THAT year. Bowie and Buffin. Brexit. Estrangement and depression.  On the plus side, The People’s History of Pop, Fingers in the Sparkle Jar.

Best blog post: We could be heroes

2017

2017: #MeToo. Books about punk women. Gender stereotypes.

Best blog post: How difficult is it to know how to treat people with respect? #MeToo

2018

2018: A momentous year. Turning 60, my autism diagnosis, death in the family. 

Best blog post: Things I’ve inherited from my mother

2019

2019: Processing loss. A rock’n’roll book club, and my first proper gig in years.

Best blog post: The year I became a grownup