As much as I might wish to have some sort of year/decade ten-best list(s) to add to the gaggles of others around the net, something nice and neat just isn’t boiling to the surface.  Most folks that I’ve spoken with or whose posts I’ve read seem to have held 2009 in disdain, many of them for very valid reasons.  Some, I’m happy to report, faired better than others, welcoming family additions, finding love, and/or simply solidifying their place in the universe, if you’ll permit a bit of hyperbole on this occasion.  My own feelings on the year/decade are decidedly mixed.

Ten years ago today, I hunkered down with my then closest friends and spent December 31, 1999 in a rather lavish bed-and-breakfast guest house on a farm in Northern California. We did this partly for fun, but also partly out of fear - that the Y2K concerns were valid and justified. Looking back, it might all seem a bit silly.  Such is the power of hindsight. At the time, there wasn’t so much a sense of concern amongst us as there was a great breath of relief - when midnight struck in the timezones before us and all was right with the world.

Here today I sit and - for a moment - look back on the intervening ten years. Those friends? We don’t speak anymore. I’ve loved and lost on four distinct occasions, though the first was a hold-over from the ’90’s. (Does that really have to count?) I’ve built dozens more friendships, mostly with artists of every medium. I wrote, directed, and produced two feature-length films. I wrote around a half-dozen screenplays. I signed the contract for - and then wrote - the 90+ page Wavelength graphic novel. I discovered meditation and magic. I entered my own personal comic book renaissance, courtesy of one Chris DeJong. I lost my last grandparent - grandmother on my mother’s side. I lost my father just over three years ago.

The aughts were a tough decade. The best and worst years of my life are thus far found therein. And while I don’t rush to burn the calendar of 2009, I can’t say I’m overly sorry to see the decade go. As with the onset of the year 2000, the decade that begins with 2010 fills me with a sense of hope and wonder. Many things will come and go. There will be joy and sadness. It’s up to us to rush in and claim them all. We’re all shepherds.

See you on the other side.