Decade of Decadence

At the beginning of 2009, I declared it to be The Year of Feelin' Fine™. Based on the number of people I personally know who got knocked up this year (at least 17, if your curious -- Jester and I will have a lot of graduation parties to attend in 2028), I know some of you were feelin' fine at some point in 2009, even if only for a few minutes. And there were, uh, those other fun things that happened this year. Well, at least 2009 was better than 2008.

And don't get me started on this godforsaken decade we just ended. Remember 2000? The economy was booming. Spirits were high. The world didn't end. Things really seemed to be going well for the country. Little did we know that Macy Gray's "I Try" was not only a song about lost love, but also, in retrospect, a chilling warning that collectively we should have clung to the goodtime 1990s for as long as we could and should not have taken such prosperity fir granted ("I try to say goodbye, and I choke / Try to walk away, and I stumble . . . My world crumbles when you are not near."). Beginning in late 2000, things started to hit the fan (shit, mainly). For reasons that are still unclear to me (and I've read the opinion many times), the Supreme Court elected George Bush to the presidency and, for reasons that are even more unclear to me, Bush was reelected four years later. Since that fateful day in late 2000, all sorts of bubbles have burst, our economy has gone from a surplus to a massive deficit, we've been hit with terrorist attacks, SARS, Asian carp, K-Fed, and H1N1, we've started two unpopular wars that don't look promising (and have already cost the taxpayers nearly a TRILLION dollars), and The OC came and went. Bottom line: this decade sucked.

It wasn't all bad. We saw IU go to a Final Four, the Bears go to a Super Bowl, and Myles Brand die. The country elected its first minority president. And that 30 Rock is pretty funny. But those things hardly make up for everything else.

Ten years ago, I was a carefree college senior with a new girlfriend and no cell phone, starting a nine-credit-hour second semester with no classes before 2:30, genuinely excited about law school the next fall, and sure that I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

Now, I am an anxious (albeit hilarious) new father with a cell phone that ensures I am connected to my job 24/7, cursing myself for going to law school, and I have no idea what I want to do with my life.

Of course, what's odd is that if I were to tell my 22-year-old self that I was now married to Jester with a beautiful daughter, living in Lincoln Park and working at a law firm while taking sketch writing classes at Second City, I probably would have thought that sounded okay. Then again, when I was 22, I got drunk six nights a week. God, I miss college. (This is not meant to imply that I am unhappy with anything in my life other than my career path.)

The end of a decade provides an unfortunate marker at which you look back at the last ten years of your life and figure out whether they were a complete waste or not. More often than not, you think about things you wish you would have done differently or things you simply wish you would have done at all. You vow that the next ten years will be different; that you will take the bull by the horns (perhaps literally, if that's what you're into). But you won't. There is always an excuse, and there is always the feeling that you will eventually have time to do it -- the summer break that never comes.

This post isn't meant to depress the shit out of you. The point of the post is that I hope you make the most of this decade. Make it your decade, whatever that might mean for you. If you want to go back to school to become an archeologist, do it. If you want to own a bar one day, make it happen. If you've always wanted to start a game show called Wether or Not, find 15 castrated goats and 15 intact goats, and pitch it to J.D. Roth. No matter how old or young you are, it's never too late to take your life back. The worst thing you can do is be idle. When the clock strikes midnight on January 1, 2020, I hope you can look back on this decade with satisfaction, not with regret.

Obviously, set realistic goals. You probably don't want to set a goal to take over the world because you're just setting yourself up for failure. But if you want to take over, say, Paraguay, then buy some tanks, set up base in a nondescript house outside Asuncion, and start building a resistance that may one day become your junta.

With that, here are my New Years resolutions and Decade resolutions, some more serious than others.

Resolutions for 2010
-Lose weight while drinking more
-Teach Daughter how to ski jump
-Use more creative ways to get out of conversations I don't want to be a part of, such as (1) explain that I have a fungus on my finger that comes and goes, then say "I'm going to get another beer. Does anyone want anything?"; (2) "Do you know where the bathroom is? I have to take a dump."; (3) go on and on, in graphic detail, about what I think it would be like to "fuck a vampire"; (4) keep steering the conversation back to cattle rustling (while making excessive use of the pun "steering"); (5) describe everything as "mental masturbation" while simulating masturbating; (6) speak only like Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs, using only his quotes from the movie (you'd actually be surprised at how relevant some of the quotes are)
-Be better about using The Rule of Three
-Visit Munich
-Get a webisode or six filmed and posted on the world wide web
-Write a will – and make it the best will ever

Resolutions for the Decade
-Get at least one book published
-Complete at least zero Ironman triathlons
-Leave the legal profession
-Continue to spawn adorable children, including one named Leon
-Buy a whole bunch of CDs
-Invent a porn-based bio fuel
-Maintain a weight that is at -- although preferably below -- my current weight
-Mold an adorably evil genius who will one day rule Paraguay