I have made peace with the passing of the 70s. I no longer feel that the 80s is the default present decade during which everything still happens. But let me tell you, Dear Reader, in my mind the 90s still lie mostly in the future. Windows 98 is a very new operating system. Nobody born in the 90s is able yet to walk or eat or use the potty unaided. I was really shocked when I realised that people born in the 80s were playing hockey and participating in porn.
And now there's only one year left of the Noughties. To me it's been a decade of fatherhood, of my second marriage, of PhD-hood, of site directorhood, of geocaching, and lately of blogging. And it's gone by fast.
What of the Teens? I'm gonna be a father of teens. A son of septuagenarians. A home owner. Hopefully a university teacher. And the top of my head will finally go bald. I wonder what the music of the Teens will be like? The movies, the science fiction? I'm looking forward to it all.
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Regarding the the later half of the 21th centuray its been lived in the company of a packed bags, a kind of modern day hunterer (arch.jobs) and gatherer(experience), hopefully during the coming decay I've evolved to a domiciled archaeologist somewhere somehow.
Happy New Year
I have a feeling that during the Teens we will finally get those jet packs we were told in the 70's that we would be using to fly around on.
I too am also surprised to encounter adults who appear to me as I think I still look like, but were somehow born in the 1980's. I feel like I am still in my 20's, though I just celebrated my 41st.
I've got one or two years on you Martin, but the '90s are still my present decade. By far the best decade of my life; old enough to be my own person and know stuff, but still young enough to be able to enjoy life without too much baggage.
I can't believe how fast the Aughts have flown by. But with how crappy they've been--politically speaking--it guess it's good riddance. Still can't get used to the though of people with no living memory of Reagan, though, and that somehow they're supposed to be my peers. Weird.
My students (aged ~15) have no recollection whatsoever of any other U.S. president than George W Bush. "Contact that. Identify with that. Feel that", to quote the late Uncle Bill Burroughs.
Oh, you young whippersnappers! I feel so ancient reading all these comments. My children were infants back in the '80s and they're grown, out of college, and out of the house now! I already had some gray hair back then, too. No, no, the '60s was the real time to come of age, I'll have you know! Mayest Thou Have Many Happie Dayes in Ye Newe Yeare (or Annum, if thou speakest Latin).
Martin, don't worry about it. I felt exactly the same way about the 80s. Now my kids are entering their first year of high school and I'm seeing 40 approach fast. DOes it bother me? Nah. Age is an illusion. 40 doubly so.
Dr. R, every time you mention this idea of yours that you would like to be a university professor, I have this strong urge to dissuade you. Presumptuous of me, I know, since I don't know you and only am connected to you by reading your blog. Nevertheless, here goes:
Are you SUUUUUURRRRe you wanna devote your life to interpersonal and interdepartmental university politics?
Just felt compelled to throw a small wet blanket on this dream...forgive my presumptuousness if it seems to contradict what you (think you) want.
Fondest regards (and a hope for a right living for you) and Happy New Year!
Dveej, of course professional life at a uni department isn't ideal. But it appears to me as the least sub-optimal alternative among the ones available to a person with my kind of education and experience.
What I'd really like to do at work is teach, dig and direct research projects. And belong somewhere. Currently I do not teach, and four days a week I belong only in my dad's spare room.
If a day is a lifetime and a lifetime is 80, it has been about three and a half weeks since Christ (was supposed to have) walked the earth. My own clock stands at eighteen minutes to three, in the afternoon. As we click over into a new year, I like to think about the maths of it all.
Humanity is gone. This world full of hatred these day and it created war every where.
I miss the day where I could paint and freedom was a bliss.
2009? I hope it will be a better year for us.
I enjoy reading your post, Dr. martin.
time is like waves...
High and down...
up and low...
it's true for individual, as for collective.
and both interact.
But it can happen something in the circonstancies makes this fluctuation to increase its amplitude.
it can be important to consider disconnecting the individual amplitude from the collective one.
Controlling the interaction between collective and individual is essential to keep the balance right...
My hovercraft, man... It's... full of, like... eels?
I really have to agree that most of the 'Naughties' were indeed shite! Personally I just feel it is the decade in which Britain more or less imploded on itself, the only personally good year I can think of was 2002 but even that had it's moments, the rest of it was crap, come to think of it the nineties wasn't that good but possibly that because I was a teenager in the 90's (1992 to be precise!) and the teenage years aren't happy ones, leastways mine wern't! No, it was the eighties, my formitive years, that were the best, sure it too had bad moments in it, but it was a much better time to live in as I remember it (And I can remember it even although I was only a small boy!) there was less crap, and more peace somehow. The 00's somehow was a decade where everything went backwards except technology, it was the only thing that evolved and advanced, things like behaviour, morals and standards were in tune with the 00's, yes, the 1900's, the last noughties, immediate post dickensian times! Wake up people, you seem to be regressing, the 21st century is supposed to be full of people evolving, learning from the mistakes of the past and moving on, from where I'm standing, it sure don't seem to be happening!