the end of a decade

I kind of hate end-of-year summations. In fact, when the New York Times ran their "decade in pictures" feature at the end of December, I skipped it. I just don't like the sentimentality of it. I don't like how those things make me feel, or how they are supposed to make me feel.

Seeing them, and hearing people reflecting on the decade on the radio, did make me think back to my own life in the past decade, however.

In the fall of 1999, I was just finishing my first semester of graduate school. It was a new beginning for me. And now, here at the beginning of 2010, I am expecting my first child, another new beginning.

Some things have stayed the same in the past 10 years: I am still in New York. I still work in theater. I don't feel that much older, and I still take myself and my work as seriously as I did as a grad student.But some things are different: I have a home as opposed to a perch. I sleep on a mattress with a bed frame and not a loft bed a few feet from the ceiling. I am married. I have a cat (though Dinah has been with me since the spring of 2000, so she only just missed sharing the beginning of the decade with me). I lost some innocence by living through 9/11 and its aftermath, and I lost more when Christopher was attacked last year.

I am curious what the next decade will bring. Of course, the first milestone is very clearly in front of me: motherhood. I know that having a child will change my life irrevocably, but I also hope that I won't be giving up the other things that are important to me, namely my relationship to Christopher and my interest/need to create and work.

I hope you all have a wonderful new decade, and of course a happy new year!