As we near the end of the year and the end of the decade it is a prefect time to write about our feelings about what has happened. It is a great time to review what we did and where we are now. It is also a great time to write about what we want to do in the next year and some goals that we have for the next decade. I am exhausted just thinking about the possibilities.
The New York Times did a very nice article in the Week in Review section in the Sunday paper yesterday.If you are having trouble starting to write, I recommend you look at some of them. There is a photographic review from all over the world but what I really liked was the decade in review called The Decade We Had. It was written in short essays by different people giving their unique point of view to the subjects they are writing about. I am a great believer that reading someone else’s story can help us put our own stories together. That is why I include a brief personal essay in my monthly newsletters to help get you to think about the subject and then write about it.
But you may be the type of person that just needs prompts and that is why I include life story triggers which are writing prompts. Here are some prompts for this past decade.
TRIGGERS:
- Y2K
- Dot Com Bubble Burst
- 9/11
- War in Afghanistan
- War in Iraq
- Katrina
- Economic Tsunami
- Election of the first African American President
- Health Care Debate
- Climate Change Conference
There are some big subjects but I am sure that you have some personal thoughts to share as you write them. When I look back at this year I personally have some mile posts. I started this blog, I had some ezine articles published and the high point of this year was the publishing of my book, Remembering…life story triggers and memory essays. I am already thinking about what the next decade will look like and thinking about to start to write about this too!
I can remember where I was ten years ago when this awful decade came into being. Believe it or not, when I rang in the new year on January 1, 2000, I was not only stone-cold sober – I was at church! My then-girlfriend and I attended a special midnight mass at the local Catholic church to welcome in, not only a new decade, but a new century and a new millennium. I remember feeling filled with optimism. By entering this new era, I felt, we could wipe the slate clean. Maybe this would be a new age of peace, love, brother and sisterhood. EVERYBODY SING!
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius!
Age of Aquarius!
Aquariusuuuuus!
How utterly naive on my part, huh? By year’s end, all of that hope was out the window and into the toilet. In a little less than a year, an ideologically perverted Supreme Court would assist in a stolen election by stopping the vote count in the state of Florida, installing a corrupt little frat boy with the I.Q. of a half-eaten box of Milk Duds as president of the United States. It was all downhill from that moment on. From the birth of “Reality Television” to the worst attack on American soil since the Civil War, it was quite a strange ten years to say the least. Thankfully this awful decade is a mere three days away from being consigned forever to history’s scrap heap. Hallelujah.
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Tom Degan