The '00s in retospect: The Shop-Vac Decade

A couple nights ago I stayed up until 4 a.m. I wasn’t ready to go to bed, so I looked through pictures from college and local newspapers I kept from my senior year of high school. The papers are yellowing, and the page designs look more antiquated than ever. Between editions covering the Battle of the Boot (we won), the City High boys basketball team beating West for the first time in eight years (we beat West all three times that year), and the 2000 Election debacle were copies commemorating the turn of the millennium (the popular understanding that is; the new millennium didn’t mathematically begin until 2001).

The lack of Y2K glitches and each unique, regional celebration dominated the headlines, capturing the euphoria and uncertainty of the moment. New Year’s 2000 was a huge deal, and everyone eagerly anticipated the coming years. Seeing those papers not only brought back memories, but further emphasized how disappointing the last decade has been.

The ‘00s were, as my high school journalism adviser might say, the Shop-Vac Decade: everything either sucked or blew. Much of the music sucked and the movies mostly blew. Unless you were rich, white, fascist, and connected to the oil and military industries, you are not better off than you were 10 years ago. Corporate conglomeration and the exponential increase in synergy has sought to commercialize every aspect of life (it ruined the internet). The major events led to a lot of blood shed and civil disservice. Frankly, any decade without a widely accepted moniker deserves to be forgotten.

But, alas, it was still a decade and deserves at least a little retrospective. So here it is, as quickly as I can type it before heading out and celebrating the final moments of the ‘00s.

2000
Personally, the best of the ‘00s. I became an editor on my high school newspaper and experienced all the things a teenage boy should.

2001
The bipolar year, and the second best of the decade. I had very low points in 2001, but I also had very high ones. I pulled in a few writing awards, graduated from high school, started the misadventure of college, and watched the towers of the World Trade Center collapse and alter the course of just about everything in this country. I became a daily newspaper journalist (minus the weekend).

200_
The year between 2001 and 2003 was so bad I refuse to finish the whole number unless necessary — and it’s not in this instance. It was the worst year of my life. Enough said. (However, one good thing was I rented my first apartment with two friends.)

2003
Better than the year before, but not great. I took my first writing class and made the best decision of my college career: I quit/was kicked off the DI and changed my major to English. I still have the change slip.

Also notable about 2003: I smoked a lot of weed. I was a stoner the spring semester. About four nights a week — always after getting home from the newsroom late at night — I smoked a couple bowls with friends, played Vice City, and watched Kilborn. Ahh — those were the days. I was seriously fat, though. That sucked (or blew).

2004
Nothing special stands out about ’04 except three thing: after 20 years on IC’s southside, and 16 in our cozy little split-foyer, my parents moved; due to financial constraints, I moved into my parents basement; and I took my first nonfiction class, beginning my love affair with the personal essay and first-person journalism. Thank you, Maggie McKnight.

2005
My grandpa died in February, and, somewhat shamefully, I reaped a benefit the next year. I was accepted into the Undergrad Writers’ Workshop for Fiction, an odd thing since I’ve all but given up writing fiction since then. My 23rd birthday was the worst of my life.

2006
An epic year, but also another biopolar one. Once again, I had highs and lows. I started The Quiet Man on January 19. I got published for the first time. I graduated from college. I moved to California.

2007-2009
I’m grouping the last three years together because not much has happened. Stuff has happened, of course, but this tail end of the decade has been filled with lost time — time that just passes without leaving much of an impression, like a gentle breeze. I’ve worked, which is a good thing to be doing these days. A couple best friends got married (a social hazard of everyone’s twenties), but few other noticeable things stand out. In April 2008, I started the Beer of the Weekend series and have drank a lot of good beer. I explored more of California, became a running fool, lost a cat (one very sucky thing), got published once each year, gained a semi-perpetual tan, lost a lot of weight, made a new friend on the West Coast, and become a confident and independent man ready to meet any of life’s challenges. They’re solid years, but not, in the overall picture of my life, as special to me as the first two years of the decade.

The best thing about the ‘00s? They’re over. Here’s hoping the ‘10s — The Teens? — are better.

Happy new year and happy new decade, everyone.