Optimism

In December 1999 the world was going to end. Thinking about it now, the irrationality of Y2K seems somewhat quaint, but at the time people were genuinely afraid of the future. Not me though, I was optimistic.

I had just become disengaged, narrowly avoiding a situation that surly would have ended in divorce long before we would be required to take off our shoes in the airport. My life had been turned upside down and I felt scattered, like a snow globe after being shaken. In the aftermath, I made a conscious choice to put down the Playstation controller, peel myself off the couch and squeeze some fun out of this new decade, assuming that there would be one.

As we now know, the world didn’t end in 2000 and I spent the next few years making good on my promise. I saw in the inside of many a club and glimpsed my share of sunrises after sleepless nights. Then I met WonderWife™ and the true nature of the decade would begin to take shape.

Just as the bits inside a snow globe settle and so did my life. A ring was purchased. A wedding planned. Real estate bought. Children born. And somehow without meaning to, I became a full-fledged grown up during this past decade. Happily.

I am as optimistic about the onset of the next ten years as I was at the commencement of the last. I have endured through the growing pains of new parenthood and I think I am just now hitting my stride as a husband. I am content. Now I get to watch my kids grow up. The future looks rich indeed.