A New Decade...

2020. New decade. Leap year, too. For some reason, I did not even have this on my radar until New Year's wishes started coming in with a focus on the new decade. While I like the look and sound of this new date, it does not really make a difference to me that it's a new decade and I don't have any special resolutions for it. It's shocking, though, how quickly the past two decades have rushed by, I can still vividly remember everyone's apprehension on the New Year's Eve of 1999 when we were not sure whether the ominous Y2K would defeat us all and render electronic devices useless. It was almost disappointing when nothing happened. 20 years ago I was still in my first job and in my first long-term relationship. At the time, I probably thought that 20 years onwards, I would still be with both. Well, I left first the relationship and then that job and so much has changed in my life since. Both work-wise and relationship-wise, I think I have grown up and developed a lot in the past decade. In a nutshell, I learned how to draw boundaries and to listen to my gut feeling, leaving situations that don't feel right, much sooner. When I say "learned", it does not mean that I did not have the necessary information before. I was just not confident enough to apply that information and act on it. Now I am and I am very happy about that. I am not sure what I will say in retrospect about the 2020s and what small or large epiphanies I will have had in that decade. I shall report!