2009

Time to start getting mentally prepared to write "2009" rather than "2008" for the current year. Usually I do not bother until the new year is actually here, but then it takes me awhile before I stop mistakenly writing the old year. I do not have any (or at least not very much) trouble writing 2009 for dates in the future, but I am usually on auto-pilot when it comes to writing the current date. The good news is that most of my trouble in the past was related to writing checks, but these days I write very few checks. The moment of truth will come when I write my first rent check of the new year within the next few days.

It is hard to believe that we have already blown through most of the first decade of the 21st century. And what do we have to show for it? How many of us can say that we are much better off than ten years ago? For a lot of us, the keywords are "survival", "struggle", "hang in there", or even "bankruptcy" and "rebuild."

It will be interesting to see what "keywords" come to describe the next decade for most of us, as opposed to an elite few who can (or might endeaver to) claim that everything is wonderful.

The good news is that a lot of improvements are occurring incrementally in the background, so that we are not able to see them as major forces in our lives today, but they will incrementally become much more visible in the coming years. A lot of the pain many have experienced in recent years is simply the dying off of the old as the new (very) slowly takes hold.

I did not mean for this post to be about traditional new year's resolutions, so I will not make any claims as to what I will or will not do in the coming year, other than to be sure to refer to it as 2009 rather than 2008.

-- Jack Krupansky