Do you tie a specific set of years to music from a decade?  What I mean is if you are describing say 90’s music do you really mean music from 90-94 and then a smattering of songs from the last 6 years. I for sure do. Well at least for the 90’s. It was the last decade I tied music to. I certainly don’t think of 2000’s or 2010’s music. Weird, right?  Or more likely, you never considered it before. 

60’s music always seemed to steer to the end of that decade and 70’s music. The middle, but to be fair. I don’t consider 70’s music much as it felt like an overcorrection to the 60’s. Of course the 80’s were perfect start to finish. The aforementioned 90’s. Meh. 

I could make a list of each decades favorites and maybe I will one day. This morning I’m fascinated yet again with the nostalgia of it all and how after my 20’s it kind of disappeared. Maybe I did grow up after all. 

Having been born in June of 1971 my life conveniently lines up into almost decades. Each passing 10 year mark in lockstep with big milestones. Y2K, 2020, 1999 and all the rest. Arbitrary yet still fawned over by a world searching for meaning in the passage of time. 

Internally I am emphasizing “arbitrary”, because it really is. I get so bent out of shape by people blaming the year they are in as the “worst ever”, and “oh what now 2020?”.  I don’t know why it bothers me so. Perhaps it’s an indication of mindset. I guess we all want to assign blame and responsibility and a year is a good enough culprit. 

2016 was the first time I remember hearing or blaming a worst year ever. Funny as I sat here the only thing I could recall about that year being so bad in everyone’s eyes was the Trump election and depending on your stance it was either awesome or completely terrible. That happened in November, so I went and googled what happened the rest of the year to make it so bad. A gorilla named Harambe died, racial unrest, global warming, Middle East unrest (NO WAY!), opioid epidemics and so on. AKA the same shit that always seems to be going on. We just decided the year was to blame. 

It’s happening right now. 2020 has become a noun, verb,adjective and adverb and I get it. It’s been a tumultuous 284 days. But if we all live on average, 75 years, it accounts for 1% of our lives. ONE.  PER. CENT. 

It’s Sunday, October 10th. There are 82 days left in 2020. What would have to happen for you to get to the end of the year and say. “Well look at that, it wasn’t so bad after all.” Or even (gasps) “2020 was pretty damn good.”???

It would take two things. 

A decision to scrap what you’ve decided about it. 

A real look back on the things that have happened. Tally up the goods and bads that actually impacted you and I mean you. If there were more bads then seek out more good. They are out there, but sometimes they we have to make an effort to find them instead of sitting on the couch saying “what a 2020 thing to happen, we are all effed.”

Whichever you decide. It’ll be your reality. 

Also, screw 2000’s music. It can’t touch the 80’s. 

#hugsandhi5s