As 2020 approached, it didn’t register that we were entering a new decade. I knew ostensibly that 20 follows 19 but I just didn’t make the connection that we would be out of the teens and into the twenties.

Maybe I didn’t want to think about it because this past decade wasn’t as eventful as I’d like it to have been. I entered it a single web developer living in Brooklyn doing comedy at night and I left it a single web developer living in Brooklyn doing comedy at night.

My disappointment with the passage of time comes down to one thing that I am ashamed to admit: I always thought that I would be special, that I’d have a cool job and a great life. I don’t know where it came from. If you said white male privilege you wouldn’t be wrong but it’s beyond that. When I was a kid, I got good grades and followed the rules and did everything right. I wasn’t popular but I could endure social awkwardness for the life that lay ahead. My dream career and great relationship would be like dork reparations.

In retrospect, I realize I had no plan for those things nor the desire to work tirelessly to get them. I just, like, really hoped they’d happen. I can’t be all that disappointed that they didn’t.

It’s not odd that the teens was my least eventful decade. It was my thirties and early forties. Significant changes start to plateau around that time, especially for a single, childless man.

The 70’s and 80’s were full of growth and change. I assume so anyway. I don’t remember much pre-Karate Kid. I know that I moved from Maine to Rochester and I learned to walk, talk, poop solo, read. The tail end of the 80’s had some bike riding, baseball cards, and crushes.

The 90’s contained all of my significant formal education and the imprinting of all my pop culture tastes. In the aughts I worked and did comedy. I lost my parents. I became an adult and a New Yorker.

But this last decade – the teens – what happened there? I’ll be honest, I think I fucked up.

I came upon this quote by Alain de Botton, “Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.”

To get some sense of how I may have changed, I didn’t go to journals or friends, I went to Facebook. I checked my posts from 2010. There were a lot of movie quotes, talk of the Mets and Tottenham Hotspur, and promotion for improv shows. That’s basically everything I talk about now minus the occasional political argument.

In the aughts, I started doing comedy. In the teens that comedy remained stagnant.

I see people that I did comedy with on TV all the time. It’s gone beyond the really recognizable people like Aziz Ansari, Pete Holmes, Melissa Rauch, and Zach Woods. Eugene Cordero was in an episode of The Mandalorian. Keung Sim had a role on You’re Dead To Me. The finale of The Good Place featured two actresses – Fran Gillespie and D’Arcy Carden – who were in level 3 with me at the UCB (a class that included Paul Downs from Broad City, Marcy Jarreau who writes for Brooklyn Nine-nine, Broadway actor Tom Stephens and The Truth podcast creator Jonathan Mitchell).

I’m still a web developer. I still have the same skill set. I haven’t moved up to management or become an expert in my field. I’ve kept working steadily along, happy for the paycheck.

The main thing that I didn’t do in the last decade was get married and have children like most of my peers did. I had a few relationships. Most of those women are strangers now, one of them is a good friend. 

The longest one lasted almost four years. I thought it was something. I think I took it as a sign that things were falling into place. I thought I’d try the other things I thought I wanted: to be an independent worker, an actor,  a freelancer.

When she dumped me, it coincided with the realization that I had neither the talent or temperament to do any of those things. Ultimately the demise of that relationship turned out to be a reset button on my life. She had a front row seat for me failing and it took me a while to realize what shitty seats those were. I feel embarrassed by how I was at the end of that relationship, which I guess means that I’m learning. So, uh, yay?

I could look to the collapse of that relationship as the reason I didn’t get married but that would be a weak excuse. She and I had no plans to marry. I’ve seen marriages. I’ve seen child rearing. And even from a safe remove it looks fuckin’ hard. Marriages likewise. Even when all of my friends started getting married, I could see that marriage was the starting line, not the finish. The marriages that I’ve seen started with a fun attraction phase and then they grew into love and marriage and children. But I don’t think that’s what kept them together. Ultimately, my friends and their partners built lives together.

Whether I like it or not, I built a life by and for myself.

I have a home and a career and a network. Over the last decade I paid taxes. I took care of my health. I did it on my own. I don’t think I chose this life. It’s more like it emerged, as if a fully formed independent life slowly came into focus.

This was the first full decade without my parents. I was an orphan on January 1, 2010 as I was on January 1, 2020. That fact has been woven into the fabric of my life.

While it didn’t pan out as a career path, I continued doing improv. I started coaching improv. Then I stopped coaching improv but still it was cool.

I stopped doing stand-up and started storytelling. I did a couple of one-man shows.

I quit smoking. Twice.

I lost a bunch of hair. Made peace with losing a bunch of hair. That’s the beauty of gradually balding, you can adjust.

I visited Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, New Orleans, Vermont, Seattle, Portland (Oregon and Maine), Florida, Atlanta, DC, London, Paris, Rome, Venice, Milan, Siena, and Florence.

In 2012, on a whim, I decided to do a program titled Couch to 5k, where you build up from not running at all to running a 5k. I remember the first time the plan called for running two miles without stopping. It seemed really hard. But I ran a 5k in May of 2012. And again the next year. and the next. In 2016, I decided to run a half marathon but I pulled my calf and missed it, did a 5k instead. I finally completed two half marathons in 2018, one in May, one in October. And then a full marathon in 2019.

I’m proud of those things.

I’m also getting old enough to stop grading on a relative scale and grade on an absolute one. So, let’s take another look at the past decade.

I was healthy for ten years. I have all of my limbs, my fingers, toes, eyes, ears, and teeth (I mean, they’re augmented by a lot of porcelain, but I’ve still got good root structure and that ain’t nothin’).

I had a roof over my head for ten years. I had three meals a day, clothes, and jackets in winter. I never feared for my safety walking down the street from enemies foreign or domestic. I had a lot of friendships that lasted another ten years. I was employed and when I wasn’t, it was my own choice and I kept my head above water.

For ten years.

That’s cool.

I’m often insulated by my own privilege and socioeconomic class that’s defined my life and expectations.

At the end of the last decade, my sister passed away. In the last decade I also lost my old friend Loren White and my classmate Anna Price. Life is not a given.

I used to lament that growing older just seemed to be accepting your limitations and lowering your expectations. The thing about lowering your expectations is that you actually start to meet them.

As I said, I started storytelling in the last decade. I had a teacher who taught me structure and that the story always ends with a return. The protagonist goes through an ordeal and comes back to their old life, changed.

I remember the low point of the last decade. I got dumped. I had no job. My attempts at freelancing and auditioning were fruitless. My improv team broke up. I had a weird health scare. I had no idea what I was doing. I had been letting myself drift.

But I got a freelance job that turned permanent. I got healthy. I kept doing improv and getting on stage and, little by little, things fell back into place.

I came into the last decade a single web developer who does comedy at night. I wanted some special life and tried to go out and get it. I fell flat on my face. Then I left the last decade a single web developer who does comedy at night.

I woke up today, went to work, cooked myself a meal, checked in with some friends, got groceries, went for a run. Tonight I’ll go to sleep in my own bed and wake up and do some pretty similar things tomorrow.

I returned. I returned to life as it is and not how I think it should be.