Omega Point

A decade in the life of…

Jan­u­ary 1, 2000
The Y2K bug does not result in air­planes falling from the sky, stock mar­kets crash­ing, or nuclear mis­siles launch­ing on their own. Pun­dits decry the waste­ful spend­ing of bil­lions to ensure noth­ing sig­nif­i­cant hap­pened. IT depart­ments world­wide sput­ter in bewil­der­ment. “But! But!”

Octo­ber, 2000
I come out to a few select friends and fam­ily. My par­ents imme­di­ately fight over which one of them is most accept­ing of it. It later turns out the answer is “neither”.

Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001
The Amer­i­can Cen­tury comes to a close. The sub­se­quent decade sees West­ern civ­i­liza­tion dig its heels in, ineptly seek­ing secu­rity and short-term gains at all costs. I watch CNN for 6 months straight.

Octo­ber 23, 2001
Apple releases the iPod. I fail to see what the big deal is. Investors dis­agree sig­nif­i­cantly on this point.

Decem­ber 20, 2002
“Sec­ond Life? What’s that?” I ask as I click the link. “What a stu­pid name!”

Feb­ru­ary 1, 2003
I move to Van­cou­ver on an ill-advised whim. The next three years are…interesting. To this day, I still wake up think­ing cock­roaches are eat­ing dead skin off my face.

Jan­u­ary 14, 2006
Some dude cuts most of my face off and totally goes to town on my skull with power tools. For­tu­nately, he was a doc­tor. I can breathe through my nose now.

August, 2006
As a part-time con­tract LSL devel­oper, I am paid in US dol­lars. Cur­rency fluc­tu­a­tions force me to give up LSL devel­op­ment in favour of work­ing a min­i­mum wage retail job. I like it a lot better.

Novem­ber 18, 2006
I man­age to get pub­lished for the first time. It is not exactly my finest work.

Decem­ber 20, 2006
I’ve just been told about this new CMS that’s sup­posed to be pretty good. “Dru­pal? More like Poo–pal!” I exclaim to a cir­cle of blank, embar­rassed faces. Nice.

April 21, 2007
A lab test indi­cates I may have can­cer. Sub­se­quent tests indi­cate I have stress. I con­sider rem­e­dy­ing both by hav­ing alcoholism.

July 22, 2008
My Palm Treo dies. I buy an iPhone. Unfor­tu­nately, every­one I know can be divided into two camps: Peo­ple who already have iPhones and peo­ple who don’t care that I am now the coolest per­son ever.

August 15, 2008
I learn my knee pain is likely to be the result of osteoarthri­tis. At such an early age, the impli­ca­tion is that I will not be able to walk in 10 years.

Sep­tem­ber 1, 2008
I am told I do not have osteoarthri­tis after all. As such, I am likely to con­tinue walk­ing for some time. “Your knees look great,” the doc­tor says, peer­ing at the x-ray. “Say, how much exer­cise do you get?”

Jan­u­ary 1-Dec 31, 2009
I endure a great deal of bull­shit. My friends are kept appraised of the situation–to their dismay.

And that’s what I did dur­ing the aughts. How about you?