Goodbye to the Noughties...
So much has happened to me in ten years, I can't even begin to fathom the changes that have occurred. This time ten years ago I was freshly moved into Birmingham and looking at changing my job, a week shy of moving to the Paradyme Group, a 3G phone game that was years ahead of the market, and therefore suffered for it. I wasn't writing comics - in fact, I wasn't writing anything at that point. I was happy to be out of radio advertising and creative, a yoyo bad relationship that I would repeatedly re-enact over the following five years - Kix 96 in 2000, BRMB and Wolf FM in 2004 and Saga FM in 2005.
(I'd like to point out here as a side point that I was asked in my interview for Saga 'what would you do to gain Saga FM 30% more of the market' and I replied 'change the name'. They never listened to me, sales dropped, but I'm happy to see, several years later that Saga - ahem, SMOOTH FM's ratings have risen...)
Over the noughties I have been to every continent in the world bar one - it's strange to realise that 2000 was the first year I ever travelled outside the country, and yet ten years later I've gone through three passports and have been to places including (in no order) Paris, Venice, Sydney, Cairns, Surfer's Paradise, The Great Wall of China, Lima, Macha Pichu, Chichunitza in Mexico, Wadi Rum Desert in Jordan, the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, Beijing, Shanghai, Budapest, Prague, Moscow, New York, Chicago, Helsinki. LA, Orlando, Amman, San Diego, Chengdu, Xian, Cairo, Luxor, Sharm-El Sheikh, Singapore, Rome, Gothenburg, Levi and Santa's Arctic Grotto in Lapland, Kolkata, Pune, Bangalore, Saltzburg, Tijuana, Cuzco... the list just goes on and on. Countries I've forgotten following others.
I've moved lives, too. In 2000 I was living with Tanya, then my girlfriend, now a good mate. I moved in 2004 to Craig's house and stayed there until 2009 when I moved to London to live with Tracy. I didn't know Tracy ten years ago - and right now I can't believe that I never 'didn't know' her, she's such a massive part of my life.
I lost people in the noughties, too. My friend Tal Stoneheart, two friends in 9/11, my Uncle David, my Aunt Enid and my Aunt Maureen, and more importantly my mother all passed away in this decade.
In this decade I also married two people. That is, I performed the services. :-)
I moved from radio to 3G games to newspapers to radio again to marketing companies to cleaning companies, selling the same lies and creating the same campaigns time and time again. In 2003 I had the opportunity to move into comics and I grabbed it with both hands. In the latter part of the noughties, 2008 to be exact, five years after I started, I was even able to go full time self employed on the writing side. Each year has grown since then.
I've loved and lost and loved and lost again, I've waited on the sidelines for people to make a decision and I've sat in the dark when it was (to me) the wrong one. But good things come to those that wait, and I met Tracy this decade. And I start the next decade, the what, the teens? I start them by marrying her.
There's so much I haven't typed here, so many things that have happened to me that I really can't do it justice by writing a blog. In the same way that the 30 year old me had no contact with the life of the 20 year old me, the 40 year old me has similar. I've barely roleplayed in the last two years, something that I started the decade doing often, at least once a month. I've stopped reading as much as I used to - mainly because I don't seem to have the time.
But was it a good decade? What would I say if I went back to see myself? Would I warn myself off it?
Parts, yeah. Eight years in Birmingham might seem like a waste, though, but I made good friends there. The early years working for radio could have been better spent writing for comics, if I knew then what I know now. There were a couple of relationships I would now totally avoid like the plague and I'd certainly have gone looking for Tracy far earlier than I did.
So what of the next ten years? Well, I'm getting married, I'd like to move out of comics, or at least add additional areas like television and novels, two things that I'm building on right now. I'd like to live near London, I'd like a pet and a house with a garden and who knows, even a son or daughter.
But the future is the future. I'm talking about the past.
And it's been a good one, overall, so far.