A Decade of Distress

One of the benefits of man-made instruments of time, specifically the yearly calendar, is that we are provided with innumerable opportunities (daily, weekly, monthly) to start anew, to click the refresh button on ourselves, so to speak, and proceed with a more emboldened sense of purpose and direction. One of the easiest ways to forget about a bad day at work, for example, is to find a way home, enjoy a decent meal, veg-out for a couple hours, and get a good night's rest. Our problems won't usually disappear, but these measures can at least help us to mentally file them away for a short while, if for no other reason than it gives us the chance to recharge and (sometimes) reevaluate what has gone awry in our lives. On a much larger scale, the month of January is one of those moments. It is typically used as a kind of springboard to a better, more healthy and organized way of living, a time in our lives when we resolve that "this will be the year" we actually make an effort to purge all of our unruly demons and habits -- and believe it possible.
Now, the skeptic will tell us that we are merely kidding ourselves, that this is just the procrastinator in us viewing the advent of "a new year" as an opportunity to put off addressing what is most pressing in our lives (usually when we instead opt to take a break and, often, go back to the drawing board, as it were). For many of us, this is true. For most of us, it's a thought which more than casually crosses our minds. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we shouldn't take advantage of any opportunity available to realign whatever it is that has gone wobbly in our lives. To be sure, 2009 was a rough year for most of us, and for many it capped-off a turbulent decade in which a whole lot of excess and ignorance and malfeasance came back to bite them in the ass. It was a decade marred by corporate and political greed and corruption, widespread downsizing and bankruptcies (not to mention that the housing market got swallowed by the earth), and -- oh, yes -- one of the worst decades for entertainment in recent memory.
The average price of a beer in restaurants and bars across the nation rose from $2.50 to $12.75, the cost per average pair of tickets to a professional sporting event went from $48 to a first born child, and the country's biggest television networks and movie production companies yearly shoved nothing but recycled crap down our throats (The Departed notwithstanding), while the prices of cable and satellite television skyrocketed, forcing most of us to repeatedly remortgage our homes (which is probably largely to blame for the foreclosure crisis). The price of gas per gallon eclipsed the price of gold per ounce (but eventually dropped to something more commensurate with that of titanium) while the price of cars hit all time lows -- some dealerships even offered two-for-one deals (it actually happened!). Furniture retailers were forced to bundle couches, tables, and rugs with High-Def televisions and gaming consoles (at a low, low price). Heck, the Hot-N-Ready Little Caesers pizza even ushered in an era of $5 fast-food meal wars.
But 2010 is going to be different. It is going to be the year we all rebound and get that much-needed foothold we have been grasping for. It is going to be the year that marks the decline of over-weight and under-medicated Americans, a year that is remembered as one of the first to close the gap in the pay rate between teachers and corporate figureheads, and it will some day come to be viewed as a turning point in our dependence on fossil fuels. It will halt urban sprawl, turning people back toward the cities where businesses are alive and thriving, homelessness and crime has been snuffed out, and competent leaders prevail upon the masses. And it will be a year in which Major League baseball finally exercises it's steroid demons, the NBA sheds its thugs-in-sneakers image, the NFL becomes a picture of parity, and the NHL becomes watchable again. That is, if those imbeciles who have since fallen from grace don't grab us by our ankles and drag us back into the mire (yes, Mark McGuire, I am talking about you).