Neal Tucker

Review and Resolution, 10 Years On

// December 31st, 2009 // No Comments » // 2009, a year ago today, alabama, awesomeness, blog, the new year, us, world

Time for another year-end wrap-up along with my list of resolutions for the coming year.  If you don’t read this, I don’t blame you; there are a million of these written every few seconds, I’m sure.  But of course, this one is a decade-end wrap-up, which is obviously less frequent than the simple year-end ones.  Ignore this mundane first paragraph.

This decade was (and will remain) the Formative Decade for a generation (mine).  Some grew up in the 60’s, and they experimented with drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.  Others grew up in the 80’s and experimented with roller skates and hair metal.  We grew up in the 00’s and experimented with iPhones and Radiohead.  The coming 10’s will be the Formative Decade for another generation, but it remains to be seen what they will experiment with.

The 20th century was a transformative century for technology, and the first 10 years of the 21st century have continued the progress.  We don’t have flying cars, but we have cell phones that put the entire world at our (quite literal) fingertips.  2009 has been another year in the mass-market technological transformation of the global society.  We saw the unprecedented exploration of the social web, the explosion of Twitter, and the promise of a new mobile web (and an Apple Tablet, which I predicted a long time ago…if I do say so myself…and I do…say so myself…*ahem*).

Ten years ago I was at a friend’s house here in Birmingham, Alabama, awaiting the destruction of Y2K.  Of course, it never came.  The new millennium came, but Y2K didn’t.  Here we are ten years later, and Y2K10 is upon us (I don’t expect that to catch on, and not only because no one will read this far into this blog post – if you’re still with me, “You’re a trooper,” as my Mom says.)

What will the new year bring?  I don’t know for sure, of course, but I have my thoughts, my predictions, my resolutions.  What follows are those thoughts, predictions, and resolutions.

I think (like innumerable others) that the iTablet will revolutionize the tech-market, and TV will move to the web like Bill Gates predicted years ago, although not in the way he would have preferred.  I fear that the US will be involved in Iran (And Yemen? Or Israel? What about North Korea?) like we are in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the US/UN will further seek destruction of  nuclear weapons on a global level.  I hope that we lift ourselves out of the global recession (depression?) in 2010, though that remains to be seen.

As for my New Year’s Resolutions, they are as follows, more or less….

1. Finish the C.S. Lewis corpus.  I’ve wanted to read all of a particular author for some time, and I’ve read more of his than anyone else.  David Mamet is a very close second.  Maybe I’ll make him my 2011 goal, unless the world ends a few years early.

2. I have a few exercise/diet goals that I won’t detail here, but that’s a staple of any resolutions list, so I know you aren’t surprised or too terribly upset that it’s on my list and not detailed, respectively.

3. A goal for 2009 was to journal every day for a few weeks.  I will make that a goal for 2010, as well, because it was a very rewarding experience, and I would like to journal more often.

4. And here is my most ambitious goal for 2010, I think.  I saw someone do this on Facebook, and I think it’s a great idea.  I would like to take a picture every day for a whole year.  I’ll post them on Flickr in a specific gallery, and at the end of the year, I will hopefully make a book or poster or something to celebrate the whole endeavor and look back on the year in pictorial fashion.

Those are my big ones.  I might come up with a few more, but those are the ones that I wanted to share.  If you read any of this, thanks for doing so.  I don’t know what to write in expectation of the next decade, though it will be the formative years for most of my 20’s.  I’m excited about it, though, and I’m looking forward to a fantastic New Year and another influential decade.

I hope your New Year is bright and full of opportunity.  Goodbye 2009 and the 00’s!  Happy New Year!  2010!

Auld Land Syne,*

Neal

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*Means “long long ago” or “days gone by” according to Wikipedia.

P.S. If you’re looking for a good to-do app for all your resolutions, check out http://teuxdeux.com/

Today in Mystory (how incredibly clever)

// February 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // a year ago today, capstone, grad school, new york, nostalgia, samford, school, senior project, u/rta

I do this thing several times throughout the year, where I sit and just think of what I was doing, where I was, who I was with, a year ago today, on whatever day that it is.

Well: I’ve been doing that a lot recently, because I kept meaning to write it down, and I just never did.  So, here it is, without further adieu.