As I am wont to do on occasion…
I come up with some really weird shit when I'm laying in bed, wide awake at 2 am and can't get back to sleep; shit that sounds amazing at the time but when I actually get around to putting it down for posterity the next day it doesn't seem quite as amazing as I'd thought it would. (This leads me to believe that perhaps I wasn't quite as awake as I thought I was.)
Case in point, this little meme. I don't know if it's really a meme if I'm only one doing it, but the idea came to me last night when my usually fool-proof method of forcing myself back to sleep—counting backward from some arbitrarily high number—utterly failed me.
It works like this: starting from the current year, assign a few words, a phrase, or a picture that best describes that year to you and work backwards as far as you want.
Mine goes like this (updated for this post):
2022: Insurrection. Return to the non-functional "normal."
2021: New beginnings…and saying goodbye to a furry friend.
2020: Lockdown. Fire. My sense of security destroyed. Removal of the orange menace.
2019: Hired full time. "I'm a real boy now!" Benefits!
2018
Thinking outside the box is strongly discouraged at ADOT, but the arrow finally found its mark. Return of the Quirky. Revisiting the ghosts of Solano Drive.
2017
Gub'mint work. Disaster strikes; Touchbar woes.
2016
Underemployed and overextended. Fear of a Cheeto planet.
2015
Back to Phoenix.
2014
Done with Denver. DISH: a feculent vat of toxic hellstew.
2013
Marriage to Ben, Dad's passing.
2012
Exploring Colorado. Devil's Tower. Mt. Rushmore
2011
Denver! (What have we done?)
2010
Ben's Graduation
2009
Mom's passing. Road trip to Wisconsin. Mac!
2008
Ben
2007
Anderson, Yellowstone
2006
Never leave home without your camera.
2005
Full time employment returns!
2004
Abrazo
2003
Cancer
2002
Return to Phoenix. Living with Dad.
2001
9/11 and the surreal beginning to where we currently find ourselves in this country.
2000
Foggy early morning, walking down Market Street on January 1st to go to work to make sure that our interconnected world hadn't blown up at midnight and thinking, "So this is what the year 2000 looks like. We were lied to."
1999
Realizing I'd become the very thing I swore I never would when I originally arrived in San Francisco in 1986: a jaded old queen living up on the hill.
1998
Back to Phoenix. Turning 40 and living with Mom; later, returning to Oz again.
1997
Redeeming my life at 33 rpm
1996
Return to Oz. Employment hell. Yosemite and Mono Lake. Dragon Lady Productions
1995
Leaving San Francisco. Tucson and the Emmett Higgen affair.
1994
Jezebel, the car from Hell.
1993
Hell on Fell.
1992
The Rory Hansen Affair.
1991
Dennis's passing.
1990
14th & Church
1989
The Earth shook.
1988
The Michael Rose Affair
1987
My first apartment in San Francisco. Kenny, Dave, Kevin.
1986
Aliens (the movie). Breaking up with Bernie and moving into my own place. The black behemoth. Yamaha, finally! Ben Walzer. Arrival in Oz. "The City will chew you up and spit you out!"
1985
Bernie, Kekku and the trip to San Francisco.