Decade Meme

I've probably done a version of this before, but I've seen several people doing it this last week -- the link I can lay my hand on right now is Nick Mamatas, who calls it "UK Census Game" for no reason I'm privy to -- and my life is very hectic right now, so content I don't have to think about and run-on sentences are A-OK for me.

2011: Pompton Lakes, NJ. Head above water (literally), married with two tween kids (now 10 and turning-13-on-Thursday). Working in marketing of serious professional stuff for a big non-fiction publisher, with lots of meetings and lots of transformational digital things going on. Started a second blog because I wasn't busy enough. Baseball season for younger son about to begin.

2001: Pompton Lakes, NJ. Same house, same kids (one of whom had just been born two days after Christmas 2000), same wife. Working as an editor for the SFBC and a club for hunting and fishing, in our Times Square offices. Had real office with a metal door and my own window, which I am not at all bitter about losing. Not blogging yet but writing lots of copy for the clubs, plus poking my head into rec.arts.sf.written nearly daily.

1991: Wayne, NJ. Living in my mother's house (but paying rent!) one year out of college. Searching for a job after my first one disappeared when the company closed up the NYC office, though I'm just one month out from my first day at the book clubs, so I might have had my first interview right around now. Unmarried, no kids, no car, no serious possessions. In retrospect, the moment when I might have run off and done something crazy/interesting. But I was so not that kind of person. Had just started a reading journal so I would feel like I'm accomplishing something every day.

1981: Wayne, NJ. Same house. Attending George Washington Junior High School, and probably still getting bullied off-and-on. (That stopped in the fall, when I got into three fights within a month.) Tall, gawky, bad hair, ugly glasses -- but it was 1981, and we were all in junior high, so we all pretty much looked bad.

1971: Rochester, NY. Mastering the details of walking and talking, and probably watching a lot of Sesame Street.

1961: Nowhere. My parents wouldn't meet for another several years.