Questions and Answers

Your post about starting your blog in 1999 sent me back to my own…

Your post about starting your blog in 1999 sent me back to my own recollection of that year. I was 12 and the world was still this shiny, bright new thing just waiting for me to grow old enough to make my mark on it. I was so young and painfully naïve.

The world is neither bright nor shiny any more (perhaps it never really was), but it was great to remember it like that for a moment. Thank you for the reminder that 1999 existed, and that I was there to see it. Cheers to twenty-three years of blogging for you, and cheers to the fact that I’ve survived for 23 years beyond 1999. 🥂

I don’t know whether this is reassuring or even more depressing, but 1999 was pretty bright and shiny.

We were still in the middle of the internet’s metaphorical boot sequence, so everything seemed possible. We were coming off Bill Clinton, so our biggest worry was workplace sexual harassment rather than global plagues and the abandonment of democracy. Prince was still alive and making music. Gas was under a buck a gallon. The Sega Dreamcast was released. And I was just beginning to get old.

But things will be bright and shiny again someday, kid. The world will heal its wounds. It’s just gonna take some time.