20 YEARS AGO AND 20 YEARS LATER

[MrZee]

20 years ago in 1999, “Y2K” was looming on the horizon. The whole world was anxiously awaiting what would happen when 2000 would click. Well, it came ... quite uneventfully and we all survived the hoopla.

Back then I was working a well paid stable job making good money and had no financial worries. I was a computer programmer in a cubicle in corporate America. Yet I was miserable and felt trapped. I was so unhappy with such a boring isolated vocation let alone all the corporate BS going on around me. Yet I felt too helpless letting go of such a comfortable income.

After 2000 passed and as many know, the Dot Com bubble burst. And yours truly was one of the masses that was individually taken into a room and handed a pink slip.

Though I felt relieved to be out of there, for a whole year I plunged into a terrible depression not knowing what I wanted to do. Then came the financial problems of not having a steady paycheck.

A year or so after my layoff, I ended up going back to school which was a good lift to the esteem. And since then I’ve worked various jobs just to make ends meet.

20 years later I work as a part time Admin Assist. at a college. I’m happy to say that I love my job and the people I work with. Income-wise I make about 1/3 less then I did 20 years ago. Money is a lot more sparse and I can barely make ends meet. But here’s the wonderful part: I’m happy.

I survived Y2K, two layoffs over the years and have a part time job that I love. My heart feels wealthy.

As we approach the New Year I wish everyone the best and truly hope we all can find that element out there (whatever it is) that brings us fulfillment.

All my best,

-MZ ❤️

[Kat63]

The years since 2000 have been weird for a lot of people. I remember the night of New Years Eve, 1999/2000. I watched celebrations from all over the world that night. The feeling I got was that everybody was awestruck by being alive at this moment in time - the turn not just of the century but the millennium!

It really felt to me, that for about 10 minutes, we might have had world peace.

There is a lot of pain and trouble in the world right now. But you know - there have been terrible times in the world before - and humans have survived and gone on to thrive. We can do this!

[MrZee in reply to Kat63]

Yes we can ❤️