So today is the last day of the decade. Today is December 31, 2009.

I was looking at my old diaries this morning. I’ve kept a diary on and off since I was 13, and I wrote diary entries at the end of the last two decades:

And now I’m ending this decade with a blog entry.

It’s weird to think that this is the tenth anniversary of the turn of the millennium. We’re already ten years into the new century. An entire decade of kids has grown up without that lifelong anticipation of the millennium that we all felt when we were growing up. They have always lived in the 21st century. It’s nothing special to them. We are really living in the future now.

Think back ten years ago today. December 31, 1999. Wasn’t that the creepiest date ever? Growing up, December 31, 1999 was always the date in science fiction movies when the world ended, when scary prophecies came true. On December 31, 1999, the sky was supposed to turn red and the oceans were supposed to boil and the giant bird-monsters from hell were supposed to come and take us away.

What happened instead? It was just another day. The sun rose like it always did, and the laws of physics did not crumble. I woke up in the apartment where I was living in Princeton, New Jersey, and watched TV much of the morning and afternoon. The news was reporting Boris Yeltsin’s surprise resignation, putting Vladimir Putin in charge of Russia. Peter Jennings, R.I.P., was hosting the millennium festivities on ABC in a 23-hour marathon. I didn’t have many friends at the time — I had just moved back to the NY/NJ area from Virginia a few months before — so in the evening I drove to my parents’ house, where my parents threw a New Year’s Eve dinner party. At midnight we all stood around the TV and watched the ecstatic mayhem in Times Square. I couldn’t believe it: It’s the year 2000. We are living in the year 2000.

Ten years have gone by since that night. And they have flown by way too quickly for me.

I was too young to appreciate the end of the 1970s. As for the 1980s, they were the decade I grew up — from kindergarten through high school. The 1990s: they were high school, college, law school, the beginnings of adult life — but mostly the University of Virginia.

What have the 2000s been?

For me the 2000s have been about New York, and about Matt. Matt and I met in late 2003 and have been together ever since. In 2000 I moved to Jersey City and began developing my Manhattan social life, and in the middle of the decade I finally moved here. In the future, when I think about a typical moment of my life back in the aughts, I will probably picture me and Matt, perhaps on a night in 2005, eating dinner together in front of the TV, back in our old apartment on West 8th Street. Perhaps we’re watching “Lost.” An image of domestic coziness.

In the 2000s I’ve had my blog. (So have a lot of us.)

In the 2000s I’ve worked for a family friend, then had a one-year law clerkship, then worked as a lawyer for the state of New Jersey for several years, then gone to work in my current job.

I have spent the 2000s paying off my student loan. My first payment was due in December 1999, and I am getting close to paying it off completely.

My last three living grandparents died in the last decade. (My dad’s parents both lived into their 90s, which gives me hope for my genes.) My family has also seen a new generation born: I became an uncle last month, and my niece could live to see the turn of the next century.

A decade ago I wrote the following:

A new decade lies ahead — the 00’s — and what will my life be like on December 31, 2009? What will I go through, learn, achieve, who will I meet, where will I go by the time I’m 36? I’ll see. I hope it doesn’t come too soon. It’s 3653 days away.

I haven’t achieved as much as I thought. In fact, I don’t feel like I’ve achieved much of anything at all. I haven’t written any books, I don’t seem to be moving along any sort of trajectory or career path. I do read a lot, but I don’t do anything with what I read. In many ways I feel like I’ve wasted the last ten years, and that scares me, because what if another decade goes by and I’m saying the same thing?

On the other hand, I’m in a loving relationship — it’s not perfect, but we have a lot of love — and I’m financially more secure than I was ten years ago. I’m not rich and we don’t own property, but ten years ago I had that daunting student loan ahead of me and I was working two jobs despite having finished law school.

So on balance I’m better off than I was.

And so another decade is over, its memories calcified as The Past. Events fixed, unchangeable, only to be thought about, talked about, read about, perhaps one day virtually experienced on a holodeck. The 2000s are History.

I wonder what the world will be like on December 31, 2019?

I guess we’ll find out in ten years.

And so we keep going.