I posted this on my Facebook page, and although I know some of you who are my friends on there have already seen it, I wanted to share my New 10s recap as well.
On the downside, I wasn't able to heal my relationship with my mother before she passed away in 2010, leaving me with a scarred psyche and recurring nightmares about my relationship with her. In addition, my efforts later in the decade to earn more money for fun things by working extra shifts at my retail job ended up almost losing me my Social Security Disabilty benefits, forcing me permanently down to 16 hours a week and putting me in a bad spot it'll take me a long time to get past. Also, RetroJunk, where I had my first big successes as a writer, underwent an overhaul in the 2012-2013 time period that saw me lose a lot of my readers and the site lose a lot of users, leading me to search for a new place to do my writing.
On the upside, in this decade, I finally achieved maturity and peace of mine thanks to a therapist who understands Asperger's Syndrome and a psychiatrist who may not have had a good bedside manner, but DID put me, at long last, on the right medications to deal with my health issues. I started an autograph collection that has continued to grow to this day. I was lucky enough to attend Chiller Theatre every year from 2014 to 2019 and make many great friends that way. I started doing phone interviews in 2012, and that has greatly expanded my horizons as a writer.
Speaking of which, most importantly, my greatest successes as a writer came in The New 10s. After I left RetroJunk in 2013, I was wondering where I would be able to write next. My friend Eileen invited me to the website Pop Geeks (or Bilateral Warp, as it was called in 2013) as a message board user, but when I informed her I was looking for a new writing base, I put together an audition piece for her. The audition piece was a success, and I started writing for Pop Geeks in January of 2014. Almost 6 years and nearly 140 articles later, I've established a niche for myself as a pop-culture historian with my interviews, and things just keep getting better.
All in all, The New 10s saw some major downs, but thankfully, there were far more ups, and I have faith that The New 20s will be even better.