Having recently moved, I spent this Christmas and New Year’s Eve by myself – it was a quiet evening to relax. Being an only child resulted in me being somewhat of a loner, and so being alone rarely bothers me. Christmas was very peaceful and enjoyable. New Years Eve I surprisingly found somewhat tougher. But let’s look back on 2008.<\/p>\n
2008 was an huge year. It saw one of the biggest US economic downturns in the country’s history effecting ecomonies worldwide. It saw the US government do something (relatively) unprecidented when it bailed out two of the largest financial companies in the world. We saw the first black president elected – and for the first time in a very long time, the world rejoicing<\/a> about something the US had done. Personally I had many friends and family lose jobs and go through various hardships.<\/p>\n By the same token, we have new technology continuing to come out and enhance our lives. Major consumer corporations like Google, Apple, Intel, and Microsoft continue to bring out new products which are continuing to push enough units (or ad revenue) to keep these companies in business. The economy is said to have reached it’s low point and be on its way back up – even though that’s projected to take at least 2 years.<\/p>\n It’s been a difficult year for many people, but as I was reminded by both Robert Love’s eloquent blog post<\/a> and my friend Chris, even in a harsh year like 2008 most of us are still significantly luckier than much of the world. We could be in Gaza. We could be in Somalia. We could be in Israel or Iran. I suggest you take a moment and check out The Globe’s photo tour of Israel and Hamas<\/a>. It certainly gave me a lot of perspective.<\/p>\n I count my blessings for not only being luckier than them, but luckier than most. 2008 treated me well, and I’m incredibly thankful and have no complaints – even about my New Year’s Eve plans. I wish all of you the best in 2009. May it bring you peace, happiness, success, and all the things you are searching for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Having recently moved, I spent this Christmas and New Year’s Eve by myself – it was a quiet evening to relax. Being an only child resulted in me being somewhat of a loner, and so being alone rarely bothers me. Christmas was very peaceful and enjoyable. New Years Eve I surprisingly found somewhat tougher. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166,"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phildev.net\/phil\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}