Wende posed a Convivial Question for this week:

We are 20 years into a brave new century.
Remember when 2000 rolled over and we all thought there weren’t gonna be enough digits to keep the internet from crashing? So much history has rolled by, over and around us . . .affecting each of us in a myriad of ways.

What has the impact of these years been on you and your inner life?
How might you be a different person from the one who saw in that new century with all the zeros?

So I went to my shelf of journals and found the volume that includes 2000 and read through that year and into 2001, and so I have data to help me note some ways in which I am

• a different person
  

  grandparent
  retiree
  photographer again
  last of a sibling set
  yogi

• no longer
  

  avid Appalachian Trail hiker (we finished the 11-year odyssey of day hikes in 2003)
  GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Evangelist
  in the role of Librarian and Professor
  engaged with liberal arts colleges
  working on Global Studies/Stewardship
  entangled with digital library initiatives

• recognizably the same
  

  omnivorous quester
  bibliophile
  cyberspace participant
  hypertext author
  foodie
  walker
  æsthete [in a good way…]
  collector
  heathen
  musician
  watcher from the sidelines
  Mocker [Ringo’s answer when asked if he was a Mod or a Rocker]

Yes, folks, for 20 years it’s been ODTAA (One Damned Thing After Another). Some things I discovered in the journal entries: few of the films I watched 20 years ago are memorable (most left no trace); I noted lots of boring meetings; lots of travel; lots of (less boring) task-focused meetings; lots of consultations, many leading to Web documents; a wide variety of courses and workshops taught; schemes to change the World around me hatched; weekends on the Appalachian Trail, lots of driving north and south from Lexington VA to trailheads. It was a very full and satisfying life, and so is its 2021 successor.

See some examples of my Web-based record keeping, ca. 2000: ‘Protest Music’ for Brooks Hickman, Hollows and other place names: a toponymic excursion (examples of GIS work), on Information Fluency, Teaching and Learning Resouce Group, Tracking Scientific Information, Technology and American Frontiers course, A History of the Web at W&L (2000).