In 1989, as an eight-year old Troy emerged from a movie theater in Vail, Colorado after having seen Back to the Future: Part II with his parents, visions of 2015 swam through his head as the idyllic future. Hoverboards, flying cars, a Pizza Hut dehydrator that would make him pizza in mere seconds. That young version of me was more pre-occupied with the gadgets and futurist technology that would be available to me all those years later than where I would end up.
But now, reflecting on the movie as I sit here a little over 24 hours into the real 2015, I find myself identifying more with Marty McFly at the end of the first film. In the final moments of the first Back to the Future film, Marty has saved the day and changed his present: his father is now an accomplished author, his brand new truck is all waxed up and ready to go, and life seems great. Until Doc Brown crashes in on the party and tells him its imperative that Marty and Jennifer accompany him to 2015. "It's your kids, something has to be done about your kids," he tells the couple. He's not concerned about all the cool stuff that he can have in 2015, he's concerned about what he would become.
We have a lot of incredibly cool gadgets in 2015: iPhones, streaming internet movies, a seventh Star Wars movie (instead of a 19th Jaws), and I can at least order my pizza from several of the gadgets even if it isn't quite as sexy as rehydrating one from a Black & Decker oven. But there's no possible way that eight-year old me could have predicted where I would be twenty-six years later. Married, writing, and most definitely not hoverboarding for fun as I originally romantically visualized.
My life is a lot different than the eight-year old me thought it would be like thanks to Back to the Future: Part II, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I have a feeling 2015 is going to be a good year, and that it's going to bring about a lot of good changes too.
Funny enough, 2015 also marks the 10th anniversary of Still Playing with Toys. So expect some stuff on the horizon concerning that as well. Hard to believe that it was ten years ago that I was sitting in my then girlfriend's dorm room struck with the idea for the "company." Thanks for being here for those ten years, and hope you'll join me for what's to come this year and in the future.