Nobody Knows What 2011 Will Bring

If you're like a lot of people, you've been walking around the last few days saying to yourself, "Ok, so it's 2011; now what?" I'd love to tell you that my next few paragraphs will give you deep and philosophical insight as to what the next twelve months are likely to bring. Sadly, however, I can't.

In fact, I don't have a freaking clue. And neither does anyone else. Anybody telling you otherwise is thoroughly full of it (you'll have to decide what "it" is in this context). It seems like every moment since the ball dropped on Times Square has been filled with talking heads on network and cable television telling you exactly what's going to happen in 2011. Forget it. It's all crap. Yes, that's right, I said crap.

No one has any idea what's in store for us. Politics, the economy, jobs, the Oscars; no matter what the topic, we're all making it up as we go. Ask one group what's going to happen next week and they'll tell you the world is about to end. Ask another, and they say you're going to be rolling in money and your kids will all be Nobel Prize-winning physicists.

Once again - all crap. At the risk of repeating myself believe me when I say that everything these supposed experts spout is utter nonsense. No one can accurately predict the future, neither in the next week or the next decade.

Remember all the Wall Street wizards who spent every waking moment "predicting" the movements of the stock market? If their analysis and instincts were so good, why didn't they see the meltdown coming on? I'm sure most of them wish they had.

Many of those financial gurus are still unemployed, although I hear a few of them took jobs as department store door greeters. As it turned out, they were under qualified and too much of a risk for any other position.

Speaking of employment, how about all of those new jobs that were supposed to magically pop into existence after a wave of Nancy Pelosi's gavel? No matter how many bills the president signed, the jobless rate continued to rise - unless you count the 400,000-plus census workers who were hired last year. Nope, sorry, those folks are on the unemployment line now too.

It all boils down to doubletalk and gambling. Politicians, analysts and pretend journalists like Glenn Beck babble on about a future they can no more foresee than I can. So exactly what will happen in 2011? Who knows? No one knows. We all sit around and speculate. Wall Street analysts take guesses at what new company will dominate the world.

I don't recall any business analysts scrambling to a camera and saying, "Oh this new website is going to come along that will let you see and talk to thousands of 'friends' while turning a college dropout into a pop icon and a billionaire." No one had a clue then either, otherwise I'd have put my stock investments into Facebook instead of BP. How's that for irony?

These examples show that the state of the world's business, like most everything else, is virtually unpredictable, but what about your personal life? Is there any way to avoid simply being at the mercy of fate?

I don't believe in fate. Regardless of what the sadly misdirected might believe, a bunch of rocks in space that happen to form a particular pattern in the night sky do not determine the future. And there is no crystal ball with which to get a preview. Our world is driven by our actions and the reactions of others.

Rather than spending our time listening to the blathering of people who are no more informed or insightful than any of the rest of us, we should each take care to make the best possible choices in our everyday life. So, get out there, live life, stop worrying about things you can't control and focus on what you can.

Gery L. Deer is a freelance journalist and business writer from Jamestown, Ohio . More at www.gerydeer.com