What's the most bizarre year of your life?

[Ocean Breeze 5,130]

I agree with other posters that this year is the most bizarre, but also for some reason 2016 was pretty bizarre for me as well, not sure why though.

[Lucky Bolt 35,091]

2020 has been the most bizarre year I’ve been through so far and it’s not even over yet. 

[AppleButt 8,676]

2020 has been an odd year for me.  Not just the obvious, but also getting diagnosed with adhd. 
 

Another contender would be 2001.  Mostly cause of 9/11 and after.  

[Starry Moon 51]

Definitely this year, but 2019 is definitely a close second.

[Treeglow Flicker 13,936]

All of them. There is always something that occurs each year that makes it hard to put them into any sort of hierachy. All these years are just a prelude to what is coming my way though in terms of weirdness. Fortunately, it should be the good type of weirdness.

[Envy 6,236]

Ironically the year this topic was created is, in fact, the most bizarre year I've ever had. When I posted in this topic, I was just a few days away from the beginning of that roller coaster, much unknown to me. The first change would crush me.

It requires a lot of backstory going back a couple of years sooner (which is essential to understanding how bizarre this really was), which of course, I'm all too good at giving. I've actually told this story before because I was so wowed by it. This is so incredibly tl;dr, but to understand how weird this all is, you have to understand the details.
 

Spoiler

 

In 2013, I dropped out of the university I was at really beaten down. Not because the staff there were bad, they were great, and them telling me I wasn't fit for it was the truth. I was giving up on ever going back to college for music. I was crushed by this, naturally. However, along the way one great thing had happened that kept me holding on - my ex GF and I had reconnected. I gave up on music knowing at least I could be with her.

By the late summer we were really connecting. By the fall she invited me to join the community orchestra she was a part of. I was discouraged from music, but I thought "Okay" because I wanted to be closer to her, so I joined it. In that same semester I began getting more spending money at my job (the job was miserable at this point, I do have to note), and so I decided I was going to buy an oboe. Context is necessary here, as well. When I was in university the year before, I really wanted to play the oboe, but I told myself I could not do that until I finished college. I needed to focus on being better at the bassoon, which I already played and loved. So... Me buying this oboe was symbolic of me giving up on that for good.

In that community orchestra, I ended up becoming acquainted with the first oboist, she was really nice. She said she would help me, but in 2013 I just didn't really get going with it, and I don't know why. Perhaps the discouragement I had toward music altogether at this point.

Now here's where we get to 2015. The year that was about to upset me deeply. The first thing that happened that year was an unfortunately conclusion of something I mentioned before - the connection between my ex-GF and I. I made some mistakes in late 2013 with her, and I think they messed things up, but we were still friends and still talking. Until finally mid 2015, she began getting really cold to me. No need to go into major details here, but just know that early I threw away my dreams and put my happiness on being with her, and that came to a very long awkward end here. It was very drawn out and very confusing me, to and very painful. Among that, in early June, our first bulldog passed away suddenly with no warning. He came into my life during a very rough period before (late 2007) and he meant the world to me. His passing away made me want to crawl up into a ball in die. So much so, I even told my parents that...

I was now devastated and lost. I never did really much care for my job, all of the pressure that was put on me and the fact that it was overnights, the emptiness of that life just became 100% apparent with the events of mid-2015.

I don't know exactly what caused this to happen, but I somehow got on YouTube and restumbled upon a YouTube video of an oboe performer I had really enjoyed when I first saw it. She was incredible. She was also a multi-instrumentalist and loved all kinds of woodwinds like me. She really lit a fire in me. This was different from academic music for me, though. I saw the amazing things she could do through recording. I realized that my flaw in music performance is playing something perfectly over and over again, so I thought maybe recording was an avenue for me to seek and express my love for music, and she showed me that.

I had bought a lot of instruments during this time and wanted to learn them all, but she inspired me to start on oboe, and I began to try to self-teach myself it on my mornings after I got off from work. However, I began having issues playing a note (B-flat I think?) and I was confused why that note in particular was squeaking. Despite my ex being gone I was still in community orchestra, so I went back to the first oboist from a couple of years before and asked her what could be causing that note to not work. She told me it was the reed, and I was like "Oh wow, of course". But then she recommended me to a relative of hers that made oboe reeds.

I didn't know what to expect. I was just shocked that she had a relative who played oboe, too. We set up a time for me to come get some reeds by email. I came to her house and the first thing she was doing when I walked in the door was playing the English horn, my very favorite instrument and so I was like "OMG". But ANYWAY, we set down to give me new reeds and I learned that she is a professional and that she teaches lessons. I didn't know what to think. I was scared to commit, to do anything too much on my time off from work (which that job had majorly burnt me out, another long story), but I thought it over and decided to come in and take lessons.

The first lesson she interviewed me quite intensely trying to figure out why I was learning the oboe. Inside I knew I wanted to play video game music covers like the YouTube performer, but I couldn't come out and say that to a professional, I'd surely get laughed at. So... She got it out of me, the long lost passion I had for going to college for music. Now you probably can already figure out where this is going. I told her the problems I had and that I was super scared of ever going back to college, that it's something that shouldn't be, but she had none of that.

From there, she found a university for me to go to and set me up for my degree path, and we worked toward it. And spoiler alert: I went back to college for music. On the oboe. The very instrument that I picked up only because I gave up on going to college for music. If you've followed this, you'd also notice that me reconnecting with my ex-GF also brought this all on, too, because if that hadn't happened, I likely wouldn't have been in the community orchestra, and would have never met the first oboist, and thus I would have never ended up with the great teacher who set me up for success.

Does that sound bizarre enough for you? Everything sure did culminate together there, didn't it? Well, there was one more twist. One that really blew my mind.

One day I was waiting for the person before me to finish up their lesson with my teacher when I looked at her wall and saw which university she graduated from. I was like "Hm... that sounds familiar...", but I didn't think much of it... Until it began to wear on my mind that I had seen the degrees listed in the resume of the YouTube performer that inspired me to begin with and I wanted to double check where she was from. And then... Bam. They both went to the same university at the same time. I could not believe my eyes. I nearly fell right out of my chair.

Understand... The university they went to? Far away from where the teacher and I live, and also even further way from where the performer who inspired me lives. The chances of that are just sooo incredibly slim.

One day in the months before that, my teacher asked me who was it that really inspired me, since I always was very vague about that and said I just want to play beautiful. I could not answer that question, because I thought she would not ever understand. But...they knew each other, they went to college together. She got to talk to me about their time there together and it was really neat!

 

And that was is why 2015 is the most bizarre year. It's a super long story, but it always feels like something straight out of fiction. Like really well written fiction where every single thing connects and leads the protagonist in one path, even the things you would think are implausible reading it.

[TotallyNotNyx 15,570]

Heh dunno tbh  all my years have been pretty normal

[TBD 17,259]

2019: I started and finished Jojo's Bizarre Adventure anime 

[dead account 2,715]

I'm afraid I never experienced a bizarre year...

[Le Trotteur Sauvage 13,053]

This year man, wtf is going on ?
And it's not even finished yet !

[TBD 17,259]

4 hours ago, Le Trotteur Sauvage said:

This year man, wtf is going on ?
And it's not even finished yet !

Well I didn’t expect my archenemy to return 2020 so that was pretty bizarre 

[Cirrus. 1,090]

Definitely this year 2020. Back in February I was freaking out. It was like seeing a tidal wave in the distance. I seriously almost bought a gun. Seeing how things progressed I decided it wasn't necessary. It's not nearly as bad as thought it was going to be here in the U.S.

I did make sure my chainsaw was working though you know, just in case.

Don't get me wrong though, it's a shitshow circus currently.

 

It is funny though, how it's an election year... THIS particular election year...

 

 

 

 

 

[Sonic Shimmer 4,134]

This one, without a doubt. Everything started off so normal and then boom.

Working from home, my whole country on lock-down for months, massive field hospitals opening up across the UK, still haven't seen any of my friends since March. It's all so surreal.

[HeavenSunset 1,867]

2011, just because

it was crazy

[Magpie 623]

2038, but I'm not allowed to say why.

[Splashee 28,571]

2020 is quite a bizarre year. A lot of odd things have happened to the world, that was trying to be a modern working world, turned out to fall apart within a few weeks because of someone sneezing in public.

[Tao 8,243]

Well I would 2008 was my odd year when I moved to AZ and was homeless for six months,  and I would rank 2020 as also my top odd year.  

[ExplosionMare 18,097]

Obviously 2020 cause so much has happened that I wouldn’t be surprised if zombies popped up out of the ground

[Ixrec 86]

2020 is certainly the most bizarre for world events, but for my life it's ironically not much of a change at all.

My weirdest year, as well as most exciting and many other superlatives, was definitely when I moved to the UK to live with my then-girlfriend, for all of the obvious reasons.

[Megas 27,850]

2020 can't seem to go about a week without trying to kill everyone

[Clawdeen 15,734]

It was in the year 1994.
 

I was born

[Iforgotmybrain 5,923]

1999 of course. They even made a song about how bizarre the summer of 1999 is:

 

[Dreambiscuit 10,331]

My weirdest year was the year I moved out of my parents' house and lived on my own. It was great in many ways but I had a lot to learn and acclimate to. It was very busy and because of that it seemed like the whole year zipped by in a flash. I call it 'The Lost Year' to this day.

[Cash In 22,656]

2020 is a major contender, but 2023 has been a wild ride. Some good and some bad, but regardless, my expectations and assumptions have been surpassed in every single possible way.

[Fluttershutter 2,583]

This year.

Life is like an eighties video game. You never win, it just gets harder and faster until you die.