2020 In Review

There are four days left in 2020. Talk to anyone who lived through this year (and there are far, far too many who didn’t) and they’ll tell you, “Sayonara … goodbye and good riddance.”

But I feel like I should say something about this year before it’s gone. There’s a lot about 2020 that I simply want to forget. There’s also a lot about 2020 that none of us should ever forget, as much as we’d like to.

2020 is like the thumb tack that dirty rotten kid put on your chair and you didn’t see it until you sat down. As much as you want to forget the whole experience and just move on with your life, you can’t. Can’t forget the pain of that tack in your butt. Also can’t forget the look on that rotten kid’s face when he saw you howling with pain. You want to move on. You want to forgive and forget. But you know you won’t. And you’ll never stop wishing for bad things to happen to that rotten little kid. Possibly even to his parents.

So here’s a list of things I want to get off my chest about 2020 and the pain in my butt that it was and will likely continue to be into the foreseeable future, presented in no particular order.

Writing

I was off to a good start in 2020. Even attended a fantastic workshop called SAGA down in Charlotte, NC back in early March. It was awesome. It was exactly what I needed to recharge my creative batteries and really get back into my writing after taking almost a year off. Everyone at the conference had heard of this thing called Covid, which had reached the States by then. We took the necessary early precautions—class instructors passed around bottles of hand sanitizer, you avoided anyone who was coughing or sneezing or sweating profusely, no one shook hands, people gave each other some extra space. But we didn’t really understand the virus back then. We thought it was just a bad cold or flu. Some people wore masks. Most didn’t. Covid really took off a few weeks after I got back home. People were quarantining. Businesses were closing. All non-essential workers were staying home. There was talk of mass lay-offs and people losing their jobs and even people being exposed to the virus and dying. DYING! Spread some George Floyd racial riots on top of Covid, then sprinkle on a dusting of looting and mandatory curfews and threats of martial law and calling in the military to suppress people’s rights to protest and a dollop of police brutality all over social media and …

Needless to say there was no writing happening in 2020. At least not anything worth mentioning. Some people got lots of writing done. Chuck Wendig for one. I followed his blogs carefully this year (terribleminds.com). Read them all as soon as they came out. Chuck did a terrific job putting into words what everyone was thinking and feeling. Not me. I couldn’t do it. I let Chuck speak for me and everyone else because I simply couldn’t do it. Not this year. But hopefully more in 2021.

The Covid Quarantimes

I mentioned a lot of this up above, but here’s a few more things worth mentioning. Here in the US, Covid-19 has so far infected just over 19 million people. Six percent of the population. Of those infected, more than 330,000 have died. The odds are that you’ll never get it. I mean, it’s only a six percent infection rate, right? But odds are also good that you know at least one person who has it. Odds are also good that you probably know someone who has died from it. I wish I could say that everyone wears masks, everyone takes precautions, everyone stays home when they’re sick, everyone keeps their distance. But they don’t. There are too many people out there who think Covid-19 is a joke … a conspiracy theory … something our government leaders just plain made up in order to exercise control over us and make us stay inside and take away our liberties. Yes these people actually exist. And they exist in droves by the MILLIONS. And they’re out there right now running through the stores unmasked, walking right up behind you, coughing into their hands before picking through the produce. Because these people will not have their god-given rights infringed on! And why, you might ask, do these people even exist?!?

Trump

This guy could be an entire novel with everything I could say about him. But I’ll be relatively brief, mostly because he’s the nasty little kid who keeps putting thumb tacks on everyone’s chairs, and I refuse to give him much time and place and thought beyond just a few words. Slightly more than half the voting country stood up after being poked in the butt for the last four years and collectively said enough’s enough and it’s time for that nasty little kid to move on and be someone else’s problem for a while. But here’s the thing—slightly less than half the voting country stood up and said, “We LOVE being poked in the butt. It feels good. We want to keep doing it for another four or eight or twelve years. In fact, it feels so good we want to abandon everything this country stands for just so we can go on being poked for as long as humanly possible.” What can I say? Some people are just gluttons for punishment. Masochists. And they believe every word that punk little kid tells them. His words excite them. And getting all excited and worked up is all they care about. Science doesn’t matter. Facts don’t matter. Other people’s rights don’t matter. So here we are.

Biden

Look—Joe Biden wasn’t my first choice for President of the US. He wasn’t even my second. Nor was he my third. But that nasty little kid simply had to G-O! Heck, I would’ve voted for the school librarian, or the school’s mascot, or the school’s science room hamster if it meant getting rid of that nasty little kid. Biden’s 2020 campaign slogan was “Battle for the Soul of the Nation.” I would’ve settled for “Any Warm Body Will Do.” Anyone running against Donald Trump this year was gonna win. We were just that sick of watching Trump rip our country apart the last four years.

There are platforms I’m not looking forward to under a Biden administration. I don’t like his stance on gun reform with federal buyback programs, registration, and magazine capacity limitations, as well as a ban on the AR rifle platform. I’m not a big fan of legalizing marijuana, increasing the defense budget (except for increasing pay and benefits for our military), or his downplaying of China’s threat to the US (both economic and military).

However … HOWEVER … any other warm body was better than four more years of putting up with that nasty little kid. Also, Biden and Kamala Harris seem like a good team. They seem like a team that can restore dignity to the White House. They seem like a team who cares about people. And after four years of dealing with someone who has no self-dignity and only cares about himself, Joe Biden is the breath we’ve all been gasping for after being held underwater for four years. It’s pretty nice waking up in the morning not worrying what kind of crackpot, half-baked, unhinged, paranoid, conspiracy-laden Tweets I’m gonna read from @POTUS today. And that’s exactly what this country needed. It’s what I needed. Those other folks though, the ones who miss the pain of pulling the tacks outta their butts every morning … I’m sure they’ll be seeding Biden’s White House lawn like caltrops with those tacks. Those guys are just never gonna be happy.

Happiness

It’s been missing in my life for a coupla years now. 2020 drained the last of what was left. Police brutality. Conspiracy theories. Covid. Riots. Looting. Gassing peaceful protestors. Trump’s election shenanigans. Crazy Rudy Giuliani. Trump pardoning thugs and criminals. Family members getting sick. Social media wars. Nine months of being quarantined. A lack of human physical closeness and contact. Just an overall lack of caring and decency from other human beings towards each other. Christmas helped a little, but only a little.

But there’s hope on the horizon. Trump is out of office. Covid vaccines are rolling out. 2021 and a brand new year are only four short days away. We have to endure the winter, but spring is always around the corner. And I have to admit it was terrific to finally get a white Christmas this year after so many muddy brown ones.

I feel like change is coming. I’m changing: working out more, eating better, taking better care of myself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I’m fifty now. Time to seriously start planning what I want the second half of my life to look like. I have only one resolution for 2021—be more positive. I’ll likely spend less time on Facebook and Twitter. Those places have been so toxic. Best to just avoid them, although I’ll try and post more positive than negative messages.

What about you? What are you planning for the new year? What improvements will you be making? Fill up the comments and let me know.