Saying Goodbye to 2020

This is my 3000th article on this blog.  I initially wanted to do something a little bit more momentous for this post (I had something planned), but it got away from me & while there were other less momentous ideas (and we'll get to that big moment hopefully in the coming weeks), I thought it would be interesting to do a rare personal article, something not pitting politics or film against each other (as is usually the battle for my attention).  Because, while this is a big moment for me, tomorrow is a big moment for all of us.  Tomorrow is, and I cannot believe we get to finally say it, the last day of 2020.

This year has been long, arduous, and bitter for most.  I have been blessed in some regard this year in the sense that (knock on wood), I have not had to endure as much of the tragedy of Covid that others have.  I have had loved ones who have had the disease, but (again, knock on wood) all of them have gotten through it with merely a bad cold & no trips to the hospital.  I lost a family member in 2020, but she had a long life (and this was not related to Covid), and happened before quarantine so that much of my family got to send her off without having to abbreviate the sendoff (like so many have this year).  My job allowed me to work from home, and I made it through 2020 with steady employment.  I'm aware these things are gifts, they are things that others didn't get to claim.  There are going to be faces that we won't get to see in 2021, lights cut off too short that will be impossible to replace, and will forever be remembered.

But I didn't get through the year unscathed.  I took quarantine very seriously, possibly more seriously than I should have (and certainly more seriously than most).  I went literal weeks on-end without human contact (in-person that is) and for the first 70 days I saw no one (that's not a joke-I saw no single person that knew my name for 10 weeks).  While I'm pretty introverted, and generally got past it after the first three weeks (which were a chaotic adjustment, more than I would've expected), this was not easy.  As someone who has struggled throughout his life with issues of self-worth, that's a long time to spend with a person that frequently frustrates you & whom you don't always like.  Three months in, I started to wonder what I'd be like when I got out of the other end of this, trying to scrape by in a house with no reprieve.

I made a vow about that time that while this year would not be the year I wanted (not be the year anyone wanted), I was going not going to let it be a "lost year" and if I was going to be spending time with myself, we were going to work through our problems & come out better on the other side of this.  With the lack of a commute, I had ten extra hours on my plate each week, and I started to use them not just to watch reruns of Bob's Burgers while curling up in a ball eating Hamburger Helper, but instead to actually be real about the goals I always dream for myself (but never follow through on), and just do them.

And in the rare happy ending this year, I actually did.  I have lost 36 pounds, and weigh less than I have since I was at least 29, and probably by March I'll be at a weight that I haven't been at since college.  I needed to lose the weight (my doctor agreed with this assessment, so this isn't about fat-shaming), but I'd be lying if it didn't bring with me a sense of confidence, more so because of the sense of accomplishment I see when I look in the mirror & know "I did that."  It's not done, but it's getting there, and I'm very excited to premiere this new look to the friends whom I haven't seen in months (and if/when I ever get to start dating again).

I have different attitudes toward money-I spend less on things I don't want, and was real about what wasn't working about my eating out habits before this.  I finally got below 2000 OVP movies left in the project (and kept sailing through it to the point where I will get below 1900 without issue next year), and finished a Shutterfly project I'd been putting off for two years.  I Marie Kondo'd my house, and invested in new things for my kitchen, living room, & home that always felt like dreams more than reality.  I worked through dozens of smaller projects that I won't bore you with, many of them having been on my To Do list so long I was shocked at how easily they eventually fell off once I decided they should be done.  I donated money to campaigns (some that won, some that didn't), and I served as an election judge (and weeks before that, cast my vote for my longtime personal hero Joe Biden and our country's first female vice president Kamala Harris).  And I let go of other things, things that I decided I didn't have a use for anymore-dreams that no longer felt like wishes, and more like chores.  I didn't travel this year, I didn't find the love of my life & I missed my friends & family more than I can possibly say, but looking back on 2020, it was most decidedly not a "lost year."

2021 contains a lot of promise.  I'm sure many of the people who are reading this are anxiously awaiting their vaccine and a return to normalcy.  But as we close out the year, it's okay if you're like me, and spent this year learning about yourself, and in the process changing your life or sense-of-self for the better, and are thus nervous about that return to normalcy since pre-Covid your life wasn't working the way you wanted it to either.  2020 was a heinous, awful experience, but it was also a dire reminder that life is short, and that if you got to be a better version of yourself through all of this quarantine goal-achieving, it's okay to not be the same person you were on the other end of it.  You don't have to compromise the person you were able to carve this year so that everyone else gets a sense of routine back; other people's assumptions don't have to define you.  In 2020, I had to decide between letting isolation overrun my life, or whether I'd finally stop listening to the people in my life (including myself) who said "no" and "can't" and "never," and I chose to finally believe in me again.  I'm leaving a lot behind in 2020, and I hope you do the same.  But that sense of purpose, of hope-from-the-darkness, of renewed self-worth...that's joining me in 2021.