it's been a year
looking back on a bad/good year, part 1
Fam, we’re here.
Finally.
The last week of a cursed, misbegotten year. The bell will ring midnight Friday, the sands will trickle out, and 2020 - at last - will end, at least on the calendar.
It’ll linger in other ways, of course. The plague holds illimitable dominion over us, thanks to both our collective and individual selfishness. A tinpot despot will desperately scrabble at holding power on Wednesday, January 6th, when Congress meets to certify his defeat. I could go on; I won’t; you know the score.
Instead, what I want to do this week is look back on my year. I normally do this around my birthday, but events conspired otherwise.
When 2020 began, I’d been writing this newsletter for a little under three months. I began writing it for the same reason I started blogging 20 years ago: I need to write. I also like writing, but frankly, I have a need to write. I have no illusions that I could do it for money; I tried, I was not very good at the business side of it, and so I stopped. It does not help that the business model for journalistic writing is utterly broken, and that the industry is mired in a decade-plus long recession.
Perhaps newsletters are a solution; I suspect not, for lots of the same reasons blogging didn’t work. Lots of smarter folks have written lots of words for why it probably won’t work; you should read them. I’ll chime in later this week with my cent.
I’ll keep writing here. I enjoy it. The pandemic made everything helter-skeltery, and I stopped writing for reasons I discussed earlier — but I’m not stopping. With that in mind, let’s move on to the first of my look backs at 2020, inspired by this…meme, I guess?
God, this was an awful year. Everything about it hit me much the same way it hit everyone else: the loneliness. The gnawing dread. Not knowing if that scratchiness in your throat was just the dry-ass air in your apartment, or you know, something…worse.
The sirens. Fuck, the sirens. New York City was the first place in America to get scythed by Covid-19, and I don’t think I can describe just how deeply terrifying it is to see a city of eight million plus people be completely stilled and silent once the shutdowns went into effect. Remember how unsettling this scene was?
That’s how Times Square looked as late as September of this year. Normally, that area is cacophonous; it is decidedly not so now. Everything was silent — except the sirens. I speak, of course, of the non-stop ambulance runs. Paramedics hurrying from house to hospital to house to hospital and back again, over and over and over. Too often, they ferried the dead and dying. I cannot now hear a siren without thinking of our deathly spring.
We’ve lost a year — and we’ll likely lose another, let’s be honest. I try seeing the best side of things, but this is the only time we have, and it is awful to have lost it through malign neglect.
As the plague descended, I was set to begin dance classes - the tango, to be precise. I’d recently gotten back into archery, and was doing well enough to consider private lessons and, perhaps, competing. All that’s on pause; my archery range is now open, but I don’t feel comfortable participating in indoor sports, at least until I am vaccinated and the vaccine is far more available. I miss it, dearly. Archery allowed me separation from stress, and it was a deeply meditative practice.
After the 2016 election, I joined a startup. I worked there for just over two-and-a-half years. I took a break before joining another, where I’m currently working. In between, I did some political work. I went on the road for Bernie Sanders, which was a deeply meaningful experience. I miss working in politics; I don’t know if I will again, and so I’m wistful. Meanwhile, I’m in a good place, with good people, and I do not take that for granted.
The best part of the year, though, was meeting Meg. I’d taken a step back from dating, and when the quarantine began, I definitely wasn’t looking to meet anyone. Then a matchmaker (!) approached me to see if I’d be interested in meeting someone. Nonplussed, I agreed. She set up the video date between the two of us; it went well; we exchanged numbers.
And we talked. We talked every day, at length. We met in person after about a month. We spent more time together, and we realized that we cared for each other. This year would’ve been far darker, far lonelier, far more wretched without her; and I am grateful that through the darkness, we found each other. I wish that for you.
I’ll write more about the books I read, the shows I watched, and the things I saw in my next missive. Remember: I love all of you, and we’ll make it together to the other side.