Everything is gonna be fine. A reflection on 2020

[Parliament 14138]

Yeah it's been a rough year, but you don't hafta squint so hard to find the good things. In March we were S.C.A.R.E.D. Food shelves were getting bare. Meat plants were shutting down. Farms were dumping milk and euthanized pigs. Yet nobody starved and Walmart has stocked shelves today. And we are still wiping our butts with paper made for that purpose.

As Covid cases were spiking, a record number of people voted in our national election. By the best, most scientific measures we have, it was fair and clean.

We released TWO (and counting) vaccines 11 months after Covid-19 came into existence. As we speak, it is being administered to the people who need it most. Within six months it will be available to the people who need it least.

Games were cancelled and Aggy almost made the playoffs, but we had a viable college football season. As recently as September that was not in the cards.

I know optimism and diversity of thought are not the nature of this board. But I am glad to cast a ray of sunshine, dare I say HOPE, on all of my Surly friends.

 

God Bless you all.

[Hefeweizen 5307]

Fuck Ohio state.

 Merry Christmas and you’re right about there being positives but this year sucked.

[Biff Tannen 45495]

The washer fluid is NOT fine!

[AnTiM 1659]

Yes, there were good things but the year is not over yet.  If Trump decides to totally shut the government down like he is threatening and has the power to do, everything so far has been minor.  If he cannot be impeached in a week, the only solution is going to be for somebody to shoot his worthless ass and tell Pence "OK Mr. President, do the right thing or you are next", and continue the succession list until someone does what needs to be done to save all our asses.

[hayden_horn 11360]

i was actually reflecting on the challenges this year brought. a distinct memory is when i stopped at the store on thursday, march 12, pretty much the day everyone shut everything down, punctuated by aisd saying "that's it, we are going remote.". it was my normal slaughter/manchaca heb, and it was fucking bonkers. people were fucking piled in there. it's a fucking wonder that it wasn't its own little covid hotspot, upon reflection. i remember the heb employee stocking bread, not able to keep up with people snatching it and he just sort of melted down and said "this is fucking mental!" and he was not wrong. it was fucking pandemonium. funny how certain memories stick with you. then we had that weird period where we would socially distance (a term i never used before 2020) in line outside the store as they limited entry. such a strange time.

i had recently traveled to vegas for ces and came back with a cough, which is not uncommon after a week of destroying your immune system with booze and lack of sleep and food. the cough/cold ran through my family and took us about three weeks each to fully get over it. i think i had covid in february, but i haven't gotten an antibody test. 

but i did learn a lot this year, as horrible as it was. i learned how fortunate i was to be able to work from home, even when my wife had to go back to the classroom. we could keep our boys here. and just the amount of uncommon time i got with them, all of us giving each other shit, learning how to be at home together, the painful parts as well as the joyous ones; it was a true privilege. 

i also learned a lot about myself, some selfish things, some not so selfish, i guess. but i also learned to be thankful for what we have. i suppose we weren't always as responsible with lockdown as we could have been, but we've been better than most, i reckon. it hurts me that my sons basically had my wife, me and each other and that's it, aside from some cousins that we've sort of "bubbled" with. it's like a lost year, but it's also been a hell of a year of introspection about what's important. 

i may never really go to the office again. what's the point of a commute? hell, just from a sustainability standpoint, a commute in austin is so terribly wasteful. i haven't filled my car with gas for a couple of months now. how wasteful is all that, in time and resource and treasure?

i made it through a serious layoff in our company, though part of me kind of still wouldn't have minded the severance and double dipping for a while. but i appreciate my boss and my job more than ever. it's strange, i usually would travel 10 - 12 times a year, 3 or 4 of those internationally to interesting places. none of that this year. it feels weird to even think about getting on a plane in the near future when it has been so common over the past decade.

despite many jokes to the contrary, i've come to appreciate my family more.  not that i didn't before, and not that there wasn't some frustration (goddammit, just do the five minute assignment to get to passing), we still managed to have some fun. and i got to spend some quality time with my 13 and 12 year old boys, which has been priceless.

despite the separation, i've really come to appreciate my friends more. i missed tailgating. i missed the football games. i missed just going to fucking dinner with some people. going to dinner at all, really. 

more than anything, i realized that i'm basically still grieving over a loss of a way of life. and that i'm solidly in the anger stage of that. angry that this happened at all, angry that our leaders, local, state, and national, seem to give fuckall about what's happening to real people in this nation, yet seem to want to be the first in line for the vaccine. i'm angry that we still have yet to enact any real plan to mitigate this shit, financially for the worst hit, and medically. the vaccine is nice, but a real plan starting, i dunno, in fucking february to mitigate a pandemic would have been nice. something that insulated businesses and people who have lost their job. a real plan, not this "on again/off again" bullshit. 

so i do look to 2021 with hope, and will take lessons from 2020, with some gratitude, but not a small amount of anger as well. i'm not sure i'll ever get over it.

tl;dr: hayden's pissed about covid bullshit

[Huckleberry 32702]

1 hour ago, Parliament said:

I know optimism and diversity of thought are not the nature of this board.

Kind of sad that even when trying to make a hopeful and loving post you still couldn't help but try to slip in a little partisan whining. 

p.s. There is still diversity of thought in here and there was more before the #GOP4LYFE crew ran away like little punks.

p.p.s. Merry Christmas

[FondrenRoad 4378]

aggy almost making the playoffs was the turning point where our overlords realized they needed to patch the simulation before we wake up in our pods. 

[ConferenceRoom 6130]

[jimmyjazz 45559]

I remember hitting my neighborhood HEB right before the lockdown.  I got there about 10 minutes before it opened -- 6:50 AM I think? -- and the line was around the store.

That was when it started to sink in.  It felt like the bizarro gas run a few years back, but this one seemed to have legs.

Turns out it did.  

I have made huge shifts in my life.  My family now gets why I "smart shop" so religiously.  They have become accustomed to generic brands, mostly because I lie and tell them I had no control over the substitution.  I only order curbside.  We save money by rarely ordering from restaurants and I'm a much better cook than I used to be.  I haven't worked at the office since early March, and I've been so much more productive, I see little reason to go in much, if ever, again.  (That's not true, I'll have to reassimilate, but at least the standard has been set that telecommuting isn't a production killer.  I have no problem working 7 days a week, 8-10 hours a day now.  Make me go in?  5 days a week, that's it, I've done way too many 90 hour weeks in the office during my life to ever do it again for some ill-defined reason.)

We have all learned a lot.  We're going to learn more.

Edited December 24, 2020 by jimmyjazz

[tantric superman 4667]