Tonight I start the yearly task of bringing this yearly enterprise in for a landing. Christmas Day has practically arrived, and short of a major lapse, I should manage to turn out my twenty-fourth post (traditionally my Christmas wish) tomorrow making ten years of the exercise. The penultimate post is always a self-evaluation of the process. No more topics to find, just bring it home.
I began today by rereading each of the previous twenty-two entries and thinking what has changed from the starting post to today. Sadly, the the biggest feature of the past month (as the eight months before) has been a lack of change, at least change for the better. The lockdown in California is as restrictive as ever, the cases more numerous, and the death count rises as fast as temperatures are falling. We see the small gleam of hope in the picture of people receiving the vaccine, but real impact of this still feels a lifetime away, and watching those responsible for so much of the suffering moved to the front of the line is infuriating. COVID stole Christmas, and all of 2020.
My own life has been constricted throughout the month. I have spent lots of time alone, I have missed my friends, my activities, and just a feeling that life is moving forward. Personally I have had good things and bad things happen to me over the course of the month, and despite writing about something every day, I am definitely no smarter and have no more understanding of my life than I did at the beginning. I’ll hope that 2021 might bring the growth of the pruning of 2020,
I think the entires are no better or worse than most of the previous nine years. Just as with the daily entries at the beginning of quarantine back in March, I’ve often felt that there wasn’t much to say. Perhaps writing 70 posts over the course of one year was overly ambitious. My well is not that deep.
Still, there were a few moments where I felt the ideas blazing as I pounded with two fingers on my iPad (a fury that has left me with numb finger tips on more than one a occasion). There were a range of ideas, and only one day when I threw in the towel (not talking about the tea towel from yesterday) and essentially skipped. The world does continue to give me ideas in the midst of this morass.
I end with the same question every year. Will I come back to do it again in 2021? Some years I have felt a great deal of uncertainty, but I have none of that this year. I am hopeful that 2021 will be a very exciting year, one of new opportunities for me and this world, and I hope I will have a lot to say.
Of course I’m the guy who spent the first few days of the current year saying, “I have a really good feeling about 2020,” so what do I know.
Be safe, be strong…let’s hope I can find a Christmas wish in all this tomorrow.