that was definitely one of the years I've ever had
Monday, 4 January 2021 04:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtTrying to generate an Annual Scorecard for 2020 is really rather like surveying the shattered ruins and desecrated coastline where Great Cthulhu rampaged out of the ocean, and trying to award it points for formal landscape gardening. It feels both futile and hubristic. Which isn't going to stop me from doing it, because Tradition Must Be Observed, but if I'm carried off by nightgaunts tonight you'll know why.
It's not even as though 2020 has been, objectively, the worst year in my life: large tracts of its day-to-day have been placid, even pleasant, and I have some slightly epic bad stuff to which to compare it. I have survived, in the course of a life spent in a relatively small corner of southern Africa, one war, two regime changes, my parents' divorce, a home invasion, some unusually destructive romantic relationships, two graduate degrees, depression, injury, a DVT with pulmonary embolisms, two years of student protests, and the slow death by motor neurone disease of my incomeless father. I can't say that 2020 has been the worst year of my life, because (a) its manifest evils impacted me personally only at second hand, and (b) it's difficult to quantify across such disparate experiences, like the Professor Branestawm process of trying to do sums in apples and oranges and get the answer in lemon curd tarts. Both the protests and my dad's death were probably more savage in terms of actual psychological wear and tear on me personally.
But on a global scale 2020 has definitely been the most comprehensively befuckened, and has reshaped most dramatically the structure and tenor of my daily life. I was fortunate, in 2020, to have a guaranteed salary and the infrastructure to work at home, and to escape both COVID infection and the infection or death of anyone close to me. I am horribly, horribly conscious that huge numbers of others, both at home and globally, have been nothing like so lucky in either medical or financial terms: that kind of privilege is an empathic responsibility. It's also a testament to the clusterfuck that this year has been that America's BLM movement and increasing drift to a fascist state, and the UK's Brexit stupidities, have been eclipsed. In any other year they would be the top of everyone's worry list, not a couple of items down in a plethora of ills.
Things achieved by me in 2020: Survival with health and sanity more or less intact, which is in itself a commendable achievement under the circumstances. Sufficient self-discipline to be very, very careful and aware of COVID precautions. The successful and relatively painless translation of major faculty admin processes into remote formats. An ordered and increasingly comfortable home (being at home 24/7 is really good for noticing and remedying minor home decorating deficiencies, who knew?). Considerably advanced strategies in surviving endless Teams meeting while keeping the swearing and screaming firmly on mute.
Things not achieved by me: A new job, shaking the dust of the country off my booted feet, global political optimism. Since the epidemic kiboshed all of the above fairly comprehensively there isn't really much I could do about it, so I propose not, for once, to feel guilty.
Losses: respect for the US and UK's political systems; any desire to live in either. 1.8 million COVID deaths, which is staggering enough to be faintly unreal. It will only get worse.
Things discovered by me in 2020: mask-construction, mask-wearing, hand sanitiser, working from home, Teams, Zoom and their horrible ilk, robot vacuums, white chocolate in lemon cheesecake, The Amazing Devil, console ownership, Becky Chambers, Vitamin D, The Witcher in both book and game form and the inevitable fanfic (was that all only this year? good lord), even higher than the usual levels of apocalypse-anticipatory grocery hoarding, sharing memes with my niece (the Destiel meltdown was a gift), American and UK politics as a rather nastily tragicomic spectator sport.
Resolutions for 2021: remember to brush my teeth in the morning, working from home has screwed with my usual home-leaving routine and I keep forgetting. Any further commitment, resolution-wise, seems incautious. I am confidently expecting 2021 to be as much of a shitshow, if not more so, and it definitely will be COVID-wise; there's slightly more hope that the US political nastinesses will die down with sane incumbents in office, and with any luck the UK will break up so that sensible portions of it can rejoin the EU. However, I am not sanguine, and will therefore make no further resolutions other than to keep my head down, survive and remain healthy.
It's not even as though 2020 has been, objectively, the worst year in my life: large tracts of its day-to-day have been placid, even pleasant, and I have some slightly epic bad stuff to which to compare it. I have survived, in the course of a life spent in a relatively small corner of southern Africa, one war, two regime changes, my parents' divorce, a home invasion, some unusually destructive romantic relationships, two graduate degrees, depression, injury, a DVT with pulmonary embolisms, two years of student protests, and the slow death by motor neurone disease of my incomeless father. I can't say that 2020 has been the worst year of my life, because (a) its manifest evils impacted me personally only at second hand, and (b) it's difficult to quantify across such disparate experiences, like the Professor Branestawm process of trying to do sums in apples and oranges and get the answer in lemon curd tarts. Both the protests and my dad's death were probably more savage in terms of actual psychological wear and tear on me personally.
But on a global scale 2020 has definitely been the most comprehensively befuckened, and has reshaped most dramatically the structure and tenor of my daily life. I was fortunate, in 2020, to have a guaranteed salary and the infrastructure to work at home, and to escape both COVID infection and the infection or death of anyone close to me. I am horribly, horribly conscious that huge numbers of others, both at home and globally, have been nothing like so lucky in either medical or financial terms: that kind of privilege is an empathic responsibility. It's also a testament to the clusterfuck that this year has been that America's BLM movement and increasing drift to a fascist state, and the UK's Brexit stupidities, have been eclipsed. In any other year they would be the top of everyone's worry list, not a couple of items down in a plethora of ills.
Things achieved by me in 2020: Survival with health and sanity more or less intact, which is in itself a commendable achievement under the circumstances. Sufficient self-discipline to be very, very careful and aware of COVID precautions. The successful and relatively painless translation of major faculty admin processes into remote formats. An ordered and increasingly comfortable home (being at home 24/7 is really good for noticing and remedying minor home decorating deficiencies, who knew?). Considerably advanced strategies in surviving endless Teams meeting while keeping the swearing and screaming firmly on mute.
Things not achieved by me: A new job, shaking the dust of the country off my booted feet, global political optimism. Since the epidemic kiboshed all of the above fairly comprehensively there isn't really much I could do about it, so I propose not, for once, to feel guilty.
Losses: respect for the US and UK's political systems; any desire to live in either. 1.8 million COVID deaths, which is staggering enough to be faintly unreal. It will only get worse.
Things discovered by me in 2020: mask-construction, mask-wearing, hand sanitiser, working from home, Teams, Zoom and their horrible ilk, robot vacuums, white chocolate in lemon cheesecake, The Amazing Devil, console ownership, Becky Chambers, Vitamin D, The Witcher in both book and game form and the inevitable fanfic (was that all only this year? good lord), even higher than the usual levels of apocalypse-anticipatory grocery hoarding, sharing memes with my niece (the Destiel meltdown was a gift), American and UK politics as a rather nastily tragicomic spectator sport.
Resolutions for 2021: remember to brush my teeth in the morning, working from home has screwed with my usual home-leaving routine and I keep forgetting. Any further commitment, resolution-wise, seems incautious. I am confidently expecting 2021 to be as much of a shitshow, if not more so, and it definitely will be COVID-wise; there's slightly more hope that the US political nastinesses will die down with sane incumbents in office, and with any luck the UK will break up so that sensible portions of it can rejoin the EU. However, I am not sanguine, and will therefore make no further resolutions other than to keep my head down, survive and remain healthy.
