Reflections on 2020: Our Year In Review
UPDATED: 2/5/2023
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3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . Happy New Year! 2020 started off with the great expectations that accompany a new decade. New Year’s resolutions seemed to come with an added dose of resolve.
Personally, we were coming out of 2019, a year of a record five trips, four of which were to new countries, and nearing our blog’s one year anniversary. We had five more trips planned for 2020, the year ahead - Italy, Iceland (for a second time), Utah, Colonial Williamsburg in our home state of Virginia, and a return to Oak Island, North Carolina for a beach Christmas. We were last-minute cramming Italian lessons on Duolingo, an effort that brought back distant memories of college Italian classes. We had started preliminary planning for 2021 trips with a hefty travel guide for Japan adorning our night stand.
January and February trudged along as they do, a depressing mix of gray skies, evenings that drag on endlessly after the sun sets, and small efforts to embrace the darkness and make it a little more welcoming by way of cozy blankets, candles, and extra time spent in the kitchen cooking some of winter’s comforting and aromatic dishes.
By the tail end of February and early days of March, it became clear to us that we were on a bad trajectory. We were reading European news daily as cases of COVID started to explode in Italy, which were were slated to visit mid-month. I think it was because we were so focused on the early news coming from abroad that we understood the seriousness of what we were facing earlier than many others in the US. In the early days of March, we starting stocking up on pantry items just to be safe. No one else was doing this yet, and Dustin, feeling silently judged for his filled shopping cart, led the cashier at our local store to believe that we had a large group of guests coming to visit.
We always felt we would be in this for the long haul and made pretty quick shifts to how we live. I think the fact that this was relatively easy for us helped. Neither of us has to leave the house for work. We are childfree so concerns about child care and schooling did not apply to us. We also have not had television since 2006, so our news sources are thoughtful articles and data sets on the trends and prognosis without entering the three-ring circus of the 24-hour news cycle.
I read an article back in the spring written by a resident who had survived the 1992-1996 Siege of Sarajevo. I have been unable to locate the article, or I would link it here. In the article, he shared lessons learned from that nearly four year lockdown as a way to help people survive or even thrive during the times of COVID. Yes, there are obvious differences between a war-torn country during ethnic genocide and a pandemic, but the day-to-day impacts share certain similarities. What the author concluded was that people who managed best stopped making plans for the future and instead focused on the here-and-now. That way, they could enjoy the good moments and simple pleasures and not feel the loss of what was beyond their grasp.
We had already started adopting this same mental approach around that time and the clarity of that article helped seal the deal. We have zero future travel plans right now, though we certainly have plenty of fully planned trips sitting at the ready for whenever it is time to brush the dust off of them. Instead, we have tried to focus this year on what is actually within our control.
We have continued posting about prior trips that we took pre-COVID and still have more up our sleeves, and we have also expanded the number of book review posts as a way to explore destinations through literature and non-fiction. We are ecstatic to have had 23,000 of you visit our site this year!
We have always enjoyed cooking and trying new recipes but used to get food out 1-2 nights a week out of pure laziness. To minimize contact with others, we have gotten into a much better meal planning routine, and have tried tons of new recipes. Because we are limiting grocery trips (pick-up only), we are getting more creative in the kitchen, cobbling together meals with what we have on hand, meaning there is less food waste, too.
For the first time in years, I actually hit and exceeded my reading goal. I have read 38 books and counting and am contemplating a higher target next year, which may be overzealous. And I also discovered the world of advanced reading copies and am loving getting a sneak peek at books not yet published and being first to the table to review them.
I have also expanded my reading and personal education about the systemic issues facing minority populations in the United States and am seeking to always do better in how I represent that factor appropriately in posts.
We (sort of) taught our dogs to be better on leashes. With a fenced yard, we have always given them exercise free range. We started taking them on walks outside, and they loved the walks more than we expected.
I started running and working out fairly consistently about 8 years ago but have never been able to get into as consistent of a routine as I have this year. I decided to avoid any trails where I have historically run outside since they are popular and started running in our hilly neighborhood. I am the strongest I have ever been, which feels amazing. Unfortunately now that it has gotten cold, it is treadmill season for me.
Dustin, he of no hair, cut my hair for me in the spring. It was semi-traumatic for both of us for different reasons. For me, mainly because there was no mirror in front of me to see what was happening. It is nearly time for an encore performance.
Dustin has also been experimenting with more primitive technologies and has made bricks from scratch (look for a future post on this!), and has begun to learn how to blacksmith.
This year, we have had lengthy conversations about our future goals. As the name of our blog underscores, our goal in life is to make the most of our time. While this was our philosophy before, this year provided additional focus to this way of living.
There have been and continue to be plenty of hours or days of dark thoughts. Will I ever feel safe being indoors with people again? With the increasing impacts of climate change, are the best (most carefree) days of our lives behind us? Are there some friends or family we will never see again?
Everyone has their own fears. Fear can be healthy. It can keep us from taking unwarranted risks or help us reassess how to spend our lives. Fear can be unhealthy. It can create the deer-in-headlights reaction or spiraling. Or fear can be ignored. It can be pushed so deep that people just keep on acting like there is nothing to be afraid of at all, a phenomenon very much on display in many of our communities.
Speaking of fear and to harken back to where I began this post, I fear too many people have even greater expectations for 2021, as if the arbitrary change of one digit on the calendar means anything at all. A year is neither good nor bad but simply a time keeping device. As the character Miss Havisham (she of the perpetual wedding dress for a wedding that was called off decades ago) in Dickens’ novel by that name demonstrates, time keeps marching ahead, the world keeps evolving, and to put blinders on is to be left behind.
What I hope for myself and for others as we move into 2021 is that we can find a way to take that healthy fear and help it evolve into more security for ourselves and our communities and to create lives more aligned with our own personal aspirations. As countless articles and conversations this past year have highlighted, there is a lot of life incongruent with real meaning and contentment. I think we should consider this year to be a wake-up call for humanity. It has certainly been one for us.
We wish all of our readers a healthy and fulfilling 2021 full of new experiences!
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Discuss: What are your own reflections on 2020? We would love to hear your experiences in our comments below!