December At Last

It’s one thing to have your head know that it’s December, but in a year like 2020, which for a significant portion of the populace has been the worst year of our lives, it’s another thing to have your gut know.

Yes, I know that other societies have gone through truly horrific years that are worse than this – 1939 through 1945 come to mind, as do 1914 through 1918, and I’m sure that the early 1860’s were no picnic. You get the drift. And individuals no doubt have years which are much worse with deaths of family members, natural disasters, disease, all of the above, and so on. But for my generation and the several that follow, as a whole, as an international, global society, 2020 has arguably been the worst of our lifetimes.

And now it’s almost over. There’s hope for 2021 with vaccines on the horizon, as well as a shift in the political winds. That’s not to say that something even MORE horrific might not do a jump scare on us all still, but in real life the odds seem to be against it.

So we’re in that last month. We’re locked down. We’re wearing masks on the rare occasions we do go out for groceries or essential tasks. We’re decorating for the holidays and doing Zoom meetings instead of huge holiday dinners and parties. We’re sacrificing and we can see, if not the actual finish line, at least the bell lap coming in just four to seven weeks.

(By the way, if you’re NOT wearing masks and NOT quarantining and NOT staying home from parties, then please eat shit and die, fuck off, then keep fucking off, then fuck off until you come to a gate with a sign saying, “You can’t fuck off past here” – climb over that gate, dream the impossible dream, and just keep fucking off forever until the heat death of the universe.)

[Yeah, I know, I should come out and just say what I REALLY feel and not hold back…]

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah…

Assuming you’re sane and intelligent and not a sociopath (which is a good assumption since you’re reading my site), then you will understand why I was so struck today in a staff Zoom meeting (or was it Teams? or Slack? or Skype? or Ring Central?) when it hit my gut that we are finally in December. It’s symbolic. It’s a marker, a signpost, a solid, tangible bit of evidence that proves that 2020 is almost over. And 2021 is hope…

Stay safe. December’s going to be okay in some ways, incredibly rough in others. But we’ll make it through.