Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time
Good lord, it’s January.
I swear it was March only last week, and this weekend just gone we were in the middle of a heatwave that had my sister and I sat on the patio up to our knees in gallon buckets of cold water.
Everyone’s probably tired of hearing the soundbite about “may you live in interesting times” being a Greek (Roman?) curse, but I’m going to repeat it anyway. Without a doubt we are living through a year, or at the very least pandemic, that will have it’s own chapter in history books about the early twenty-first century. That said, for me there’s a disconnect between knowing I’m stuck in history and actually feeling like it. So far, touch wood, I’ve been lucky and the virus hasn’t touched my life (and, yes, I know, tempting fate by putting it into writing). My sister has received the first half of the vaccine, and I’ve spent most of the year furloughed, kept at home hopefully out of reach of infection. It’s a bit like how I felt about cancer before 2016; it exists but it doesn’t involve me, until it did.
It’s been a strange year hasn’t it? Some reading this have had life return to something resembling reality, others are ducking and dodging the combined irresponsibility of their governments and gleefully ignorant countrymen. For all the time I had to spend at home working on my own projects I didn’t get much done, and it’s not like I couldn’t bear to do anything I just didn’t have any gumption. Setting deadlines for myself didn’t work either, as I was (am) entirely aware that when there’s nothing to do time has no meaning except which meal you’re preparing. So that’s where I’ve been; I’ve not been ill, I’ve not given up on this blog, I’ve just been ‘here’. Actually I haven’t done a whole lot of anything… except play a lot of Dragon Age: Origins over the November lockdown.
I won’t say good riddance to 2020, and I won’t say anything hopeful about 2021 either – unlike apparently everyone on social media. Since 2016 we’ve looked ahead on December 31st with a “well it can’t get worse!”. And then it did, steadily every year that followed. Just when you thought fate/chance/luck/nature had no moves left to play, something else was thrown at us. For all we know we could be jinxing it and whatever Trickster God is in charge of the universe clearly doesn’t like being challenged. I swear to God it’s like being the neighbours of the idiots who dug up a Jumanji board. Which is why I’ll say good luck. Whether it’s a well needed blessing to survive whatever disaster, or political machinations trample over us, or gentle encouragement to embrace whatever freedom we find coming out the other side.
So no resolutions, no plans, no “202x is going to be my year!”, just a very neutral recognition that 2021 is going to be a year. It is after 2020, it will lead to 2022, and when it’s over we’ll all say “happy new year” again.
The Curvy Bookcase 