Science has shown that gratitude, that making a list of things that have gone well, makes a person healthier. Yup: counting your blessings really is a good thing, not some pseudoscience wackadoodle nonsense.
Good things I experienced in 2020:
- I started off the year at a weight and size that made me feel glorious - I was healthier, it was easier to do everything, from turning over in a sleeping bag to getting on and off my motorcycle to taking off and putting on clothes to bending over to tie my shoes. I looked good too!
- I got to take Stefan to the Broken Spoke in Austin, Texas at long, long last and we had the magical honky-tonk night I've long dreamed of. It's such a special place to me, and I know it's not much longer for this Earth.
- I did some of my best work, professionally. At the start of the year in particular, I had challenges thrown at me at breakneck speed and very little support - I was often entirely on my own at my biggest gig of 2020. I just kept pushing along, just kept producing - I discovered boss video editing skills I never knew I had and got to put some of my book's suggestions to test yet again, to see if they were still valid - and they are! I'm very, very proud of what I accomplished this year, work-wise.
- I got a professional gig that I haven't been able to tell any of you about, because I signed a non-disclosure agreement, but I will be able to someday, and for that gig, I had to make a LOT of videos none of you have ever seen, and the company I did the gig for said that mine were the funniest and most lively of anyone on the project. In short: I got paid to be a dork.
- I've sold a LOT of books, far, far more than even the year my book was released.
- We rode through Baja, California, Mexico & back on our motorcycles. I don't even know how to summarize what an amazing, soul-quenching adventure it was, so you will have to read the travelogue. But it was, hands down, the highlight of the year. And the last time I socialized with other humans other than Stefan.
- I got to see Henry for the first time since Williamstown, and meet his family, and it was wonderful (but little did we know it was the last time we would hang out with anyone for 2020).
- A friend from Portland, one of my best friends from high school, was finally able to visit me in my home.
- We spent two nights out on Washington County backroads viewing Comet NEOWISE. A lot of times, when you hear there is going to be some kind of celestial event, you see it and think, really, that's it? This was NOT one of those times.
- Hearing Stefan's reaction to seeing the rings of Saturn for the first time through our Aldi telescope. He's not emotive AT ALL, so hearing him exclaim anything, ever, is an amazing moment. Months later, we got to see Jupiter and Saturn in one viewing through the telescope, something we'll never experience again. Oh, the joy our cheap telescope has brought us this year in particular.
- Stefan bought a wood-burning pizza oven and we used it over and over and over.
- For 3 months, I got to have a cat, and I enjoyed every second of it. Giving up Zeb broke my heart, but he is so, so happy in his new home, with his girl.
- I got to find out that this vehicle exists.
- The day we sat on the sidewalk outside, making chalk art.
- Stefan cut my hair twice AND colored my hair, experiences neither of us will ever forget.
- The results of the November 2020 election.
- Tim and Fred Williams, twin brothers in Gary, Indiana, listening to various artists for the first time. TwinsthenewTrend have brought me so much joy this year. Some days, they were the ONLY joy. I am proud to help their first time experiencing Dolly Parton and Jolene go viral.
- Lucinda. Every day.
- We didn't get the novel coronavirus.
- My biopsy was negative cancer.
- I grew my own garlic for the first time and had the best year ever for growing my own salad.
- Being a part of Black Lives Matter protests - and seeing protests even in tiny Oregon towns.
- The Democratic Convention online. I was so skeptical. I was beyond skeptical. I watched it at first thinking I'd turn it off after 10 or so minutes. I watched it all!
- I got cool new neighbors.
- My friends came through for me in a major way online - and I don't just mean Eric Idle. You know who you are and what you did...
- Christmas. It was the nicest one we've had in years. I don't know what made it so special. We didn't do anything different than previous years. Maybe we just appreciated our health and luck more than ever.
But it was a rough year, that just cannot be ignored or denied. And not only because of people dying, becoming permanently disabled, or otherwise suffering from COVID-19, not only because of beloved businesses closing, not only because of the horrific economic hardship suffered by so many, not only because the performing arts and other live performance of any kind may never recover:
- I further lost hope in humanity, as I watched people refuse to wear masks, refuse to not travel, refuse to not isolate from friends and family, because they found such inconvenient. I didn't think I could hate people more than I did in November 2016. I was wrong. Seeing people behaving so, so badly, with no regard for their fellow humans, no regard for the institutions of this nation, because they felt bored or inconvenienced or somehow oppressed... going skiing or to the beach when public health officials were BEGGING people not to travel at all, flying for vacations, getting together for parties with "just a few friends..." I'm never going to be over the profound selfishness I have seen during this pandemic, seeing people at their absolute worst.
- I gained almost all the weight I worked so, so hard to lose in 2018 and 2019. To have felt so, so good when this year started, and to have it all gone now, to have all the health problems that come with being obese come back... it's soul-crushing. I'm ravenously hungry all the time, ever since we got back from Mexico, in a way I never have been in my life.
- A cherished, long friendship ended, bitterly. And that former friend worked hard to tear me down before I realized what was happening. I prefer walking away to burning something that was once wonderful down completely and THEN walking away. I've learned yet again: when someone in your life spends a lot of time running other people down, be aware that that's exactly what they do to you when you aren't around. She wasn't always this way, and I hope someone helps her recognize the start of dementia, which, unfortunately, makes a lot of people become assholes.
- I learned yet again the importance of documenting everything in your work - even if it's just to prove something to yourself in moments of self-doubt. And I learned yet again what Sharon Capeling-Alakaja said to me once upon a time is true: "You have to make absolutely certain everyone knows what you are accomplishing in your work, you have got to brag about what you're doing, because if you don't, there are people that will claim you aren't doing anything."
- I don't think I'll ever go back to Austin. That city has been my spiritual home since the 1990s. My love for that city has run so, so deep. But my reasons for going to Austin are all gone now. Will I ever again love a place like I loved that city, that entire region? I know nothing lasts forever... I'm grateful to have experienced the city when I did, and how I did.
- I went on what I think is going to be my last job interview ever. It was for a job I really, really wanted - maybe not quite as much as the two jobs last year I talked about so much, but still, a LOT. I was bubbling with ideas for it. As I left the interview, knowing that I never did quite connect with the people in that room, I realized I just can't do this anymore, I can't pour myself into all of the unpaid hours needed to apply for a job and prepare and interview once or twice and not get any payoff. And if I'm too old for that, I guess I'm too old for the jobs as well.
- The troll.
- The fires all over Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. This wasn't a faraway disaster, one we would see first hand only when we made a motorcycle trip through a region. This was thick smoke in my neighborhood, day after day, and having to wear one of the three N95 masks we have any time I stepped outside even for just a few moments, and looking at a sky that looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie.
- The collapse of the iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. I cried when I saw the video. What a loss.
- I have tinnitus. And there's no cure! I realized it in the late summer. I really thought I'd been careful with my hearing in all of those years of going to hear live music - first because the bands I went to see weren't usually very loud (alt-country and bluegrass) and because I wore earplugs if things were even remotely loud... except once (damn you, Texas Tornados at the Austin Music Awards in March 1997).
- I've never felt the loss of my paternal grandmother as deeply as I did this year. For some families, there's just one person holding it all together, like the sun in a solar system or the flame everyone gathers around, and without that person, the family members drift apart. Their relationship was with that person, not with each other. Mamaw kept me posted about family members moving, marrying, divorcing and dying. She welcomed my phone calls. She made sure we talked once a week. She told me she missed me. She made me feel a part of a family. That's truly gone, I realize that now, for the first time. If you still have that in your life, cherish it.
- The dread of 2021. I know so many of you feel like all the problems are going to get left back in 2020 and this is a fresh start. I don't. Hospitals have patients out in their parking garages and their staff doesn't have enough PPE. There still isn't mass, regular testing. People are gathering inside each other's homes, restaurants and health clubs are refusing to follow public health guidelines. I am not hopeful to get the vaccine myself before the Fall - that means nine more months of staying at home and being terrified. No, I don't look at January 1 as a fresh start - I believe numbers will sky-rocket through Feburary because of all that people have done since the Fall.
I really shouldn't end on a downer... so I will end with this:
In all this time of reflection during home quarantine, I've realized that, as of February 2021, it will be 20 years since I moved to Germany and began an adventure that changed my life forever, an amazing adventure that followed a lot of other amazing adventures I thought could never be bested. So, in February 2021, I'm planning on celebrating the 20th anniversary of moving and living abroad by sharing each of my travelblogs 20 years after each happened. To prepare, I've been spending a lot of time re-designing those pages to make them more attractive to read. It's been really nice to revisit that time of my life. I said over and over back then, "I am the luckiest girl alive." Two decades later, with hindsight, I can say, yes, I was.
So, that's my year in review. Hope the two of you that actually read my blog enjoyed it.
