2020: Year in Review

I’m so glad 2020 is coming to an end, even if 2021 might not necessarily be better. It’s just been a shit year, there’s no other way to put it. I don’t think we’ve come to terms with what’s happened, we’re all trying to make the best of the situation and look for positives, but that’s because we’ve desensitized ourselves to what’s going on around us.

This was not the way it was supposed to turn out. It was the start of a new decade, something which we all get excited about for reasons unknown. There are two ways of looking at it; either it can’t get worse and the rest of the decade is going to be amazing, or if this is a marker for the rest of the decade, then the future doesn’t look very bright at all.

The art of socializing has been lost, at least for me. I wasn’t the most social person, in the first place, but the pandemic and staying at home, in my own bubble, has sent my social anxiety skyrocketing. And what’s there to talk about anyway? Other than that which must ALWAYS be named. And virtual meetings just don’t cut it, they are awful. If it’s not a dodgy internet connection, it’s making sure you look okay on camera, or even that horrible moment in every damn meeting where you’re wondering whether you should get on camera, a whole new form of peer pressure. I’m too fucking old to deal with peer pressure man, I have back pain and headaches after drinking 1 beer to deal with.

Fake crowd noises in sports is another thing that’s been the absolute worst thing about 2020. Or cutouts of fans in the stands, seriously is that how cringey things have become? Crowds bring in the atmosphere at any sporting event, yes even golf. And we had to make do with TV producers doing their best at creating an ‘atmosphere’, treating us like morons. It was almost as bad as TV shows with canned laughter. But then again, it also led to some funny moments when you had a crowd ‘cheering’ for a well-played forward defensive cricket shot.

The uncertainty of this year has made me so restless. It’s like it’s made everything I suffer from even worse. I couldn’t concentrate on things much anyway, but now I can’t watch more than 20 minutes of an episode, or a movie, without turning to my phone. My anxiety means I can’t watch something without reading about the story beforehand. I can’t even listen to a complete song sometimes! My mind is always racing, always moving on to the next shiny thing, which is ironic in a world that has been, for the past 9 months, so dull.

Remember when Kobe Bryant dying was the saddest thing that happened this year? Yes, that happened this year, believe it or not, or ‘pre-pandemic’. Cases and deaths have just become numbers, ‘only 40 people died of COVID today’ is good news, which is so surreal to even read or think about when you consider that that’s 40 families who are grieving, and whose lives have been changed forever. Per day. And that’s on a good day.

And then there’s the cringey slogans and terms. ‘We’re all in this together’, ‘the new normal’, ‘unprecedented times’, stop it already. We’re not all in this together, we never were, we’re inherently selfish and look out for ourselves, and that’s fine. We can do our bit and not be asses about it, but that’s about it. And what is the new normal anyway? What is normal? What’s with this obsession with having things be exactly the way they’ve been all along, if we’d had it that way, we’d all have been naked and living in huts. Maybe we’d have been happier then. And we probably wouldn’t have had this damn virus, so that’s another positive.

Anyway, I’m glad there are only 13 days left in 2020. Ha, how ironic that there are 13 days left as if we needed any more bad luck this year. Will 2021 be better? I hope so, but at the same time, I’m not hopeful. But at least we’re used to it.