In preparation for this post, I re-read two posts that I wrote back in January: one looked back at the decade just gone, and the other looked forward to the year to come. The one about the 2010s talked about how my life had changed during that time, while the other considered what was likely to happen in politics.
They both feel incredibly far away right now.
I have to say, though, despite the title of this post, I can't say the year has been an especially awful one for me personally. I'm very lucky to have a salaried position that allows me to work from home; I'm also lucky to have a place to live and a lovely girlfriend with whom I've been cohabiting for the last few months, so I don't even have to stave off loneliness the way I did in the first few months of the pandemic. I did lose two relatives to the coronavirus, so I won't claim I'm unscathed, but again - many people have had worse years than I have.
I'm also happy to report that my worries about the 2020 election, as outlined in the post about what 2020 would hold, didn't bear fruit. The US elected Joe Biden as a pretty clear repudiation of Trump and his assault on the administrative state, so while the patient is still in danger, at least the blood loss and trauma is slowed.
Though not stopped: the year began with the impeachment trial in Congress, where the House voted along party lines to impeach, and the Senate voted along party lines (except for Mitt Romney) not to remove Trump from office. If the pandemic hadn't distorted American life, it's scary to think what Trump and his coterie would have gotten up to before Election Day, emboldened by the fact that the Senate wouldn't hold them to account.
I titled this post "The Hits Keep Coming" because this is just the latest in a long string of years where things have gone so, so badly. The pandemic may have derailed Trump's shot at reelection, but don't forget that it was so bad precisely because he and those around him downplayed it, ignored it and did all they could to stop the government helping the people who needed it the most.
It was also the latest year in which California saw apocalyptic fires and smoke, which turned our air poisonous and blocked out the sun for weeks on end. It struck me at some point that these awful fire seasons started affecting the Bay Area back in 2017, so they line up nicely with Trump taking office, though even I have to admit that it's more of a coincidence - the real problem has been mismanagement by our energy providers and a loss of preventive fire maintenance in favor of just hiring more firefighters. Trump's an idiot for saying we needed to rake the forests more, but it's true that our fire preparedness in this state has gone down the toilet.
The year was also marked by political and social upheaval, in another almost unbroken streak since 2014 or so. The reaction to the Black Lives Matter protests provided white supremacists and casual racists alike cover to vent their grievances against minorities, and provided Trump more opportunities to divide the country and fire up his base of extremely shitty people.
His loss at the polls probably even galvanized this shiftiness even further - talking about how the election was "stolen" has given his supporters a legend of grievance that I'm sure will resonate like the Nazis' "stab in the back" legend after the First World War. That, coupled with the Democrats' weak showing in Congress, implies that the US will continue to be ungovernable as a result of the GOP refusing to engage with political institutions.
The hope is that Biden will be able to accomplish something before the next midterms inevitably hand Congress back to the right wing. I've read pieces that suggest he follow Trump's playbook by trying to do everything at once, and not letting the sections of the commentariat arrayed against him to focus on bitching about any single thing, and at this point I'm hoping for any strategy from him (and from the rest of the Democratic Party) that will help the country move forward and turn fairer, healthier and safer.
On a personal level, I'm hoping to move forward with the writing, the fitness, my relationship and financially, as always. A lot of this forward movement I'm hoping for will depend on the course of the pandemic, especially since I'm pretty far down the priority list for getting vaccinated. I'll be surprised if I see the inside of my office again before June or so, let alone being able to get on a plane and leave the country (or even the state).
But luckily, my writing and fitness are things I can work on here at home. Something that living with the pandemic has confirmed for me is my need for structure to be able to accomplish the things I want to do - I may not have done all the writing I wanted to do, but the writing I did accomplish came about because I held to a strict schedule of writing most nights.
It's the same with fitness - despite not being able to go to the gym since March, I've seen my tummy slim down to levels I haven't experienced since I lived in London. This is an effect both of my religious adherence to runs and HIIT workouts on YouTube (thanks to the Body Coach, Joe Wicks!), but also the fact that my opportunities to snack between meals fell sharply once I couldn't walk to the Specialty's near my office and get my twice-a-week iced tea drink and turkey-swiss croissant.
It's a cliche to say that no one can tell what the future holds, but this year has shown us how true it is, and I think the chaos will continue to a certain extent. But hopefully everything can settle down for a bit soon - I'm tired of living in interesting times.
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