10 Years of This Shit

Funnily enough, the title of this post isn't precisely, or only, referring to the political stuff. 2016 was the first in this current sequence of terrible, terrible years, and it started off with a bang when I logged into the AV Club and learned that David Bowie had died. I was reminded of that when I started seeing think pieces, on Facebook and on the Guardian, among other places, marking that anniversary. And these have been followed by 10-year tributes for Alan Rickman, which means we're going to get to relive the Great Celebrity Die-Off of 2016.

So I wanted to get out ahead of all that, and just note, in among all the horrible shit going on in Minneapolis and Alligator Alcatraz and Greenland and Ukraine and Venezuela, that we're going to be reminded of how awful that felt back in 2016. And the worst part is, that all began in January 2016 and went through the whole year, until we got treated to Brexit and Donald Trump's first election win.

I was also thinking about the good things from that year, of which there were few, but a couple did spring to mind. One was, of course, Leicester City's Premier League title, which remains one of the greatest sporting fairy tales I've witnessed. They had a good few years after that, even though they sacked Claudio Ranieri as manager the following season, but then they had an ever worse set of seasons until they were relegated a couple of times. Sic transit gloria.

The other good things that I remember from 2016 are in the dating realm, where I went on four dates with someone and even smooched her a couple of times, the first since I'd moved back from London. I also got a mini-raise that year, also my first since London, although the following year I learned just how grossly I was being underpaid by my company.

Anyway, this post isn't about me. It's more about solidarity: we're going to be seeing a lot of commemorations of ten years of All This Shit, even as All This Shit burns down even more intensely around us than it did then. Take a break from social media and the news as needed, and set boundaries so that people don't bring that kind of thing up as a way of making small talk (I have people in my family who do this). As shit as it all is, and as shit as it's all likely to remain for a while, we'll get through it as long as we take care of ourselves and of each other.