It Isn’t the End Yet

by syaffolee

Anyone who thinks that everything will be different once the clock hits midnight tonight is delusional. Sure, a lot of Really Not Good things have happened this year, but all of the problems resulting from those things aren’t going to magically be solved once it’s 2021. If anything, I suspect it’s going to be an uphill battle.

If this year has shown us anything, it’s that our assumption that people will do what’s right during a crisis is wrong. There is always a subset of people who won’t do what’s right, reasonable or rational. And when the world climbs out of the hole (hopefully some time next year) and we finally have breathing space to make plans on what to do if (when?) something like this happens again–contingency plans will have to be built in to take into account, well, the selfish people. Otherwise we’re doomed to repeat history.

Anyways, maybe this is a good time to look back at what I had posted at the beginning of this year. I had a list of non-resolution resolutions:

• Post more to this blog.
• Post more consistently to my postcard blog.
• Write more regularly (instead of just binge writing during NaNoWriMo  events).
• Submit stories to places more often.
• Read more books (and reduce the size of my to-be-read pile).

Post more to this blog. This certainly did not happen. I think I posted less. It’s only in these past couple of days that I’ve tried posting regularly again. I don’t know how long that will last once work gets going again. I technically work for an “essential business” that makes medical devices. Because of the pandemic, things have been extremely busy. I suspect after the holidays, there will be more cases and thus more demand for medical supplies. And in an indirect way, this will mean more work for me.

Post more consistently to my postcard blog. Well, this was one of the things that did happen. Posting about postcards does not take that much effort and because I wasn’t able to spend any of my free time elsewhere, this was where some of my free time went. Once everyone is able to freely travel again, however, my posting frequency might take a nosedive.

Write more regularly. Nope. Definitely did not happen. I was mostly stuck writing reports for work and after writing reports, I’m usually too mentally drained to write for fun.

Submit stories to places more often. Because of the above reasons, this did not happen either.

Read more books. Unfortunately, I did not have enough time or brain space to read more books. I read nine books and started a bunch of other ones which I’m in the middle of right now–so maybe I could round it up to ten. It’s a rather dismal number, but I suppose it could be worse. I would be absolutely happy if I could read a book a week, but my current workload would really have to be cut back a lot.

So yeah, whatever I thought would happen at the beginning of 2020 certainly did not happen. As for 2021, I think it would be best if I kept my expectations low.