I briefly considered skipping my a year-end entry this year. Most of what we did in 2020 is in my previous entry, the overly updated and entirely depressing Covid-19 experience (click here to read it). The story of 2020 doesn’t have an ending. The pandemic goes on. Police are still murdering unarmed black people. Billionaires are still fighting class warfare against the rest of us. Climate change is still ramping up.

But darn it, I don’t want my list of year-end entries to have another gap in it, so here goes.

2020 wasn’t all bad, as this summary will show. But it was very different. It was the first calendar year of my life that was dominated so forcefully by a single, ongoing (entirely preventable) event: the Covid-19 pandemic. Obviously this isn’t unique to me or to my family — it was the experience of most people on Earth. (That in itself might someday have some benefit — a shared experience that we survivors can look back to, no matter where we’re from or what we look like.)

In the context of the pandemic, I’m well aware that the four of us in this household were among the the top-tier of most fortunate people. To wit: we didn’t lose any income, none of us got sick (even fewer non-covid illnesses than normal), no one we directly know died of the coronavirus (though we have acquaintances who knew people who died), and at the same time we didn’t labor under the worst of the pandemic restrictions (because we live in one of the states with the weakest pandemic restrictions — most of the curtailment of our daily lives was voluntary).

In some ways, our lives even improved this year, due in part or in whole to the pandemic. For one example, I bicycled more miles this year than I have since... probably 1990. True, I bought the bike in February, before we knew the pandemic was going to be serious, but the majority of my bicycling was done with my children, as a way to get them safely out of the house during various levels of lockdown and virtual schooling. Another example is learning Spanish with the free app/site Duolingo: I’ve gone 280+ days without missing a lesson and can now say things like: “Yo quiero comer muchos verduras porque es muy saludable.” I only heard of Duolingo because our son’s first grade teacher suggested it during the first weeks of “distance learning” back in March, as a way to keep the children’s minds occupied. I got back into playing chess and now I play a game online each day against a random person around the world — which wouldn’t have happened without the pandemic.

A more direct financial example is the stimulus check we received in April. We used it to clear the last balance of our last debt, thus freeing up a certain amount of monthly payment, leaving us a bit richer with every paycheck. (Without the stimulus, it would have taken us another ten months or so to finish paying off that loan.)

Another way of thinking about how the pandemic affected our 2020 story is imagining what this entry might have looked like if I was writing it and there hadn’t been a pandemic. I suppose the presidential election would have been the biggest national news of the year, but it wouldn’t have figured into our personal stories. This would be the same entry I write every year, bragging on the children’s growth or grades or milestones, listing minor improvements we made around the house, and so on.

RnB : Lives Upended

Children, fortunately, seem to be more resilient to sudden changes in life than adults — perhaps because even on a normal day they don’t have much control over what happens to them. Our two began the year normally, ready to finish first (B) and third (R) grade. B was on a local youth soccer team and R was in “company” at her dance studio. When the pandemic began to affect us — in March — both of their extracurricular activities were of course canceled, and both shifted suddenly to doing school at home with me. Though sports and dance reopened locally during the summer (against all medical advice), we kept our children home and neither has been a part of anything like that since.

I’m proud of both children in the way they handled their isolation from friends; they found other things to do and other outlets for their energy and generally kept up brave faces. Early on, there were a lot of moments when one or the other began to ask permission for something and then remembered we were in the pandemic. “This weekend, can I go to...? Oh. I mean, after the pandemic, can I...?” But by summer, both realized we were in for the long haul.

Both made a valiant effort at virtual schooling when the Autumn semester began, but both clearly needed in-person instruction and so we sent them back.

This was the year R quit playing with toys altogether. We continue to work with B on his reading. Both learned a lot of Spanish via Duolingo, and both learned how to play basic chess this year.

B lost four or five teeth and started growing some new ones.

Family

One thing that really sank in for me this year is how much I like my wife and children. Of course, I always love them — but to me love isn’t a feeling; rather it’s a decision and a set of acts. What’s out of my control is whether I like them, and I’m glad I do because we spent a lot of time together in this (relatively) small house.

Vacations / Trips / Visits

Due to the pandemic, our trips were curtailed greatly. We did make a Spring Break trip — just before the pandemic became serious here in the U.S. And during the pandemic, we drove to Inks Lake State Park a couple of times. Otherwise, we stayed local.

(We offered, a couple of times, to visit nearby relatives, insisting that we meet up outdoors and with masks, but those relatives declined.)

House, Neighborhood, And City

The two top house-related items for 2020 were buying a new queen mattress — that was in late February, just before the pandemic — and buying a new stove/oven in October. (The builder’s stove finally began to glitch after ten years.) We also did small things like buy a desk and chair for B, and replaced the children’s towels.

Personal

I published four short stories this year, a bit of a let-down from the eight works I published in 2019, but still an achievement considering how little time I had to myself:

• Nonanos (July)
• Juan Won (August)
• Magic Glasses (August)
• The Moral Minority (December)

But I also made an effort to work on an upcoming novel (set in the same fictional universe as Nonanos and The Moral Minority). I wrote several thousand words (at least 50,000, if we count rewrites and multiple drafts) to that end, besides working on background world-building items like naming planets, filling in the timeline, creating an entire fictional language with its own grammar rules and alphabet, designing starships and habitats, and coming up with backstories for each major character. I won’t promise to finish the novel in 2021, but I think it’s possible that I will.

Continuing an effort I began seriously in 2018, I read more than fifty books this year (see my Book Reviews list for links to all my reviews). I think I put together a good mix of sci-fi, fantasy, history, and activism — and even read a romance novel in there. And I have a nice stack of books ready to begin 2021.

Already mentioned higher up are other self-improvement activities: learning elementary Spanish, biking regularly, re-joining the chess world.

Weather

In local weather, 2020 was just slightly warmer than the average of the past 11 years (which is warmer than historical averages), and slightly rainier than our 11-year average (which is drier than historical averages). Very little was remarkable. A few things that stood out: September was our coldest September in at least 11 years and the second-rainiest. We saw only six days that hit freezing or colder (three in February and three in December), which is the fewest number of freezing days ever — we average about 18 such days per year and the previous minimum was seven freezing days in 2017.

For more our 2020 weather, see 2020’s weather page, or my Killeen weather summary page.

Conclusion

In all, 2020 was indeed a year unlike any other in my life, a year that will stick out in my memory differently than all the preceding years. There are certainly signs that 2021 will turn the corner, but I’ve learned not to get my hopes up too far, and I will continue to rely on pessimism as a self-defense mechanism.

I tend to not make new year’s resolutions, and for good reasons: (1) I’m very bad at keeping them, and (2) unforeseen circumstances reliably arise. But some things I would like to accomplish in 2021 include: finish my novel (working title: XP-4554), continue to learn Spanish, read at least 50 books, and finish saving up for a downpayment on our next house.

 

Previous “Year In Review” Entries:

2019: 2019 : Year In Review
2018: 2018 : Year In Review
2017: Year In Review: 2017
2016: Year In Review: 2016
2015: Year In Review: 2015
2014: Year In Review: 2014
2013: Year In Review: 2013
2012: Year In Review: 2012
2011: Year in Review: 2011
2010: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
2009: 2009 In Review
2008: Year in Review: 2008
2007: (no entry)
2006: (no entry)
2005: Marline’s Visit, Pt. 5 (scroll down for “Overall 2005”)
2004: (no entry)
2003: 2003: A Non-Nostalgic Remembrance
2002: Of the Year 2002
2001: (no entry)
2000: The Last Year Of The Millennium