2020 was a 365-day, widespread, universally-shared, slow-motion torture-fest / cringe-party in a crowded middle-school gymnasium with DubStep pumping madly and eye-gouging lights running 24/7.
Americans attended this party dressed in their best, only to be splashed with pigs blood and then covered in red, white, and blue confetti, looking like Tomi Lahren after her morning cross-fit.
It was the calendar equivalent of stepping on legos in bare feet while subsequently banging your knee into the corner of the bed while somehow also being naked from the waste down on national television.
Everyday seemed to feature new form of “what the fuck?” that we, as a nation, all had the enjoyment of experiencing together. While we were a pretty divided nation this year politically, we at least were unified in having to experience this together, even if the way we sometimes choose to handle it in drastically different ways.
United we stood in 2020, dumbfounded in how it could be so bad, angry that it was happening, and acting out in our own ways. And learning how to make bread.
Just in Case You Forgot
The highlight reel of hell that follows sounds likes a nightmarish version of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire delivered by that fast talking “The Micro Machines Man” from the 80s sponsored by pure hatred.
It’s Slipknot covering REM’s “It’s The End of the World As We Know It.”
In 2020, Australia was on fire for a while and later in the year, halfway around the world, a large part of California burned. Fucking Koala bears burned, which is dreadful.
Hong Kong erupted into violent protests, the pot finally boiling over for a long-suppressed people finally looking for some rights. This year’s massive protest was actually the next episode in a long story that began with the murder of a young woman and a body stuffed into a suitcase in 2018. (It’s a fantastic story, read it AFTER you read this).
Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape and sexual assault in New York and what the hell, NBA legend Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter were killed in a helicopter crash. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle noped out of the Royal Family and something, something, something about murder hornets.
Let’s pile the fuck on. Try this for something that sounds like it comes out of a fever dream:
This year, Russian voters backed a constitutional amendment that, among other things, enables Vladimir Putin to seek two more six-year terms when his current term ends in 2024, potentially allowing him to remain in power until 2036.
What the fuck is that? Go back and read that paragraph again. Slowly.
Chadwick Boseman, Marvel’s Black Panther, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg both died. So did David Prowse (Darth Fucking Vader), Alex Trebek, and Sean Connery. There were a bunch of important losses to music but I’ll get to that later.
A U.S. drone strike at Baghdad International Airport kills Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
U.S. President Donald Trump was impeached and acquitted. Then we held a national election that is still happening.
George Floyd and Stephen Covey’s Warning
There was the murder of Minneapolis man George Floyd at the hands of police officer during a traffic stop.
It doesn’t bear too much repeating that the murder, captured entirely on video, involved the white police officer kneeling on the black man’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, causing Floyd’s death and sparking a vast national outrage.
Floyd was killed over the passing of a possibly counterfeit $20 bill.
I personally felt like this monumentally unfortunate occurrence would somehow give way to an equally extraordinary moment of reflection and reevaluation. For as big a moment as Floyd’s murder was, I assumed we’d stop and change how we did things in America.
In the 1960’s, the response to a largely unpopular war was protest, conversation, eventual change and some really great music. I didn’t live through it but I feel like at least something happened.
When I look back on the impact the murder had on us as a nation, I can’t seem to decipher anything that was learned, changed, or adjusted for the long term.
The only thing I can think about is that we as a nation were robbed of a great opportunity to do literally anything other than display our unhappiness with the situation by gathering, shouting and holding signs, and occasionally burning down a business.
What a wasted effort.
I’m reminded of this quote below from Stephen Covey, author of the classic book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. While it sounds like a self-help book, and it largely is, it’s worth noting that it’s packed with a ton of insightful stuff. Like this, which applies to the Floyd murder and our reaction to it.
To learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.
The Pandemic and You Can’t Make Me
COVID-19 has taken 2020 and turned our world upside down. There’s been joblessness, homelessness, and a general pause to everything we do. You’ve been through it and so have I. Let’s not explain pandemic.
I’ve been one of the lucky few that only has had to worry about relatively minor things like the boredom of isolation and sadness of not being around friends and family.
In March of this year, just three months in, Americans reports 6.6 million jobless claims. That number fell gradually throughout the year but graphically and statically, it’s still scary.
That graph shows the jobless claims and how that line still has not reached the pre-pandemic numbers.
I can’t shake the feeling though that the true face of the pandemic has largely gone unnoticed and we’re all going to learn a lot when the dust settles.
I watched the news with anxiety rising over the climbing COVID-19 case numbers and deaths. I worried about the safety of my family and others as politicians bickered, fought, and filled the airwaves and my mailbox with advertisements about how much they cared about me.
I bought toilet paper in bulk, food by the case, and alcohol by the way-too-fucking much.
I got angry at the slow pace of progress to help people. In the movies, this cure would be out a lot quicker, I thought stupidly as a mature 40-year-old man.
But I count myself lucky to have been watching from the sidelines of the pandemic. I never had to sit in a long line of cars to get a box of food so my family could eat and then live with having to ration food someone else gave to me. I never had to get tested for COVID-19 so someone didn’t shove a seemingly mile-long cotton swab into my brain.
I didn’t have to send a loved one to the hospital to battle COVID-19 alone. The idea of my son being alone in the hospital instilled an incredible amount of caution and fear in me.
Still, countless other Americans have lost jobs, waited in long lines for food, and fell deep into depression, alcoholism, and despair and grief. I’ve largely been isolated from that though, and I’m blessed.
The biggest impact COVID has had on me has been existential.
I still consider it somewhat of an unreality to be part of a shared experience where over 250,000 in America died while countless others deny or fight against the very existence of the thing responsible for the deaths.
Re-reading the above statement — even in editing — is astounding to me. I want to erase it but it’s pixel-true so there it is.
It’s been hard for me to process this rigid dichotomy, this literal two-sides to the coin example of people.
On one side, there’s the careful, compliant Americans trying to slow the pandemic. Wearing a mask is a hassle. It sucks. But you wear a mask and you stay inside when you can and sure, it’s terrible but the more we are careful, the less it sucks later.
On the other, there’s the polar opposite. There’s an angry, seething, reluctant group of my fellow Americans railing against the measures to slow the virus with clenched-teeth.
With a virus and pandemic that is as deadly serious as the people it’s killed, it astounds me that someone can be a living breathing human being that doesn’t acknowledge its existence.
In 2020, we have a virus with the realistic, it’s-fucking-happening-right-now potential to kill literally hundreds of the thousands of people. The proof is it is still happening right now, in hospitals and nursing homes across the country.
I highlighted the word still above there because I love the way it looks in this font and also, if you think very hard, you can remember a time in March of 2020 when we actually joked that we could get a handle on the pandemic.
Still, there’s a large part of the population unwilling to adhere to safety guidelines out of a perceived loss of liberties, an unwillingness to accept reality, and the bald-face fear of complying.
Grainy Internet videos of people throwing tantrums in stores over wearing masks leaves me somewhat uncertain what to think. Long into 2020, people would gathering in large groups — both Democrat and Republican — openly defiant of not-what-to-do.
This causes me to stop and wonder if the ability to stop a pandemic is a talent beyond the capabilities of America. It’s not a good feeling.
For some, the pandemic has created a need to either disprove reality with pseudo-science or worse yet, entirely replace the present reality with another based on conspiracy theories. This inability to deal with the reality of a pandemic comes from being fear of losing control and/or the sadness for a loss of a yesterday that isn’t coming back.
Watching people adopt this “You Can’t Make Me” approach to mask wearing coupled with a “Look at this Facebook Research” denial of COVID-19 has been an awful hard thing to watch.
But I guess it’s a lesson you learn as you get older: No amount of science can combat another person’s steadfast commitment avoiding change and urgent need to maintain feelings of control.
Fake facts, shaky research, and false claims help people that need to cling to control of their situation feel smarter, safer, and more superior despite having no evidence.
And With That, All My Heroes are Gone
The largest loss of this year is undoubtedly my best friend Adam Ward.
Adam passed on Nov. 8 just four days after his 39th birthday. I was lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time with him before that though and it was time well spent.
We broke quarantine together in May of 2020 when he came up and helped my rip down an old fence that sat rotting in my backyard. To be honest, I didn’t fully expect to tear down a fence to celebrate our shared celebration of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolfe’s loosening COVID-19 restrictions.
Still, there he was with his truck and tools.
We tore that fence down, opening my yard up. The result was fantastic and gave me an impression of my property I didn’t know was possible. And it snowballed.
Soon he was walking the property with my wife, making grand plans for a privacy fence, deck off of the house, and other improvements. I’d hear random snippets of conversations that sounded like bits of Home Depot ads or HGTV commercials.
“… meandering walkway..,” I’d hear my wife say. “…open concept, sandstone, really yoga feel…” I’d hear Adam repeat.
I’d be cleaning up my tools and he would be walking the property with my wife, stoking the fires of inspiration. Those two would be planning out the next couple of weeks and talking projects. Adam would point out areas that had to be cleared and eagerly suggested the trees that just had to go.
And they went.
We spent quite a bit of time together before he left us and all of it was good. Sometimes now, when I look out my back window, I can see him sitting there waiting for me to come out and start a fire, just like we would at the end of a long July Saturday following a day of work.
I often write about him because I enjoy seeing it documented somehow. I like seeing a record of what we shared together. Writing it lets me relive it. Sometimes I think it’s because I don’t want to forget.
There’s a Bright Side
But for all its faults, frustrations, lockdowns and loss, 2020 has had at least one bright point. I ended up getting married again, a feat I once thought impossible.
On a bright, beautiful, warm morning in mid-July, I ascended a mile-long path in a state park in Cook Forest, Pa.
A brief ceremony was held in a big clearing atop a smooth, rock surface surrounded almost entirely with trees with the exception of the overlook, which gave way to a view of a lush wooded valley.
The day was remarkable for several reasons, not the least of which was the way my wife looked. I’ve seen many things in my life but I’ve never seen anything quite as beautiful as my wife that day.
I’ve heard of having your breath taken away but I thought that was just something people said. We breathe automatically without thought as an evolutionary level-up bonus because, let’s be honest, what a pain in the ass it would be to have to consciously breathe.
On July 10, 2020, my wife erased temporarily millions of years of evolutionary progress when her stunning beauty literally took my breath away.
(I recovered seconds later and continued the whole breathing on my own thing, no worries).
I was surrounded by just enough family and friends for it all to be what I wanted it to be. Adam gave the best man speech — his second of my life — and it was glorious.
When I think about what 2020 took away from us, I’m somewhat grateful that I was able to take something back from it that will last. This year will come to a close but my relationship and memories will go on.
