2020 was some kind of year. Much of it was bad, but with it came a lot of re-discovery, some of which was good.
First, it was learning how to properly wash your hands.
Then, how important toilet paper is.
There was a bounty of really good streaming shows we unmined, not realizing how much entertainment was truly out there, just waiting for us.
New creatures were discovered with something called Murder Hornets. OK, this wasn't good, but it would make for a great sports team mascot.
Civil rights discussions and protests exploded in ways not seen since the 1960s. Some of that explosiveness was not good because parts of cities literally exploded. But the awareness and potential change that was reaped could be really good in the long run.
Other common re-discoveries?
Time was unearthed in abundance via hours and hours of quarantining that would have been spent commuting or doing something outside of the home.
Common decency toward human beings made a comeback. At least until an event on a Minneapolis street turned everything upside down. Then chaos in Portland. And Kenosha. But even among those moments, some kindness was found, too.
Common sense? That seemed to be as hard to find as hand sanitizer and "extra" mid-November votes in Georgia among so much of what was going on all year.
One thing for me in 2020, along with lots of space in my garage after a serious purge, was rediscovering the idea of sharing some writing again… utilizing a medium that’s only 20 years old. Do people still read blogs anymore? Because you can probably watch 20 TikTok videos and a handful of Insta-stories in the time it takes to read through a post. Or if words are your thing, it’s much easier to read them in 280-character increments than a collection of paragraphs. Maybe it’d be better to call this a transcribed podcast instead?
I hope the reading of blogs is also re-discovered, because I ventured back into these waters due to so much swimming through my mind lately. Rather than sharing something for the umpteenth time to my family members, I thought it best to dump things here.
If it’s nothing more than an echo amid empty space, at least my wife can just focus on watching another episode of The Mindy Project without me interrupting to ponder if The Office was the greatest collection and launchpad of talents to other entertainment vehicles.
And my kids can watch their plethora of subtitled Anime shows without me noting it's curious that there doesn't seem to be that many Asian characters in all of these shows of a genre developed in Japan.
So, I’ll just leave that kind of stuff here. For you and me. Or at least just me. But if you’re a you that’s reading this, feel free to share your own thoughts. Though be careful, because in 2020, and now into 2021, one last thing we also discovered is the sharing of thoughts can be just as toxic as pandemic germs.
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