Well before COVID-19 made a mess of 2020, people turned to social media to curse the outgoing year. It didn't take a pandemic that upended society and mangled time so that many days felt like forgettable weeks. Usually it just took a cluster of celebrity deaths to start blaming the calendar.
"First, Philip Seymour Hoffman. Now Harold Ramis? 2014 can suck it!"
When I see "Death to 2020" pop up on Netflix amid shorter, blunter sentiments, it strikes my ears and eyes as trite, even if it's true. We should've kept our powder dry for a year like this one.
2020 sucked. We're going to be dealing with the ramifications of this year for a lot of the next decade, and we can only try to steel ourselves with our best guesses.
I went the entire year without seeing my family. I didn't get to say goodbye to my friends when I left New York. It took about seven months in Nashville before somebody learned I existed in a non-business transaction. I'm an introvert by nature and often welcome solitude, but the extent of the isolation from living that dead-end host life registered unfamiliar feelings. On one end, a melancholy that comes and goes. On the other end, the strange exhilaration from simply being recognized by face and name.
And I'm probably better off than most. Perhaps some scars will linger due to the unprecedented nature of it all, but I imagine even a painfully gradual return to normal life will resolve the biggest issues, and I'm hoping I'll find myself surprised and delighted by previously mild joys. For others, the path back isn't nearly as straightforward, whether it's due to unimaginable grief, economic hardships, or what else this catastrophe inflicted.
When it comes to the 2021 season, I'd love it if we never saw another game with zero fans in the stands, even if the season has to be delayed to make it work. The conditions of the 2020 season worked remarkably well for something that was made up as it went along, but it's no way to baseball, especially as the economic model of team-building becomes increasingly disconnected from fan satisfaction. Take it from somebody who realized how few in-person interactions he had over the course of 2020: The lack of direct, nearby feedback isn't healthy.
Happy New Year, everybody. I hope you made the best of a bad hand in 2020, and nobody should feel inadequate if they didn't.
