2021

So, like, this is a novel combination of New Year's Day feelings.

For one, as I mentioned yesterday, it genuinely still feels like March 2020.  Given, though, that vaccine distribution, while it will (hopefully) ramp up in due course, will undoubtedly be continuing well into the second and third quarters of the coming year, I suspect the pall of March 2020 won't really feel truly lifted until April 2022 when (again, hopefully) we'll be able to do real "April" things again.  Insofar as anyone can really make "plans" these days: What are those?  (Every past year's me simultaneously shudders at the thought.)

On the other hand, New Year's Day is, fundamentally, just the day after the last, like any other.  Nothing terribly earth-shattering has happened.  Twenty-twenty-one is a continuation of twenty-twenty in so many more senses than usual.  Twenty-twenty, part two.  There's a temptation to affix a roman numeral and call it "2020-II", but that would be too easily confused with the proper name for the following year, when (hoooppefulllllyyyy) far much more of this can be aptly described as "behind us".  In the meantime, perhaps more resonant, if a bit defeatist: twenty-twenty came for us, and twenty-twenty won.

Of course, for most of us, it didn't actually.  We've adapted, as humans have done through the ages.  It's still important to make plans and to set goals.  The key has been to remain supremely flexible in throwing out plans and goals — often repeatedly — and picking something else that ends up suiting the present moment better.  As you can inevitably understand, this is undeniably easier said than done.

And so, a lot of us have been continually deferring things, which has meant that a lot of us have been talking about 2021 as this bright, rosy thing for quite a while now.  And I think it's pretty clear it will have a lot of rosiness throughout, even if the exact timing and nature of those positives isn't yet known.

But let's not be naïve: We're pretty far down in the depths right now.  It will take time to work our way out of that, both individually and collectively, and there will be setbacks along the way.  Remember in March when there seemed to be this conviction that we'd be through this in just two months?  Postponing events just to ultimately have to postpone them again?  That's not likely over.  And that sucks.  It's real rough in both a logistical sense and an emotional sense.

Yet all this clearing of space can still — somehow — offer opportunity.  For my part, in a year when most normal journeys have been curtailed, I've spent the last five months or so embarking on the latest of my series of journeys of self-discovery.  Some of those have been bigger ones, some smaller.  Some I've shared (albeit not here; I'm a terrible blogger) and others I haven't.  I get the sense that this one is on the more significant side of the scale, which has been daunting at times.  But I also feel much better equipped for this trek and I definitely know that I'm far from alone.  So that has been helping a lot.

So when it comes to my goals this year, I honestly — and uncharacteristically — haven't got a clue about the "how" that's ahead of me.  Nevertheless, the usually-nebulous hope and confidence that I have actually feels more concrete and tangible than ever.  In other words, I think I've got some good leads, guys; and ones that I can probably make real progress on despite the current state of the world.  It's quite appropriate, then — though not at all unique — that the name "twenty-twenty" is carried forward as part of twenty-twenty-one, and on through the rest of the decade that lies beyond.

Not to distill it too far, but this year's gonna be less of a datebook and more of a checklist.  "Whenever" is fine.  It is Absolutely Fine.

And while no grand checklist is ever complete, hopefully — can you hear the strain in my voice? — enough boxes will be filled that 2021 will be full of fond and rosy memories.

Hopefully.