What a fucking year. At the beginning of 2020 I was looking forward to a year of tenure and travel. Here, at the end, I’m looking back on a year of turmoil.
I did end up getting tenure (I got the notice while on a socially distanced beach vacation in July) and I did some travel in January and March. I was in fact visiting family in Minnesota on the day the pandemic was declared: March 11, 2020. I canceled my flight and rented a car to drive home, stopping in St. Louis to visit my sister along the way. In fact, the last time I ate inside a restaurant was at a burger place in St. Louis (when social distancing was in effect, but mask-wearing was not… it makes me nervous to remember now).
I made it home and immediately had to transition my courses to online. Since 2017 I had been working more and more to deliberately make my classes as little like online classes as possible. Joke’s on me, I guess. But I pulled though, as did most of the students. Poor students.
Over the course of the year I read a lot (see my Goodreads year in review). I’ve never been so thankful for my porch. It’s where I did a lot of reading this year (including a re-read of one of my new obsessions: Stephen King’s Dark Tower series). Having an outdoor space to relax probably did more for my mental health this year than anything else. It’s an unusually warm December 31 in the upper 50's (Fahrenheit), and I’m writing this on the porch (in a sweatshirt, but I’m out here).
I miss going to restaurants, but the thing I think I miss most is movie theaters. A lot of movies are being delayed or released simultaneously on streaming (like Wonder Woman 1984 last week). The last movie I saw in theaters was Downhill with Beth on Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t very good. I hate to think that was the last movie I saw in a theater in 2020, but such is life.
Will movie theaters still exist whenever it’s safe to go them again (hopefully late 2021)? We’ll see. I have a slim hope that this calamity for the movie theater industry may create a larger niche for smaller independent theaters that are able to offer a more unique experience. But goddamn, I miss sitting in the dark with strangers eating popcorn, candy, and soda. I was often that weirdo seeing a movie by himself in the middle of a weekday. Will I ever be that weirdo again?
In May, George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer on a street corner I’m familiar with, which set off a series of protests around the country, and even around the world (including many here in Chattanooga that I attended). For a while it seemed like maybe a turning point had been reached on the issue of police violence toward Black and Brown communities. Several months later I’m not so sure.
I made it home and immediately had to transition my courses to online. Since 2017 I had been working more and more to deliberately make my classes as little like online classes as possible. Joke’s on me, I guess. But I pulled though, as did most of the students. Poor students.
Over the course of the year I read a lot (see my Goodreads year in review). I’ve never been so thankful for my porch. It’s where I did a lot of reading this year (including a re-read of one of my new obsessions: Stephen King’s Dark Tower series). Having an outdoor space to relax probably did more for my mental health this year than anything else. It’s an unusually warm December 31 in the upper 50's (Fahrenheit), and I’m writing this on the porch (in a sweatshirt, but I’m out here).
I miss going to restaurants, but the thing I think I miss most is movie theaters. A lot of movies are being delayed or released simultaneously on streaming (like Wonder Woman 1984 last week). The last movie I saw in theaters was Downhill with Beth on Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t very good. I hate to think that was the last movie I saw in a theater in 2020, but such is life.
Will movie theaters still exist whenever it’s safe to go them again (hopefully late 2021)? We’ll see. I have a slim hope that this calamity for the movie theater industry may create a larger niche for smaller independent theaters that are able to offer a more unique experience. But goddamn, I miss sitting in the dark with strangers eating popcorn, candy, and soda. I was often that weirdo seeing a movie by himself in the middle of a weekday. Will I ever be that weirdo again?
In May, George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer on a street corner I’m familiar with, which set off a series of protests around the country, and even around the world (including many here in Chattanooga that I attended). For a while it seemed like maybe a turning point had been reached on the issue of police violence toward Black and Brown communities. Several months later I’m not so sure.
I’ve been part of the Community Control Now coalition to get an independent civilian oversight board here in Chattanooga. A few weeks ago the election commission threw out enough signatures it may not be on the ballot, but there are efforts to fight this. We’ll see how that goes. And we’ll see how the larger struggle goes, too. I do think there’s at least more awareness among my fellow white people. But whether that will translate into long-term meaningful change I can’t say.
And of course the 2020 election still happened. Even if the President is still crying foul, Biden's inauguration day is just a few weeks away and the Georgia Senate runoff that will decide the fate of the Senate happens next week. Things in my area went badly, but not unexpectedly. At least I still have a Democratic State Rep.
The damage to our democracy in the long term by this President and the general culture that he and the right wing media have promoted is hard to calculate, and it will be with us for a long time, I’m afraid. A substantial part of the American population is in the grip of harmful conspiracy theories, and many of them would say the same about me. As MLK asked over 50 years ago, where do we go from here?
After much haranguing and gnashing of teeth, UTC opened in the fall with some online, some hybrid, and some face-to-face classes. My hybrid classes morphed into completely online classes over time, for which I was thankful. The semester went okay, or as okay as one could expect, but there was a constant background stress for me and the students about the whole thing. It was stressful just getting several notices every week about students in and out of quarantine, and some testing positive for COVID. I admit I went easy on them this semester, but I think we should all go easy on each other right now.
Beth and I have been lucky to remain employed during all this. And somehow sharing a two-bedroom duplex apartment for nine months of a pandemic hasn’t incited any murder-suicides yet. It’s great to have the cats (I created an Instagram just for pictures of them). And our streaming services. And I still have more books at home than I could read in five years. And I’ve been writing a lot more on my blog, as with my Pandemic Journal.
I greatly dislike sorting people into generations or relying too heavily on some mythical reductive introvert-extrovert dichotomy, but to whatever extent I’m a Gen X introvert this has helped me a lot. A lifetime of cultivating the ability to entertain myself endlessly with books, movies, games, walks, naps, writing, etc. has finally paid off. Not that I’m completely isolated; like many people this year, I’ve done a lot of video conferencing with friends and family, including some regular D&D sessions with friends.
I also managed to publish a few things (mostly stuff that was in the review process from 2019 or earlier… such are the lackadaisical ways of academia). I managed to get to the APA in Philadelphia in early January, but all my other academic conferences were canceled or postponed: one in Salt Lake City in April, one in Hawaii in May, and the Tennessee Philosophical Association conference in Nashville in October. The Hawaii conference has already been re-postponed to 2022. Beth had a conference in New Mexico in the summer, and I hoped to join her. I even momentarily floated the idea of a very long solo road trip to explore some of the Western states along the way (something I’ve always had a secret desire to do).
I did a lot with my union (United Campus Workers). My term as UTC Caucus Chair ends today. I surely could have done better and more, but I feel like I did a decent job keeping the organization running and even growing during one of the most difficult years any of us have faced. I’m glad to let someone else take over that job, although I will still be involved.
As for the pandemic itself, it looked like things might be getting better in early summer, but then we had spikes in the middle of the summer and then November and December have gotten really bad. And Tennessee has some of the worst numbers in the world by cases and test positivity rates. For some reason, wearing masks became politicized. And a lot of Americans just aren’t taking this seriously. I’m horrified whenever I have to go out. Most people are wearing masks inside, but not everyone. I’m experiencing a level of anxiety about being around people I didn’t know I could have, even when I’m outside. I try to go on walks on less busy streets just to avoid people. Will I ever feel normal around people again?
And we get little to no coordination at the federal level. And the Governor of Tennessee resolutely refuses to create a statewide mask mandate (although we have one in my county). Congress has been stalling a second aid package for six months, and now we’re getting $600 checks amid impending evictions and high unemployment.
I love this country in my own way, but I’ve never been patriotic in any conventional sense. Our pandemic (non-)response has been beyond embarrassing. It’s horrific. It’s disgusting how this government and its people have botched this, revealing the ugly inequalities that were there all along (for example, Black Americans are more likely to die from COVID due to these inequalities). And things only seem to be getting worse. We’ve had more cases and more deaths than any other country on Earth through almost the whole pandemic.
(And of course we have the looming threat of climate change behind all of this… the US non-response to the pandemic doesn’t give me a lot of confidence for how we’re dealing with that collective threat).
We have vaccines, but so far not many have been given out and there’s a lack of coordination about distribution that leaves me less than hopeful that we’ll get enough people vaccinated to end this pandemic by the end of 2021 (even if it has effectively ended in a few countries already).
Let me post the numbers here at the end of this cursed year.
Worldwide
Cases: 83,670,246
Deaths: 1,822,617
US
Cases: 20,386,101
Deaths: 353,226
Hamilton County, TN
Cases: 29,530
Deaths: 273
So how do I feel at the end of this fucking hell of a year? Exhausted. Sad. Overwhelmed. Anxious. Occasionally at peace with myself. So, I guess... lots of things.
Given where we are and what my country has shown itself to be, it’s hard to say how much hope I have for 2021. I’ve given up on “back to normal,” but this year has shown us that normal wasn’t so great, not for all of us. Let’s just say I think it’s possible things will get better. Maybe in the absence of anything quite like hope, acknowledging a possibility is enough.
And of course the 2020 election still happened. Even if the President is still crying foul, Biden's inauguration day is just a few weeks away and the Georgia Senate runoff that will decide the fate of the Senate happens next week. Things in my area went badly, but not unexpectedly. At least I still have a Democratic State Rep.
The damage to our democracy in the long term by this President and the general culture that he and the right wing media have promoted is hard to calculate, and it will be with us for a long time, I’m afraid. A substantial part of the American population is in the grip of harmful conspiracy theories, and many of them would say the same about me. As MLK asked over 50 years ago, where do we go from here?
After much haranguing and gnashing of teeth, UTC opened in the fall with some online, some hybrid, and some face-to-face classes. My hybrid classes morphed into completely online classes over time, for which I was thankful. The semester went okay, or as okay as one could expect, but there was a constant background stress for me and the students about the whole thing. It was stressful just getting several notices every week about students in and out of quarantine, and some testing positive for COVID. I admit I went easy on them this semester, but I think we should all go easy on each other right now.
Beth and I have been lucky to remain employed during all this. And somehow sharing a two-bedroom duplex apartment for nine months of a pandemic hasn’t incited any murder-suicides yet. It’s great to have the cats (I created an Instagram just for pictures of them). And our streaming services. And I still have more books at home than I could read in five years. And I’ve been writing a lot more on my blog, as with my Pandemic Journal.
I greatly dislike sorting people into generations or relying too heavily on some mythical reductive introvert-extrovert dichotomy, but to whatever extent I’m a Gen X introvert this has helped me a lot. A lifetime of cultivating the ability to entertain myself endlessly with books, movies, games, walks, naps, writing, etc. has finally paid off. Not that I’m completely isolated; like many people this year, I’ve done a lot of video conferencing with friends and family, including some regular D&D sessions with friends.
I also managed to publish a few things (mostly stuff that was in the review process from 2019 or earlier… such are the lackadaisical ways of academia). I managed to get to the APA in Philadelphia in early January, but all my other academic conferences were canceled or postponed: one in Salt Lake City in April, one in Hawaii in May, and the Tennessee Philosophical Association conference in Nashville in October. The Hawaii conference has already been re-postponed to 2022. Beth had a conference in New Mexico in the summer, and I hoped to join her. I even momentarily floated the idea of a very long solo road trip to explore some of the Western states along the way (something I’ve always had a secret desire to do).
I did a lot with my union (United Campus Workers). My term as UTC Caucus Chair ends today. I surely could have done better and more, but I feel like I did a decent job keeping the organization running and even growing during one of the most difficult years any of us have faced. I’m glad to let someone else take over that job, although I will still be involved.
As for the pandemic itself, it looked like things might be getting better in early summer, but then we had spikes in the middle of the summer and then November and December have gotten really bad. And Tennessee has some of the worst numbers in the world by cases and test positivity rates. For some reason, wearing masks became politicized. And a lot of Americans just aren’t taking this seriously. I’m horrified whenever I have to go out. Most people are wearing masks inside, but not everyone. I’m experiencing a level of anxiety about being around people I didn’t know I could have, even when I’m outside. I try to go on walks on less busy streets just to avoid people. Will I ever feel normal around people again?
And we get little to no coordination at the federal level. And the Governor of Tennessee resolutely refuses to create a statewide mask mandate (although we have one in my county). Congress has been stalling a second aid package for six months, and now we’re getting $600 checks amid impending evictions and high unemployment.
I love this country in my own way, but I’ve never been patriotic in any conventional sense. Our pandemic (non-)response has been beyond embarrassing. It’s horrific. It’s disgusting how this government and its people have botched this, revealing the ugly inequalities that were there all along (for example, Black Americans are more likely to die from COVID due to these inequalities). And things only seem to be getting worse. We’ve had more cases and more deaths than any other country on Earth through almost the whole pandemic.
(And of course we have the looming threat of climate change behind all of this… the US non-response to the pandemic doesn’t give me a lot of confidence for how we’re dealing with that collective threat).
We have vaccines, but so far not many have been given out and there’s a lack of coordination about distribution that leaves me less than hopeful that we’ll get enough people vaccinated to end this pandemic by the end of 2021 (even if it has effectively ended in a few countries already).
Let me post the numbers here at the end of this cursed year.
Worldwide
Cases: 83,670,246
Deaths: 1,822,617
US
Cases: 20,386,101
Deaths: 353,226
Hamilton County, TN
Cases: 29,530
Deaths: 273
So how do I feel at the end of this fucking hell of a year? Exhausted. Sad. Overwhelmed. Anxious. Occasionally at peace with myself. So, I guess... lots of things.
Given where we are and what my country has shown itself to be, it’s hard to say how much hope I have for 2021. I’ve given up on “back to normal,” but this year has shown us that normal wasn’t so great, not for all of us. Let’s just say I think it’s possible things will get better. Maybe in the absence of anything quite like hope, acknowledging a possibility is enough.
"Happy New Year!" seems like an oddly dissonant thing to say in the cacophony of 2020. So maybe instead I'll say, "May 2021 be better for you and yours than 2020."
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