I don’t even know how to answer. I kicked off the year by uprooting my entire life: breaking up with my boyfriend, packing up my extensive shit, and moving across the country to a state where I’d never set foot & knew exactly one (1) person.
It had to be done, and at the time, the timing was right. My lease was up, my relationship was kaput, my job was over … and for very many reasons, I badly wanted to GTFO of the city, and state, and region.
Covid meant renting the 2nd house I saw (the 1st got rented out from under me) lest the property management offices close & leave me stuck in my friend-of-a-friend’s attic indefinitely. I basically jumped on the first available unit that would lease to me. Can’t say that was ideal.
Covid has enforced isolation just when I left all social networks and moved to a brand new place. It’s hard for me to tell if quarantine is enabling my natural introvert tendency, or exacerbating it, or just providing a convenient excuse.
My ex is in a similar position, and we’ve leaned on each other far more than we might have if we were each able to, yanno, meet new people. I haven’t decided if that’s good or bad: move on? or reconcile?
I’ve worked retail since all this shit hit the collective fan, so it’s not like I’m isolating myself. In fact, I’ve interacted with hundreds of strangers - and their filthy cash dollars - every day that I earned money.
So I dunno. Covid hasn’t hit me as hard as some, but my life was turned upside-down this year regardless.
I got a phone call from my brother on New Year’s Eve, and subsequently spent the stroke of midnight on a plane on my way to visit my mother for the last five days of her life. So the year didn’t start out very well for me.
COVID certainly impacted me, but I can’t say it was entirely negative. I was out of work for four months but was able to draw unemployment plus the extra weekly allotment, so I lost nothing financially. The worst thing about the pandemic for me has been having to forego my annual Anniversary trip with my wife and my annual Baseball trip with my best friend. And I do realize that makes me pretty lucky. Though now I feel the sting of not being able to visit my Brothers for the first Thanksgiving without mom, which sucks.
But the other big news stories of the year, notably the devastating wildfires here in California and the racial tensions across the country (fueled by the idiot in charge) have been pretty horrific.
And the one thing we should have to celebrate right now is being marred by the big baby trying not to give up his power, just to keep everyone’s anxiety level high until at least the end of the year.
2020’s been dreadful for me, and it had almost nothing to do with the pandemic. In the last week of May, I got an infection in my foot. I delayed getting it looked at because of the pandemic’s effect of making it hard to find a doctor. I got a fever, and went to the ER. It turned out to be a resistant staph infection that moved to bones in my feet, my blood, and the pacemaker leads in my heart. Surgeons took out the bad foot bones and my pacemaker. I spent most of the summer getting IV vancomycin and physical therapy. Just when they thought I was over it and sent me home, the damn thing jumped into a disc in my back. Another surgery, another bunch of pt, and another 6 weeks on the IV. Fortunately, they decided to teach my wife how to do the IVs for the last month.
I have finally been declared free of the MRSA.
My home state of Indiana is in the middle of another peak of new coronavirus cases, up 96% in just the last 2 weeks.
I worked at Boeing on the 737 production line. Since November of 2019 till the day I retired on October 2nd, everything has been a total cluster at the Boeing Renton plant and are still to this day. Management does not have clue what to do. It was decided to install a new production model while no airplanes are being built. When tested on multiple time over the past few months, it has been mostly a failure. Hopefully the production line will begin in earnest soon and things will get back to “normal”. Since October 2nd, everything has been wonderful for me. Being retired sure helps.
Well 2020 started off great with the Kansas City Chiefs winning the Super Bowl. My kids were all set to graduate high school. We were looking forward to first wedding of the next generation in my family. Then a big summer vacation.
Then covid hit. No graduations. No big family wedding. No vacations.
Well, among other things 2020 set the record for the number of named storms in the Atlantic. Louisiana did not enjoy being hit twice in the same place. Neither did Nicaragua. So weather wise, it wasn’t a stellar year (unless you work for the weather channel).
This has been a year of ups and downs for us but mostly good, I’d say.
This year we paid off our mortgage and both cars. We’re not totally debt-free but boy, what a weight off our shoulders. I had a good-paying job with the Census and my husband’s job is still steady.
However, my husband’s mother died in March, the day before our anniversary. She had been steadily declining since a stroke in 2016 but her passing was still a surprise. We had all been to her house eight days earlier to celebrate my birthday. She seemed happy and healthy then. That was a Saturday. The following Saturday night she had a seizure. Sunday she was in and out all day, Monday morning she was gone. This would have been awful enough without Covid, but the lockdown in our area started the day of her funeral. Friends and family members who already were having trouble with sudden, unexpected travel plans suddenly weren’t allowed to come to the service anyway.
But aside from Betty’s death, the year really hasn’t been so bad for us, Covid notwithstanding.
From a personal perspective this year has not really been that bad for me. Both my wife and I remain employed and since we’re working from home we’re spending less money on fuel, restaurants, etc., etc. We’re probably better off financially right now. Since since May I’ve started walking every day, right now I walk approximately 7 miles daily, and I’ve lost 30 pounds so my health is improving!
2020 has been a fairly shitty year, COVID or not. My mom was diagnosed with cancer. Dad was diagnosed with dementia that same week. My son was diagnosed with scoliosis (fortunately not quite so bad it requires surgery, but it does require a brace). Overygirl broke two bones (but given that in 2016 she broke 6, I guess that’s not awful).
Then there’s the election and learning that people don’t actually care how many horrible things our president does so long as he bleats “conservative” values that would make you cringe if your drunk uncle was the one spouting them at the table. It was really depressing to see how close the election was and fairly predictable that, instead of ceding for the sake of the country, he instead tried to overturn the decision like a dictator.
COVID just complicated everything that much more by adding a dash of fear and added stress to the mix.
My wife and I started new jobs while our old ones would have disappeared. We bought a new house and a new car. Which reminds me, I survived a rollover car wreck, and the driver who ran me off the road fessed up. My toddler is now potty trained. I’d say I’ve had a decent year, personally. Y’know, other than the chaos and tragedy of local, national and world events, of course.
Without COVID it would have been a great year. I had tickets to two concerts and several sports events. I had made arrangements to go on six trips, including two international. All canceled.
Let’s see. Good friend died in February. Cousin died of a heart attack in June, leaving his three young children with his wife who has terminal breast cancer. My father was hospitalized basically for neglecting his health. He didn’t manage to finish himself off but he’s working towards that goal. Another cousin was found by his 19-year-old son after dying of an aneurysm. My father-in-law continues to do nothing to recover from his stroke and is thus careening towards complete decrepitude. On the way out, he is spending all of his remaining money on health care aids he hates and won’t rely on. He was also the victim of identity theft (unrelated) so we’ve got that to deal with. Mother-in-law is understandably uninterested and incapable of helping father-in-law. I think she is starting to show signs of senility but it’s hard to tell from 3,000 miles away. Wife’s grandmother died. Wife’s aunt died.
On a personal note I started the year off by having lost the cat who comforted me after my dad’s death last September two days before New Year’s. There’s feeling alone with a pet to talk to and then there’s totally alone…
Then I suffered a serious injury in mid-January and it took seeing an orthopedist, bracing, and doing PT to get better by June.
And last weekend we had a windy come-too-early winter storm that sent a tree crashing down on my car. A lot of people suffered similar issues but the body shop was finally able to take it today.
Not completely horrible for us - ignoring concerns over world events, politics etc.
Some job stress for both of us, though we both remain employed.
Financials have been a mix: we’re spending less on discretionary stuff like restaurants, but far more (I think - will have to look at Quicken records) on groceries. But we’re supporting 3 households at the moment (us, the in-laws in FL and my daughter) .
And we’ve finally had to knuckle down and make some very large purchases which had been looming for years: the house’s roof was aging and we were beginning to spot some signs of leakage, and our 22 year old car decided it needed $$$$ in repairs, so we had to get a new one.
Elderly parents remain a frustration - they are being reasonably cautious except FIL keeps going to the library when he promises he won’t (they have books by mail) and is showing some signs of health issues - and they’re a thousand miles away, in Florida, so we can’t exactly check on them without risking our own lives.
I think I am going to get as stinkin’ drunk as I have ever been in my life, at midnight on 12/31.
No, in fact. Despite the COVID I managed to move to a better apartment; during a period that the restrictions were relaxed, I largely enjoyed summer and various activities; also, I managed to get some money from the Czech government to make up for some lost work during the first lockdown and lost very little work during the second lockdown. I used the time I gained during the lockdowns to work on my writing. So while the COVID situation is certainly worrisome and unpleasant (and hit me like lightning from a clear sky at its onset) and I hope it will end before too long and not affect me worse in the future, I wouldn’t consider 2020 to have been that bad a year for me, all things considered.
My wife’s and my jobs continued w/o interruption working from home. Some hassles, but also some benefits - and the paychecks kept coming. Meanwhile, lower expenses for gas, drycleaning, entertainment…
We are very fortunate to have a family vacation place to use, so we were able to get out of the house several times. But mostly, a lot of what we enjoy most does not depend on what was limited. We rarely eat out, and I could go the rest of my life w/o attending a movie or large party. Ability to walk/bike was unaffected. We got a new pup in March - which has been great. Golfed thru the summer/fall. And we’ve been able to play a lot of music together.
Main thing has been not playing music in groups or attending concerts as we usually do. But that’s not that big of a deal.
Trump/McConnell are horrible, but Trump will be gone soon. And as repugnant as so many recent policies, they do not DIRECTLY affect me and mine too much. So yeah - for me, this has been a pretty good year.
My mother passed away last Saturday. It really hasn’t hit me yet five days later because she’s 2000 miles away in Chicago, and I haven’t seen her since 2019 because of that and Covid. I’m still waiting for that wave of grief I know is coming, and is needed to keep being real and will totally suck, but here I am in limbo at the moment.
I mean, 2020 was shit for all the obvious reasons. On top of that I miss friends overseas, especially my oldest friend (30+ years) and his wife in Tokyo whom I haven’t seen since early 2019, and it’s unclear if I’ll see them in 2021 (all countries need to get vaccinated I guess before international travel happens, yikes).
Personally I’ve done okay financially – I have a job, I’m banking so much of what I make because what else is there to do. OTOH I’ve gained a bunch of weight and need to get my shit together because there’s been little reason to this year.
2020 suck(ed)s.
In a lot of ways, 2020 didn’t even happen. So much on hold, so little time with anyone at all, so much joyless isolation. I really didn’t live my life in 2020 except for very very brief periods. I want that time back!
WIthout COVID, 2020 is nowhere near as bad as 2006, when 3 cats died, my father died, and I was demoted at work to free up a position for the manager’s golden child.
For 2020 - my brother-in-law died (not COVID), but he was a dick, so that actually goes in the plus column. Current job promoted me - “we know you’re thinking of retiring next year but we’d like to keep you around a little longer”. Everything that was personally bad was directly or indirectly due to COVID. (Unable to travel, so many event cancellations).
COVID shortening the baseball season probably helped my Dodgers avoid their traditional collapse in the playoffs and let them win a World Series.