Here is a happy thought:
There is only one answer that anyone could be absolutely sure would be correct. Dead. The only state of being the individual has complete control over.
Have a nice evening!
Depends. There are a lot of things going on right now “right next door” in Portland that are filling me with dread and a sense of foreboading of worse to come. There are things happening with our northerly neighbors (or rumors of such anyway) that could have immense repercussions for me personally if true.
Or I could be happily protesting the deplorable state of backwardness of my state government while Prez Biden works to fix every damn thing that simpleton and his handlers have messed up (or as much as can be repaired)
Likely moved to a new house, still keeping same job, gotten married. Most likely debt-free at last, after many years of wrestling with credit-card debt. Not sure I’d still keep my current SmartCar. A lot of these plans depend on how much Covid allows me to travel around.
Shoulda barred this (and all similar) responses too. Dang. 
No dithering! Man up and make a guess, future posters!
I expect vaccine or no vaccine I’ll be working the same job, living in the same apartment. I just expect less chaos on my job with changing schedules, coping with one covid-induced crisis after another, and so on (for example: yesterday I got called to come in to cover for someone who went into quarantine)
Hoping to have my largest personal projects either completed or closer to doing so (downsizing my pile of stuff and getting back to creating things).
In my new house, working on my Canadian PR status, hopefully working for the same company. That’s the plan, anyway.
Assuming that things don’t get worse COVID-wise and we can get that dumb shit out of the oval office, in a year, I’ll be within nine months of retirement, and will have re-financed the house at the super-low interest rate. I expect to spent much of the next year working from home as I do now. I don’t think much else will have changed – horses will still be with me, the dog will be a year older and hopefully a bit more mellow. Maybe I’ll have the new pergola built by then.
Dammit, beat me to it.
sigh.
ok. I see three potential futures right now, some more likely than others
I will either be partaking in armed rebellion against someone I will come to consider to be an illegitmate and unconstitutional occupier of the white house as he and his cronies deliberately foster and incite insurrection in various areas of the country, or I will be (if the rumours are true) living in a refugee facility of some sort in Canada, or I will be happily living my normal life with a mentally human, nominally intelligent and sane person in the oval office who is working hard to repair the damage done by the current person in there, all while protesting the utterly dumb legislative and executive decisions made by my state.
I will most certainly be doing one of those things.
I’m not trying to fight the hypothetical, but you yourself acknowledge the uncertainty of the times. I wish I could be more definitive as to what I will be doing. But I am prepared or preparing to do any one or any combination of those three things.
Summoning some optimism here …
I’ll be working at the same job, which will have hired enough people to hit that magic “we gotta offer insurance” level so I can have access to health care.
I’ll have fully unpacked all my shit, renewed my lease for another year but perhaps started poking around the possibility of finding a home of my very own to purchase. If not, I’ll have gotten the backyard fenced so I can have a couple of chickens.
Maybe by then, I’ll have sprung for a bidet attachment for the toilet. In all honesty, my 3-year plan is “chickens” and “bidet toilet.”
And someone I care about, who cares about me. But that may take a bit longer, sadly.
Damn, @Trinopus, I am genuinely sorry to hear that. That just sucks.
Bless you, Bullitt! The really sad thing is that quite a few millions of American minimum-wage workers have no retirement plan outside of Social Security. An awful lot, in fact, are in debt – horrible credit card debt. (I have avoided that death-trap…) And, of course, millions of American workers are undocumented, and so don’t even have Social Security to look forward to.
Toss in a pandemic…and a hurricane on its way to hit the east coast…climate change…Chinese aggression… Not necessary a happy day in Stalingrad…
I think that a lot of us (me included) may be sitting fat, dumb & happy in the middle of a global “phony war” with a shitload of bad shit coming down the pipe.
I’m in Quebec at the moment, with a mandatory indoor public mask policy (which I completely agree with btw) in which maybe 20% either don’t wear masks properly or at all. And then, every Tues night in Vancouver there’s a drum circle attended by a few hundred born-again hippies in their early 20s (just too damn cool for masks and distancing).
And then I hear pundits talking about how of course young people just need to have fun; well here’s the thing - maybe this is just bad enough that we can’t go on as normal for the next five years or so. Maybe, just as young people had to “grow up” and fly Spitfires and command Lancasters and corvettes, they and the rest of us will have to grow up (I’m 61 ffs) and take this seriously.
At any rate, one year hence, I probably will continue working at my current job (hopefully or thrust into early retirement) but splitting between work from home and work from office (with mask). That’s if we’re lucky.
@Trinopus, what can be done to fix this?
My opinion – go back to the structure post WWII, with a large middle class and strong labor unions. And, yeah, high tax rates, for redistributing wealth.
Instead, what I think is going to happen is a new wave of inflation, reducing the effective national debt at the expense of immense harm to the poorest of us.
I ask for bread…and will get a stone.
Gotcha. May more bread come your way, and for those who hand out stones when bread is asked for, may those stones be shoved up their asses.
I hope that, a year from now, I will have gotten a SARS-COV-2 vaccine. I hope to be enjoying the luxury of griping about President Biden’s shortcomings. I hope that I will be able to travel again, although what I most wanted to do this summer, and what I most want to do next summer, is stick around for the LA County Underwater Unit’s Advanced Diver Program. I hope to go to those weddings and parties that have been postponed, and hug my parents.
I don’t hope that the pandemic will devastate the economy and cause the housing market to collapse, but I anticipate it will, and I plan to take advantage of the opportunity to buy a house. That may not happen within the next year, but probably within the next 5.
Worst-case, I feel my job and current housing are at least secure, and I’m grateful for that. I plan to keep marching, donating, volunteering, and writing to my elected representatives in protest of this dystopia we’ve become. Some of my coworkers have created a coalition with some BLM activists to work on a plan to address the systemic racism in the child welfare system, and though I’m overwhelmed with projects already I’m trying to lend that effort as much support as I can. I expect to continue these efforts for years to come, even if Biden wins.
I imagine that, if Trump gets a second term and/or the vaccine doesn’t pan out, I will eventually catch the virus, maybe more than once. I will probably survive; I just hope it doesn’t cause permanent lung damage that forces me to give up diving. If I recover and they’re still using convalescent plasma, I’ll donate. I’ll keep wearing a mask and social distancing. I’m not sure what else I can do. I really hope things don’t keep going this direction for another year.
Did you steal my life? I’m in this exact situation. And it’s 7 years because my wife is younger in an essential, low-wage, no benefit job.
I expect the political thing to crest later this summer and then fizzle out mid November either way. Most of the actions are not as dire (unless you’re a wolf) as the clickbait headlines lead one to believe. Expect the weddings, funerals, events to slowly ramp up in my area. Went to a traditional Wisconsin wedding last weekend with 150 in church and 250-300 family and staff at the reception. No reported cases yet. By next weekend I expect the all clear. Many off those same people were in my yard for daughters grad party yesterday. Even less worried as everyone was outside and there was a decent breeze most of the day.
Great plan until I send my trained bunny to steal your Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator ,
Dammit, you caught me. I try to be original, you see, but the Dopers here are too interesting not to imitate.
@Esprise_Me hit the nail on the head, hoping for the COVID vaccine and complaining about a President Biden.
Somewhere. Other. Than. Here. I am never spending an entire goddamn summer in Mississippi again, although I admit the peaches are nice. And I am never passing up a chance to travel again. You never know what might happen.