Im talking about 2020 in general of course...
Yep its been an odd and tiring year for everyone Im sure... Time for an annual update from me.
Early on in February I did manage to go take a week long break laying about in the sun on a Mexican beach... I went to the Caribbean side in the Cancun area which I had not visited on any of my motorbike travels in previous years... It was nice enough as far as" a week at an all inclusive resort" goes but I have no need to rush back and revisit the area or live there in retirement... But retrospectively Im glad I got to go do it before all travel anywhere on the planet got completely locked down. And it was nice and snowy in Vancouver when I left and nice and Sunny in Mexico when I arrived :)
On that front, I think its quite a good thing for us all to see just how entitled and decadent we have all become over the last couple of decades.
In my early adult life it was unusual for people to travel internationally to recreational climates and locals for annual vacations and they were certainly expensive and adventurous trips when they did happen... cut off from regular communications and funded with travelers cheques and $US cash... But recently every new-grad school kid does it with their friends to pretty much anywhere in the world, and we all constantly natter with each other on twitter and facebook and instaspam and money flits across the net with e-transfers and trip-advisor and airbnb bookings etc.
And Oh how we all howled like the world was ending when it all got shut down, and oh how all the pampered little people screamed for their individual freedom when governments tried to restrict personal freedoms for perceived social good. Heaven help us all and our vaunted free democracies if there was ever a more significant or more directed actual threat... Any enemy who wanted to destroy us could easily do it because we clearly have no social cohesion and no semblance of personal responsibility toward others in our societies... Its all for one and one for self... Looks to me like we are all badly in need of exposure to a real threat with more direct and deeply felt consequences...
Im saying we probably need serious group experience (war/revolution) of some sort to bring the facts home to us all so that the line we all draw somewhere between Us and Them gets positioned further away from our individual interests and more to our societal interests... Im not sure if thats positive or negative thinking though :)
What else did I do?
Well there were a few projects... Finished off a couple tables tops that I had worked on before.
And of course there has been all sorts of social turmoil and with Covid being in every conversation all the time for most of the year...
For my part, Ive had it pretty easy. My work has been constant and mostly unaffected by it all... The company I work for did better than most in that its part of the whole internet infrastructure economy and that got a significant boost this year. Ive been going to work at the office throughout the pandemic. Most of the team I work with went through a few months of mostly working from home, but I stayed in at the office to be the one to adjust things in the lab for the rest of the team whenever they needed it. So its been same same for me for the most part.
It has been a disappointment to not be able to play sport or have dinners with friends nearly as much this year but on the whole Im not nearly as socially dependent as most people I know so Ive "suffered" far less than most I think.
On the financial front its been an average year... I actually spent quite a bit less than in a normal year due to no travelling (either domestically or internationally) and less socializing, but I also took a significant financial hit from my tenant ( I rent out my house basement suite to help pay the mortgage) being stuck in Russia for 6 months! She went home to visit family in March and got stuck there for half a year, so I chose to reduce rent to a token level for that duration cos she had no source of income and no options to deal with her stuff while she was stuck over there... It has cost me quite a few thousands of dollars to absorb the hit but I think its cost her more, and Im one of the lucky ones so I think I can take on some of the struggle for others without complaining too much... So kind of a break-even year for me... I also note with disgust that all the large banks here in Canada posted pretty muck record profits this year while the Canadian Government and lots of the Canadian people posted record debt!
