Forward March Through 2021

I didn’t do much writing in 2020, as per the evidence here. I didn’t do much writing anywhere else either. 2020 was the year of survival for (I’m guessing) 90% of the population. When the year started, I was already having anxiety and panic attacks. Throw in a new job and a pandemic, and things were gonna get real bad. March, April, and May where the worst but I also made a really good decision–I used my job’s resources and got a therapist. I’ve been in therapy for almost a year now and the anxiety, the panic attacks, and the medication has plummeted. I’m grateful.

We kept inside for nine months. My husband and I both worked from home and our daughter started school online. Our trips outside were rare–grocery store trips and restaurant take-out…and trips to the comic book store. My favorite store in town closed down. Thankfully, the pandemic is not what forced them to close down. It was difficult to see places locked up and lights turned off. We tried our best to help local places as best we could. That’s how we ended up at another locally-owned comic book store and our way of getting through the social emptiness that was brought on by the pandemic. The new store was doing weekly online auctions and it became our weekly social “outing.” I looked forward not to buying things necessarily, but to talking to people and hearing others laugh. We were approached by the owners of the closed store and we were asked if we’d like to buy overstock. My husband, God bless him, wanted to help me get through my anxiety/fear/depression and we bought thousands of comic books at a discount. A note: this was at the beginning of the pandemic, when we were more optimistic about…well, everything.

Most of last year was a slow drip, drip, drip. Work, school, sort comic books, clean the house, prepare something to eat. Obviously, the world’s problems didn’t magically disappear at midnight on January 1st. But what these cyclical patterns allow us to do is stop, take a deep breath, and move forward. As Rocky once said, “It ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” So here we are, no resolutions for the unknown. Just our energy moving us forward. I’ll keep exercising because it helps with the stress, although I won’t say no to losing a few pounds. I’ll keep writing because it helps get out the thousands of jumbled thoughts floating around in my brain. I’ll keep hoping that things will return to some type of normal, because I’d love to see people again…and eat in restaurants…and go to conventions…and sit in a movie theater. So, as my husband and I toasted at midnight, “here’s to an average, boring year.”