God knows, that’s true for me:\u00a0 2020 began, literally, with a call to tell me that my mother had died, and is ending as I recover from a concussion.\u00a0 <\/span>In-between\u2026well, we know what happened in-between, worldwide and locally.\u00a0 <\/span>A few bright spots, a few not-inconsiderable wins, but overall\u2026 yeah.\u00a0 <\/span>And the veil of plausible deniability was pulled away from the arrogantly deadly <\/i>stupidity of too many people, some of them people we respected, trusted, or loved. We\u2019re going to be cleaning up after this year for a long time.\u00a0 <\/span>So it’s entirely reasonable and expected for people to start with the year-end chants of, \u201cnext year is gonna be better.\u201d<\/p>\n And I cringe, as I do ever time I hear it.\u00a0 <\/span>Not because I think we\u2019re jinxing ourselves, although, that, yeah.\u00a0 <\/span>But because if the past few years have taught us anything, it\u2019s that what\u2019s coming doesn\u2019t HAVE to be better. And it won\u2019t be, in and of itself. The universe bends toward the least amount of effort, and it takes effort for good things to happen (don\u2019t ask me Why, that leads to theological and thermodynamical questions I don\u2019t have the stamina for, because 2020<\/em>).<\/p>\n But I do believe that we need to be optimistic.\u00a0 <\/span>First and foremost because if we don\u2019t have the belief that there is better coming, the urge to stay in bed and let other people deal with shit becomes overwhelming, until we’re all in bed and nobody actually is<\/i> dealing with shit (or, if they are, they\u2019re not the people you want left in charge of anything, <\/i>see: 2020).\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>But secondly and just as importantly, because it\u2019s been my observation that sustained effort is driven by equal parts optimism and irritation, the kind of attitude that doesn\u2019t say \u201cit will magically get better\u201d but rather \u201cfuck you, universe, I\u2019m going to make it better.\u201d<\/p>\n This year – every year –\u00a0 be punk-ass optimistic.\u00a0 Be annoyingly <\/em>punk-ass optimistic, because nothing annoys naysayers and doomfuckers like optimism.\u00a0 But… maybe this year we don\u2019t shout it from the rooftops.\u00a0 <\/span>Keep it quiet in your breast, and warm in your hands, and hidden from Fate.\u00a0 <\/span>Or, as a caution appeared in my social media scroll this week: Everyone, hold hands (virtually, for now) and on the count of three, step forward.<\/p>\n Oh yeah – and Happy New Year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is it the last Friday of the month already?\u00a0 Shit. It is.\u00a0 The holiday season is in full stride, Hanukah in the rear view window, Christmas heading out the back door, and Kwanzaa upon us, and yep, there’s New Year’s Eve waving from the end of the driveway. It’s inevitable that in this Year of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166,56],"tags":[175,57],"class_list":["post-904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid-life","category-life-experiences","tag-holidays","tag-laura-anne-gilman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":906,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904\/revisions\/906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Nobody](\"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/IMG_5892-300x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n