Best Laid Plans

And the Year That Manically Laughed at Them 

After last year this is just how my face looks all the time now.

Well, it’s been an embarrassing 11 months since I posted a blog. Blame it on 2020, the scapegoat for all my mediocrity over the last year. 

I had ideas but my trivial topics suddenly became even more trivial as we settled into the “new normal” (that cringe-worthy phrase) of the Covid-19 world and the year that kept unfolding. My attempts at witty ramblings became insignificant as we all witnessed social unrest boil over from years of injustice. My insights on the industry and work-life weren’t really relevant as we counted down to November 3rd with doomsday-like apprehension. No one really needs me to take a shot in the dark at writing something decent when we are all preoccupied trying to get a shot in the arm.      

My reflections during 2020 weren’t going to be profound. So I decided to give my space in the blogosphere to anyone else to share their experiences surviving the most F’d up year I think any of us has ever lived through.

Sidenote: If I had tried to write something, I probably would have used the word “unprecedented” and would have just deleted the whole post in disgust. 

But I didn’t even try to write one. 

Even when I thought it might be semi-appropriate to acknowledge some milestone over the last year, I just didn’t. The intentions were there but somehow the dates (and personal deadlines) came and went before I realized they were sneaking up.

I considered writing a post with a “28 Weeks Later” theme, in reference to the zombie apocalypse movie, in honor of six months in quarantine, but I just ended up watching the movie instead. I thought about writing a post about my socially-distant set-up for trick-or-treaters on Halloween (my favorite holiday), but got distracted by the rest of the holidays. I thought about doing my annual cliche New Years’ post, but dear god who wants to recap that dumpster fire and feign hope for the new one. 

But then in the first few weeks of 2021, I had some serious work-life changes that finally inspired me to try to start typing again: I got a big promotion and started going back into the office part-time and actually had all these things to say that felt relevant to this blog.

Source: Me.Me

Then a snowy February 15th rolled around and the “rolling blackouts” ERCOT warned about became full-on catastrophic (and completely preventable) snowpocalypse and we spent 77 hours without power in below-freezing temperatures. The first day was kinda funny - look at me working all bundled up, how silly! But when the sun went down and the power still hadn’t come back on, it wasn’t funny anymore.

My laptop died shortly after this photo and the power wouldn’t come back for another 3 days.

By day three we were scavenging our neighborhood for firewood. We built a blanket fort next to our fireplace to stay warm at night. I worked from my phone as much as I could, but my fingers would go painfully numb. We walked five miles trying to find a store, any store, open that sold cat food, but that mission failed. Even when the power came back on day four, it went down again several times leaving us nervous and hesitant to bring food back in from being “refrigerated” outside in the snow. And for a week after, we had to boil all water before it could be consumed.

Dear sweet boyfriend and cats trying to stay warm during Snowpocalypse.

After that, my motivation and spare time to write in this personal blog disappeared again.

But then the anniversary of quarantine arrived and I felt required to say something. Anything. Just throw up some stream-of-consciousness word vomit and call it a day.

Because it’s been a year.

2020 was a year. Q1 2021 has been a year. And we’re approaching a year since I wrote in here.

As Georgia Hardstark from my favorite podcast says:

“You don’t have to be perfect, just fucking do things.”

So that’s what I’m doing.

Thank you for your patience. Thank you for still being here. And thank you for joining me as we forge ahead with best laid plans, better prepared to throw them all out the window again.

Illustration by Andi Fink