I’m sure most of us who spend any time at all on social media often receive the memory reminders of where we were or what we were doing last year on this date or maybe even 10 years ago. After spending the last year in a relative state of nothingness, when it comes to creating memories from visiting somewhere, or even with someone, I’m finding these reminders more agitating than pleasantly reflective. They are just reminders to me about a year of my life not doing the things I enjoyed doing the most.
That being said, I have also been very fortunate in not losing any family or close friends to Covid. I did lose friends this year to non-covid related reasons. Too many and too young. Which I guess only raises my level of frustration to this past year. We never really know how much time we have left here, so while I have what remains, I would like to live it to its fullest.
I know there are those that will say it was a year to reset. To become more introspective. To silence ourselves for a bit and listen to and feel things we stopped noticing in our normal busy lives. Well, that was great for about 3-4 months. Then it got a little stale by month 6, and now a year later, IMO it’s nothing but frustrating, sad and depressing. We are social creatures by nature. We are suppose to socialize.
However, yes, we have a vaccine. It’s time for optimism. Of course being a healthy non-obese, non-smoking and less than 60 years old unemployed male, puts me pretty far in the back of the line. Honestly, I’m not in hurry. I’m not of the ilk of some that react to getting this vaccine with the sense of relief as if it’s going to keep them from getting sick or dying from something else. The anxiety and fear that has been driven into the mindset of many in this country may very well be irreversible.
What I mean by that, is in the case of those most anxious about getting the virus, upon getting the vaccine, doesn’t clear you from the rest of the demons lurking to take us all out, ie. cancer and heart disease just to name a couple. I’m sure for some, it’s a relief to hopefully take Covid off the list of possible causes for our death, but statistically we should be worrying about other things.
I’m not trying to poo-poo the vaccine. I’m not trying to downplay the ugliness of this pandemic. Many people suffered and too many died. The restrictions we decided to put upon ourselves as a society left many of those tragically dying alone. That is something that really saddened me and I believe in the future we will re-evaluate. Perhaps the precautions could have been handled differently.
I’m way passed tired of the politicizing of the pandemic and even more tired of seeing people’s inaccurate posts of blame, or misinformed spreading of restrictions, or lack thereof in some situations. I just hope we can recover. I don’t mean from the virus. That wish is a given. I hope the anxiety and fear hangovers don’t linger. I have my concerns about that.
The funny thing was, this blog was supposed to be about the two year anniversary of our trip to Finland and the Arctic Circle in the hopes of seeing the Northern Lights. It’s a bit of a story unto itself and I think I will reserve that blog for a later post. In the meantime I hope I didn’t offend anyone with my honest blowing off some steam in this blog. I wish I had answers. I wish tomorrows’ Facebook memory comes up and says, “remember that year you had that really unsettling dream about a pandemic shutting down the world?” Aren’t you glad it was just a dream? If only……..
Here’s the latest Middle Age Warriors podcast taking on the issues of travel as we slowly try and move forward from the pandemic……Peter Greenberg the Travel Detective answers a lot of questions you might have.
