A year ago, things were very different than they are now. For example, in the back of my mind I still had hope of getting together again with my ex girlfriend. Today, I'd have to think long, hard, and carefully if that option were to present itself to me. But that's the least of things I can mention today. My father was still alive, and I had no idea that he'd be one of the over 400,000 (and counting) Americans who'd die of the coronavirus over the next 12 months.
Both as individuals and as a culture, we would have to ask questions posed by a once popular song:
Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we?
Could we?
Most of us thought that the good times we experienced prior to 2020 would last forever. As the virus taught us, they were only fleeting things.
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I spent most of 2020 employed at the census as Marian. Recently, I applied for and accepted a job, working as Marian again. Although this would have been a job better suited for Mario, I figured that I wanted to see how I would do in private industry without the official protections of a government bureaucracy. Is this the job I really wanted? No. But it will have to do when there are 75 people (or more, in many cases) applying for jobs in both public and private sectors.
If things had progressed as most of us had expected, most of us would have gone on our usual vacations, not really noticing what they did for us as people. Now that we've been largely isolated from others for a year, many of us feel it's time to get out in the world again, even if we are taking big risks in doing so. I look forward to taking my Hawaiian cruise when cruising opens up again. But I will not give the cruise lines a penny more than I have to for their products.
Travel and work are not the only things affected by the pandemic. Our nation's political future was affected as well. Many of us gave our former present better than an even chance of being reelected because of the then "booming" economy. The pandemic put an end to that, as the then president made light of the virus when people were more concerned about their lives than whether they had jobs or not. How many of you think that our current president could have won the election if things were as they were in 2019? I certainly don't think he'd have had much of a chance, as people usually vote with their wallets. This time, they voted as if their lives depended on their votes - which they did.
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2021 looks like it will be a better year for many of us. Hard-line Evangelical "Christians" are no longer able to use the federal government as a tool to attack transgender people. We are on target to see most Americans have access to a Coronavirus vaccine shot by some time this summer. And we will soon be able to resume outdoor socialization when Spring comes. We will be entering a time where a "New Normal" is evolving, a period where growth starts anew for both individuals and for society as a whole. I look forward to this future.
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