Year 8
In my end/beginning of year post for this year I said
Good luck to your 2020, we'll all probably need it.
Yeah. We needed it. This year, like every other year before, has been marked by celebrity deaths but we also got to experience a "one in a lifetime" global pandemic.
I remember seeing an alert from the New York Times on Feburary 25th titled C.D.C Officials Warn of Coronavirus Outbreaks in the U.S. and going to get groceries that night. My girlfriend's birthday was later that week and we all enjoyed ourselves at a brewery while being mildly worried about what a potential pandemic would bring. Only a few days later my pandemic lockdown started on March 3rd when Anamanaguchi's Seattle concert was cancelled due to the virus starting to spread in Seattle. The next day both Amazon and Microsoft told its employees to start working from home. A few weeks later while biking around Lake Washington for the first time I remember seeing blue ribbons up on trees in Kirkland, most likely in rememberance of the first people in the US to die of COVID-19 at the Life Care Center in Kirkland.
This year also brought the largest civil rights protests in US history with the George Floyd protests. Unfortunately starting around my birthday, the protests regarding police brutality have revitalized the conversation around race in the US but also has brought new policy initiatives. Here in Seattle we saw the formation of the Capitol Hill Organized Protest FKA Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, months of protests supported by various community groups, and the beginning of legislative changes regarding policing in the city.
I also managed to bike 1,235 miles this year. I bought a road bike in Janurary planning to do the Seattle to Portland bike ride which was later cancelled due to the pandemic but even then I managed to bike around Lake Washington (~60 miles) 3 times and also biked 100 miles in a single ride.
One thing I always found weird when I was younger was that New Year's Eve is kind of just another day, New Year's Day is the beginning of a new year but all of last year's problems continue on. SARS-CoV-2 started circulating in December of 2019 but the virus wasn't known to the vast majority of people until the beginning of 2020. We've started vaccinating in the US this year and will continue vaccinating well into 2021 and worldwide vaccinations will most likely continue into 2022 and onward.
As for this blog, it will continue on as long as I continue on. Thanks for reading. 2021 can't be worse than 2020, right?