There’s an on Old Scottish tradition that I will probably adopt at midnight tonight. I never felt the need before, but this year, on the last day of 2020, I do…

 

The Scots open all their doors at midnight, to let the old year out and welcome the new year in. I’ve heard people say they’re going to open all their windows, too, this year, to be sure the old year has plenty of escape room.

 

I heard another individual say they wished they could take their roof off, too, at midnight!

 

So, yeah, very few people are sorry to put 2020 in the rearview mirror and let a new year start to redeem what has been a very bleak year for the families and loved ones of what will be upward of 350,000 COVID-killed people in the U.S. in 2020 alone.

 

Sadly, before it’s all over the CDC is predicting hundreds of thousands more dead. It’ll be this way until at least March. Read that again: until at least March.

 

Fortunately (knock on wood), I haven’t lost a close friend to COVID (yet). But I have friends who have. And far too many of the people I know who have survived COVID (I believe I had it in mid-February) have lingering health challenges (damage to their vital organs) that may never go away.

 

So, COVID is here to stay in devastating ways.

 

But with an incoming administration that cares, and with vaccines that can be delivered and administered in faster ways as soon as the Biden-Harris team assumes office at noon on January 20th (which will, sadly, be months too late to save literally hundreds of thousands of additional lives), things should start improving mid-spring or a little later.

 

I’ll still wear a mask and do everything else that’s recommended to stay safe and to keep others safe because until there is at least 80% immunization (herd immunity), I won’t want to risk passing the virus on to immuno-compromised friends, relatives, neighbors and loved ones.

 

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel so I’ve managed to outlast and outwit COVID-19 long enough to remain hopeful and positive that the people I love most in this world will make it through and be here to celebrate with IN PERSON next New Year’s Eve. I just wish every other family was as bloody lucky as ours has been.

 

2020 WASN’T A COMPLETE DISASTER FOR ME IN OTHER WAYS, TOO

 

Even though I had to give up playing pickle ball in mid-February (a passion), I compensated in other ways by walking, riding bikes, planking, jogging in place in my den, and doing other things to keep myself from becoming otherwise deskbound. (I spend hours every day at my keyboard either looking for writing gigs or fulfilling them.)

 

During the June-July timeframe, all but one room of my home was upgraded/remodeled: the kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and living room. I no longer look like the poor country cousin, and I’m immensely thankful for that.

 

In August, I realized a lifelong dream (well, since I was nine and developed the bloody things) and had chest masculinization surgery so my outward appearance matches my inward essence. The procedure gave me such a lift, such joy, such release from decades of feeling like a fraud appearance-wise that it actually made me feel decades younger than I am. (I’ll be 70 in March.) I certainly wasn’t expecting that!

 

And in November (despite his protestations of  “fake news” and “a stolen election”), eight million more voters than he had decided that we’d had quite enough (and then some!) of the present occupier of the Oval Office and Executive branch of government and told him he was fired. It didn’t sit well with him or his most rabid followers, but facts are facts and it is what it is, for which I’m immensely grateful.  That fellow and his minions had me depressed and anxious the entire time they held office. For a progressive, transgender advocate of diversity and fair play, it has been a truly gut-wrenching era.

 

So, other than COVID-19 and its anxiety-producing drop in my writing income, I really can’t complain. The people I love most are still here, there’s a woman in the Executive branch of government for the first time ever in U.S. history (and I like her a lot), and my client base suddenly is picking up again. It looks like 2021 is going to feel a whole lot better than 2020 did all the way around. I will be able to take up pickle ball again (after I’ve been immunized) and I will have a panniculectomy  to get rid of 14 pounds of loose skin that has plagued me since 1977 when I lost 125 pounds. If lifting that burden does for me what the chest masculinization surgery did for me, I won’t  feel 38 to 40 years old–I may feel 20 again!  Who knows?  I will keep you in the loop on that from my YellowBalloonPublications.com blog. (THIS website is for pro stuff, not navel gazing!)

 

I WISH YOU A HAPPY,  HEALTHY, PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR… with many more of them to follow.

 

Stay safe. Limit travel. Save lives (for just a few months longer, so I’m sure to see you on the other side of this damnable pandemic!).