In the blur of stretched-out yet strangely compressed dayweekmonths that was 2020, one moment comes back to me now.

Early March with the lockdown looming. I had stuffed my cart up and down seemingly every aisle of the grocery store except pet food, ending up in the back corner with the booze. As I hurriedly wrestled two ginormous boxes of red and white wine into the rack under the basket — the only space remaining — I looked up and met the eye of a nearby guy. At a glance he took in my bareknuckled determination and the cart I could hardly push, and deadpanned, “Have a good apocalypse.”

And… I have. This year I have been so absurdly fortunate. Turns out: I really like my home, my cooking, my husband. I like feeling relief from the terror of facing a second Trump administration, even shadowed as we are by his lasting impacts. I like my work even more than I did in the Before Days; in both my professional and volunteer roles, this year has shaken shit loose and opened up possibilities for deeper progress that I yearned for but that had been blocked by people who hadn’t yet seen or who preferred to deny the urgent need for change. And despite some scares, my loved ones and I are currently safe and healthy.

But it makes me FURIOUS that my experience of this crisis is so relatively easy. Every day it cuts my heart that my life is full of injustice — except I am the one getting the good end of the stick, for no reasonable reason. I work hard, I try hard, but that’s not special; so does practically everyone in my experience. Why should hundreds of thousands of us be dying, especially when I get the best of health care for my small concerns? Why should millions, including children who can’t possibly be blamed, be “food insecure” aka fucking starving while the stock market blazes ever upwards?

I could go on. If you read me often, you know that I usually do. ????

Even I, optimist that I am, can’t hope to fix the world so it’s fair. But I can use my unfairly good fortune as fuel for the fights we can maybe win. So that’s what I’m focusing on bringing into 2021.

See you there, my friends. Thank you for being “with” me as much as we could in 2020. Onwards together. ❤️????????