…from 2020: The Lost Year

Is it just me, or does everyone feel like we somehow lost a year? I find myself looking back, thinking about different events, and thinking “this happened last year.” But it didn’t. Whatever Thing I’m trying to place in time happened in 2019, BP (Before Plague). The Plague and the political and social climate here in the US brought out the best–and worst–in people. What have we learned, as a society, as a country, during the Lost Year Called 2020?

Here’s what I learned:

I like working from home. My anxiety and stress levels plummet when working from home, because I don’t feel like I’m being pulled apart by Family and Work interests. I can work all day, taking breaks to do the dishes or start the wash, reviewing contracts from my porch couch, while listening to the sounds of bugs, birds, and the breeze. My brain can focus on work, then switch to home, then to work, almost seamlessly. Women CAN have it all, but it’s best Had working from home.

I have stronger convictions about the marginalized and working poor and how politics and society affect them. According to my family, I’m a liberal. Whatever. I call myself a Pragmatic Christian, though the Christian label is just to sum up the teachings of Christ from the Bible. It could just as well be Pragmatic Buddhism, or Pragmatic Islam, or Hindu, or (name a world religion that teaches love for all)–that’s what I am.

Reading the whole article matters. A lot. There have been so many inflammatory headlines flying around out there, on “news” websites, Facebook, Huffpost, you name it. I am best served if I research an issue, check out the sides of it worth checking out (and no, the lady who thinks Washington DC is full of lizard people, and that women’s health issues are caused by sex with demons, is NOT a source worth wasting my time on), and make up my own mind, without the yammering of conflicting opinions and biases.

Fact check. Fact check, fact check, fact check. And bring your documentation before you start telling me something that you saw that a friend of yours on Facebook posted from the friend of another friend, who is the cousin, of someone who Knows. I’m not interested. I’m gonna Google whatever you told me. And I’ll set you straight. Nobody likes being set straight by a middle-aged, greying, white woman lawyer. Save yourself the pain ;).

And I really DO want world peace. (view from my porch, moonrise June 5, 2020.)