The year in complete review

A post in which I try to review the year entirely from every perspective possible.

Did you ever see those letters that people wrote about how their lives had been over the past year that used to get mailed out. It was all about family and changes to life. People’s lives. It was a great idea because at one point, when there wasn’t such a thing as the internet and Facebook. Now anyone that writes those either isn’t online or is posting it to Facebook.

Ever a libra, it seems silly to me on one hand to try to mass communicate about my singular life to everyone that I may know, regardless of if they care about it or not, but it also serves a purpose in longform letter writing that’s been lost in the day of “Facebook posting.” But I think I might be too lazy to do that. Why, you ask? Well, I have no attention span. I like to blame the internet.

Also, every year seems to suck more than the last. But, to paint with a broad stroke here, maybe this year didn’t suck as badly. I’m writing this with less than 13 hours still to go, but maybe 2021 wasn’t as horrible as 2020 was.

Then again, it really depends on your perspective, doesn’t it? Reviews are so massively perspective based. Taste is everything in a review. It’s political, it’s preferential, it’s mood dependent. What’s to say that I only reflect on the bad of the year? Seems pretty ill conceived if I think about that. Also, I can’t say that my year was amazing personally but that also is me. Review is reflection and of a personal interpretation which is only what one chooses. Review of what?

I think I’ll try it. Here we go.

Bear with me. I’m not entirely familiar with every industry, locale, and subject matter, but in the spirit of inclusivity, I will attempt to cover everything, after all, that is what a year in review is ultimately seemingly, and bluntly, trying to answer: was it good or bad? There’s about a million ways to answer that, depending on where you focus.

Let’s get into it!

Fashion — a return to maybe some normalcy, but it seems we are returning to the 90s again. That seems bad.

TV — There’s still too much to watch.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

Video games — Please purchase the DLC to read this section here.

Wine — More is always better.

Cars — I’m still waiting on my Tesla to get the USB ports it’s supposed to come with.

How many more topics are there to review?

Phones — They fold now? Is this strictly necessary? Hey Siri, are you unlucky?

Matter — What’s supposed to replace all the smart stuff to actually make it work together?

The English language — Vaccine. That seems divisive. Moving on…

Vaccination status for the world — Low.

Crypto-currency — It went up and down and back up and back down…

Politics — January 6th, President Biden, Vice President Harris, Mandates, Cuomo, January 6th again, Manchin, Wars on Christmas Trees (what the actual @#$%?)

That should have been an article all on its own, and I why did I think this was a good idea again?

Religion — Check back in the next century.

Comics — Print is still dying, but content is pretty kickass at least, right?

The environment — 100 seconds to midnight.

Movies — You know I actually saw a decent amount of movies. Good stuff too. It wasn’t a bad year, though it may have been a lighter amount of fair than normal years.

Music — (Oh god, how can I cover this? I barely listen to music.) New stuff from artists! Yay!

Now I’m exhausted. Gotta keep going.

Restaurants — More closures than openings, I think.

Books — What new books are you reading? Give me some recommendations. I’m still working on my backlog from 2014 though.

Pop culture — Meagan and Harry got interviewed by Oprah. Many people died. Pete Davidson continues to date way above his league and he doesn’t understand it. Scar Jo triumphed over Disney. We learned celebrities don’t bathe as much as we wish they would. I’ve officially learned more than I wanted to know about anyone.

[Insert thing here] — Really, what exactly is left to review? Stuff happened. There’s no end to this list. I think I’m done.

There are so many ways to look back at a year. What new has changed? People died, many great new people were born. Things happened that will forever change the way that we go about our lives for the better and the worse. To sum up but a second is the same as to sum up a year, an impossibly large task that when fully worked out will have taken more time than it is worth.

But reflection is never worthless. Reflection is how we grow and learn. We change, we ebb, we flow, and then we look back and continue forward. Every year continues to come at us like we challenged it and we continue persevering. We may fall but life will go on, maybe just not how we are used to seeing it. Maybe not with those close to us, maybe not with you, or me, or humanity at all, but life will continue in some form.

At least, I hope. And that hope is what can help us to carry forward into a new year; a new moment of time as new challenges arise and we feel like there is nothing good happening and we wish it was all a dream.