2020 was a pretty bad year. I can’t say it was the worse year I ever had, but it was annoying and infuriating. Or rather, many of the people were annoying and/or infuriating.

The response of the much of the government AND a lot of private organizations was inadequate and aimed at the wrong targets. Not to mention that some of those government and private entities used it to advance political agendas.

We were lied to early on and lied to more later on. I won’t go into all of the fudging of numbers done by people upon whom we should have been able to depend, but it’s there.

Politics were nasty and will get nastier. The election was stolen from the rightful winner. If you’re racing to your keyboard to tell me that it was all on the level, don’t bother. I can read, and I can count a bit too. Math doesn’t lie.

Back to the pandemic. Since I’m retired and only work a bit on the side to keep from being overwhelmed by boredom, my income didn’t go down by much. On the other hand, there are a lot of small businesses that are gone and will never come back. Their former owners will likely never recover financially. Or emotionally in many cases.

Depression, suicides, and drug overdoses hit record numbers. Speaking of record numbers, murders hit record numbers in cities where the police were “defunded.”

Neither George Floyd nor Breona Taylor should be considered heroes. I’ll leave it at that. I’m sure I’ll get a lot of hate comments, but I frankly don’t care.

So, even though 2020 is over calendars are just the way humans mark time. It’s arbitrary and this being the first day of 2021 doesn’t mean that the misery is over. In fact, there are those who are actively trying to extend the misery. If you break down the virus totals by state, you’ll find that the states with the harshest restrictions are also the states with the highest rates of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths.

Is that a coincidence?

On one hand, we are told that hospitals and their staff are overwhelmed. Staff is depressed and exhausted. On the other, we are treated to hospital staff performing elaborate dance routines. I’ve been overworked and exhausted in the past, and the last thing I felt like doing was dancing. I felt like taking a shower and getting some sleep.

I know, I sound overly cranky, but what I’m seeing and what I’m hearing from people working doesn’t match what I’m being told by the media and government officials.

Back to time and 2021. Just because we flipped over pages in a calendar doesn’t mean that all of our woes are over. There is some likelihood that the problems of 2020 are just going to keep on.

Think about that.