Well, this is an inauspicious start. Here is is 8:00 on December 1, and suddenly I remembered, “You’ve got a blog post to write!”
For, my friends, it’s that time again. For those who followed the quarantine trail of posts earlier this year (my goal was to write every day of the quarantine, a pledge that sounded so easy when it felt that it would last a couple of weeks, and of course I cried ‘Uncle’ after 50 days), this period between now and Christmas is my traditional blogging slog of 24 posts, each written on the day with no prior planning, reacting only to the thoughts of the day.
As usual, I started this year by looking over previous years’ posts, and I was surprised to find that this year marks the tenth year that I’ve done this. This is a good lesson that you should never do something more than once, because then you are stuck with it for life. Looking through the years of posts (240 if you count them) is like a yearbook of a very senior senior, each year feeling like it was somehow different from any of the years before.
This year is different, though, more different than any of us could have imagined when I started last December 1. Appropriately, I think that the chaos of the broader world though 2020 mirrors a lot of what has gone on with me. It’s a different world, a different country, and I’m a different person, happier in some ways, sadder in others, definitely not wiser.
As usual there will be no theme to the posts this year. I suspect there will be weird Christmas traditions (if I can find any that I haven’t talked about already), Victorian Christmas cards, Christmas carols, and A Christmas Carol…the same stuff. But I’m not the same person I was a year ago. There are new people in my life, and I’ve grown closer to the old people. I have been at my best and at my very worst. I’m a year further in life and I’m closer to death, older, but definitely no wiser (or have I said that?)
So I thank you for walking this road one more time with me. I can’t promise brilliance, but I can promise you me every jingle jangle day.
I’ll take it!
This just popped up in my FB feed today 12/2 and I was happy to see it- I thought you had decided to not blog this Advent!
I don’t know what deranged pledges and decisions I made back in May, but as this day drew closer, it was clear that to skip would be letting the virus win. 😉