2020 - Air Your Grievances
 

This has been a terrible year. Let this be a place to air your grievances!

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I'll go first. A couple of weeks ago we decided to try and do a road trip to Banff for the day with our 15 month old son. Beyond Coronavirus it is difficult to travel with a child of this age. We said screw it let's get some fresh mountain air. Haven't left the city since he was born.

Thursday was beautiful. Overnight the smoke from the West Coast fires blew in and resulted in air quality alerts in Calgary and Banff. Needless to say we did not end up going and this was how my 'holiday' felt:

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Obviously I am grateful not to be living in Vancouver or Victoria right now but it felt like the cherry on top of a crummy summer.

The smoke is gone now from southern BC. Which may make you grieve even more lol.

Glad to hear that. It’s been grey with smoke the past couple weeks with some sunny days but nothing like you guys had. Hopefully it didn’t leave there to hang out here.

This year has felt apocalyptic enough without choking wildfire smoke. Sadly it seems to be a new season now.

No more narcissistic sweaty shirtless selfies on SSP! Save it for some dating site or instagram.

The "wooden shacks" discussion spawned a wooden shack thread, maybe this will spawn a "The Great Canadian Show-Yourself-Shirtless-And/Or-Naked Thread"? :P

You know what? Fuck it lol AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Lol, can't make this up: right after I suggest everyone posts pictures of themselves naked, SignalHillHiker posts a spoilered thing, that when opened starts with "This is definitely my personal anus..."

:haha: Hey, I didn't even assume you were talking about me because I'd never post a shirtless one.

Really? I would have considered you capable of almost anything :haha:

(especially if drunk - but maybe it's not that time of day in St. John's)

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Aww, thanks. :fingerscrossed:

You're still a monster, though. :haha:

:haha::haha:

Totally in agreement.....leave it for Instagathingamajig or that other narcissistic forum called The Facebook.

Seriously, though haven't gone on a good vacation since late 2018 and late in 2019, started planning a vacation to northern Italy (Dolomites, maybe Austria) with my wife and a stop off in the UK to see family etc. The plan was to go basically now so as you can imagine that trip went out the window. Backup option of New Hampshire now is also out the window due to border restrictions and even though the White Mountains of NH are quite bucolic the political situation in the US with a bat sh*t crazy president doesn't help.

It's been a terrible year for so many reasons... One thing in particular I have been hating the self-righteousness a lot of people have seemed to acquire since quarantine.

First, there's people for whom COVID-19 is equivalent to the plague. For these people, anybody not self-quarantining at all times, not wearing a mask, or out and about is idiotic or evil. They yell at people, call fellow citizens 'covidiots', and generally seem to have a massive superiority complexes. For them, COVID-19 is the biggest problem in the world and suggesting otherwise means you're stupid or don't care about others.

Then, there's the opposite group who are convinced the whole thing is a scam and the only people smart enough to know the truth of the world is themselves and their stupid facebook group or something. They have to shove it in our faces of how we're all living a lie and are idiots for listening to scientists.

Last, and unrelated to the previous two groups, we now have people who are woke to black lives matter and are constantly pushing ideas of how white people are evil, Canada is evil, police are evil, liberalism is evil, etc. Similar to the first two groups, this population is also convinced they know "the truth" of society. If you don't agree with them, then you are a racist and don't deserve a voice on certain matters. Even if you're not white, if you don't buy into their talk then you are not considered a "real" non-white person.

As one of billions of people who have probably had the worst year of their lives due to the pandemic and things related to it, it has not been helpful to my mental health to be hearing this back and forth of how a select few know the truth of the world and the rest of us are idiots for not buying into their mantra. In all honesty, the self righteousness is still probably not in my top 5 of grievances for 2020 but it's definitely something that grinds my gears when I observe it.

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Dating is off limits for the remainder of 2020, welp.

I don't know why everyone is complaining about 2020. Name one thing that is bad right now. I think everything is pretty damn good!

Compare 2020 to 2019 where Brexit just kept dragging on. Talk about a nightmare year.

I just want to go back to work, but until the travel restrictions/14 day blanket quarantine go away it won't happen. I even miss getting up at 2am for 4:30am shifts.

In about 2 weeks, that layoff will become permeant too. So I guess I'll just have to deal with moving on from the travel industry.

Would also be nice if I could find a new job in the meantime, but that too doesn't look very promising either. 300+ applications and counting. :shrug:

That is a pretty accurate review of a fabulous year :tup:

I gotta say....Im getting pretty pissed off by people saying this year is a dumpster fire....and whatever about "It's 2020, what do you expect".
Sure, globally things are well, not looking good, but it's not like once this year started rolling about, problems in different parts of the world started happening out of the blue. (This is a bit of a moot argument I'd argue as well, but hell, it still aggravates me to see people writing off this year because of so and so.)
My main point is one year of your life shouldn't be written off due to problems worldwide, there are still plenty of things one can do and accomplish.

That's why for this thread's topic, I can't really say much, except the pandemic/"Great Kung Flu" has well, affected the world a lot as we all know.

First Ten Weeks (until Pandemic) It went normally, I was glad to just spend time working and doing my normal thing after a hectic semester at university.
I was laid off on St. Paddy's Day, and my last shift was on the prior friday. After that, I went for a bit of hiking, a bit of walking....and some drinking here and there.

April: I started going for night walks, exploring neighbourhoods I saw by car years ago, but only now walked, and truly saw for myself. I stopped drinking on the 20th of April, and I didn't start again until August.

Through May to mid-July; I continued going for night walks, sometimes going 35+ kilometres...I didn't do very many, maybe 3 or 4 a month...but they always were memorable, fun and usually long walks. I also continued making art and doing whatever, the former being good practice for myself.
Unfortunately for me, my mental health started getting worse over time...I was just getting lonely and almost desperate at times to start conversations with strangers. In mid-July, I was brought back to work...so gradually night walks stopped.

From the end of August to now; I've been drinking a lot more, as a way to relax....but only doing so about twice a week. I've come to start appreciating some wines, and occasionally went drinking with friends at bars. I made some friends who also like photography, which has been a great way to continue doing something I love, while socializing, and heck, offering updates to projects in Toronto :yes:
With the way things have been recently, it feels like we'll be reliving March again. It's a bit of a strange feeling, but with how business has started dying down recently, it's hard to not say we'll probably be laid off in the coming weeks. I'm in a depressive state not unlike what I had years ago...though it's reminded me just how unproductive one can be in such a state. I had some bad days at times, but recently I've been a bit better.

I miss travelling to other parts of the province.....I intended to go to Ottawa sometime in the summer to check it out for a day or two....mostly because it's not incessantly far by train, and I had a good experience there 9 years ago which made me want to return someday.