We’re halfway through the longest year of our lives. I know, that’s a bit dramatic, but given all this *gestures* what do you expect? Anyway, we’re midway through 2020.

Looking back

Before I make this all about me, let’s reflect on what’s happened in the world in general in the first half of 2020:

I suppose in all seriousness I could run a list of all these major events that have happened, but it’s basically been all COVID-19 related since March, outside of protests and riots and inept governance and whatnot.

As for me, I flew into Texas for an assignment in early January with a nagging dry cough. Said cough was pretty much gone, finally, by the time I flew to North Carolina, then home, then to D.C. in a span of six days in early March for a couple other assignments. But I decided to self-quarantine anyway after getting back from Washington, and by the end of the week everything was shut down, and I’ve been working from home ever since.

I’ll acknowledge that I’m grateful for being able to work from home. That made it easier to contend with when tragedy struck in March and April, starting with my dad’s untimely death.

An aside: I also want to point out that when my father-in-law died in 2008, the bosses at the newspaper I was working for at the time seemed to wonder why I was taking as much time off as I did, right in the middle of the fall sports season. Twelve years later, when we had to put our cat down three weeks to the day after my father died, I was told to take as much time as I needed.

I don’t know, just thought I would share that.

Looping back around, then, I haven’t had nearly as many bylined stories in the first half of 2020 as I would normally have, especially because we’ve not done bylines as most of our stories have been phone interviews rather than in-person. But for you completists out there, here are my bylines from 2020’s first half:

• Transition assistance a foundation for returning to civilian life
• The clue: This 2015 Boys Nation president won on Jeopardy!
• Legion aims to help ease transition for servicemembers

Meanwhile, here on the blog, I paid tribute to my Dad and my fur kid. I pitched a wacky idea for adding a 17^th game to the NFL schedule and expanding the playoffs. I ruminated on a Memorial Day spent at home instead of on the road for the first time in four years. And I started what I thought would be a clever riff on the NCAA Tournament, using Stephen King books. Life kept me from finishing that, but who knows? Maybe I’ll find the time to finish that.

Looking ahead

Well, another quick look back first.

On New Year’s Eve last year, I wrote a thing looking back at the previous decade, and I ended it with this:

“I’m eager to see what the 20s bring. More so, I’m eager to see what I achieve, and what those I love achieve, in the next decade.”

In retrospect, that’s a tad foreboding.

Still, even with all that’s going on, I’m aiming for cautious optimism in my outlook for the rest of 2020 and beyond. That’s reflected in a few resolutions I’ve made for myself:

• Get running again. I’ve actually started this, sort of, although it’s obvious I’m not the same guy who ran a half-marathon four years ago. On the bright side, the pandemic gave me a built-in excuse to push my registration for this fall’s Indy Half Marathon to 2021, so I’ve bought myself another 52 weeks to get in shape. I’ll need it.
• The million word challenge. I’ve started and stopped on a couple novels and several short stories over the years, but as 50 looms, I know it’s time to, as my father-in-law would have put it, “stop f**king around” and write. As it turns out, I’m about 1,000 days away from turning 50. If I write 1,000 words a day for each of those 1,000 days, that’s a million words and one hell of a lot of writing. And now that I’ve put that out here for all to see, I suppose I have to live up to those expectations.
• Be more sociable. And I don’t mean on social media, necessarily. Let’s face it, Facebook can be a cesspool, a soul-sucking garbage dump. Yes, we’re able to connect (and re-connect) with friends and family on there, and there are some good things. But then you’re scrolling through and you see somebody espousing an opinion you disagree with, or worse yet, they’re just flat out stupid wrong about something and you just get mad. For nothing.
  Now, obviously, we can’t all meet like we could have before the pandemic, and even meeting virtually leaves something to be desired. But I’m going to try my best to not let political and religious and sociological differences drive me nuts. I know it’s something that I need to work on, especially as we get closer to what’s sure to be an even more divisive election.

We’ve made it through the first half of 2020. It’s all downhill from here. Hopefully it’s a fun slide and not a crash into a dumpster fire.

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