For those of you in the United States, whether in person or in spirit, who celebrate (me included), Happy Thanksgiving!!
It occurs to me that as the person who took up Thursdays for these Open Forums, the write-ups for every Thanksgiving would always end up being my days through the cosmic miracle of sheer coincidence. That’s an unexpectedly delightful thing to think about for some reason! Something a bit amusing about it all.
I remember my post from Thanksgiving last year being written while I was feeling a bit down and emotional. 2020 was simply that overwhelming and horrible–the COVID state of affairs especially–and on top of that, we were also very recently recuperating from The Great Kinja User Blog Nukedown that forced TAY to set up shop on this site right here. It was a lot to handle all at once.
This year, however, I’m not feeling nearly as morose. In fact, I’m feeling quite peachy at the moment! With not much thanks to the year that has been 2021, though; shit still sucks pretty bad in lots of ways. Particularly frustrating: Idealistic, hopeful me thought that we would be coming out of the COVID bend by now. Instead, it’s still very much a clear and present reality that is looking due to get even nastier as the cold season picks up yet again. It’s perhaps not bringing me down as much as previously, which I really hope is less the result of becoming numb to it all and more a result of becoming moderately better at navigating around its troubles, especially being vaccinated against it. Relatedly, I’m scheduled to get my booster shot soon enough.
If there’s one single thing above all else that I’m thankful this year, THANK THE LORD for these COVID vaccines. I dearly wish that they could’ve been enough to put this whole damn pandemic behind us, but the Delta variant and an entire contingent of anti-vaxxers (including damn near an entire Republican party here in America, evil craven assholes all of them) clearly decided that wasn’t going to be in the cards. But these vaccines have materially made things better regardless, and I still find the hope and promise they bring–that COVID19 may still yet be conquerable–to be profoundly reassuring. We did not make all of the progress, but we made progress nonetheless.
My wife and I sure as hell wouldn’t have gone to the movies recently to see House of Gucci without our shots. We were going to the movies fairly regularly as of a few years ago, and it was painful to have that taken away from us by COVID. It was quite nice to be able to do so again with a reasonable degree of safety. We even went out to eat and drink for our second anniversary a couple of weeks ago! Like, at a real restaurant!
Moments like that are still most likely far from being a normal occurrence by this point, but it’s been lovely even having them at all, and in a way that is not utterly reckless. May things keep going in the right direction like this from this point forward.
Today’s question, same as last time: What are you thankful for this year?
Otherwise, as always, Talk Amongst Yourselves!
Today’s thoroughly cliché Morning Jam:
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