Adios, 2020. Thanks for trying.

For all its faults — and, yes, there were multitudes — 2020 could have been much worse.

For example, the Patriots could have won the Super Bowl. The Walking Dead could have turned out to be an ongoing documentary series. Beto O’Rourke could have fulfilled 68 Biblical prophecies. Our sun could have gone supernova…although that might not have been all bad, assuming it waited until today so that A&M could end up as a Top Five team in the absolute last CFP poll.

No, looking back on the year, I have to admit that some good things happened and even more bad things didn’t occur.

On the plus side, Debbie and I discovered the pleasures joys not-absolutely-horrible experiences of running on golf courses (it only took three years of living 150 feet from one to figure it out). I had approximately 83 doctor’s visits but only one of them required a bone graft. Only one of the eight new tires I bought in 2020 had to be replaced within two weeks of purchase. None of the snakes we ran across inside or immediately outside our house proved to be venomous and all of the centipedes we ran across were less than a foot long. I learned that filling a divot inside a cup of Cozy Shack rice pudding with coconut cream is akin to the nectar of the gods. And there was that one time that our internet service actually provided its promised 25 mbps download speed.

I did lose blogging momentum in 2020, ending the year with only about seventy entries (and ten of those occurred during the first ten days of January), so y’all should be thankful for that. I can honestly promise that that will occur again in 2021, because in this area, past results are indeed predictive of future performance. Plus, I’m not trapping raccoons anymore, and that will eliminate about 40% of my potential subject matter.

Anyway, all of this is to simply say…well…I’m not sure. I hope 2020 was relatively kind to you and yours, and that 2021 will improve on all the successes and joys that you found, and replace those you missed. And if 2020 was a profound disappointment in the area of personal goal achievement, perhaps you can take solace in knowing that you weren’t alone: