January has gone past in the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n
In the past, I have often written a year’s end round-up of sorts on my Not A Blog just before or after New Year’s.\u00a0\u00a0 This year, though… 2020 was probably the worst year I have ever lived through, for the country and the world if not for me personally, and I say that from the perspective of someone who lived through, and remembers, 1968.\u00a0\u00a0 So much happened, and so much of it was dire, but all the rest dwindles in importance in the shadow of hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths.<\/p>\n
The worst of the pandemic may be yet to come, alas, but at least we see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.\u00a0\u00a0 Like millions of others, I am waiting for my turn to get the vaccine.\u00a0\u00a0 I am on the list.\u00a0\u00a0 Soon, I hope… meanwhile, I continue to go masked and quarantine myself as much as possible.<\/p>\n
At least we dumped Trump.\u00a0\u00a0 That was far and away the best thing to come out of 2020.\u00a0\u00a0 We went out ugly, of course.\u00a0\u00a0 The same way he came in.\u00a0\u00a0 The same way he governed.\u00a0\u00a0 What a vile vile man.<\/p>\n
Personally… well, I lost a number of friends, some very near and dear to me.\u00a0 I have several other friends who are in failing health, so I fear that there may be more losses to come.\u00a0\u00a0 Parris and I are as well as might be expected, but… this growing old is no fun.\u00a0\u00a0 Was it Yeats who wrote, “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be?”\u00a0\u00a0 How old was he when he wrote that, I wonder?\u00a0\u00a0 Twenty-two?\u00a0\u00a0 He fibbed.\u00a0\u00a0 Growing old sucks.\u00a0\u00a0 (Yes, right now I hear someone saying “it beats the alternative,” which is what the unimaginative ALWAYS say… but being an SF writer, I can imagine many<\/em> better alternatives.\u00a0\u00a0 Eternal youth.\u00a0 Robot\/ android bodies.\u00a0\u00a0 Cold sleep.\u00a0\u00a0 Upload to the internet.\u00a0\u00a0 C’mon science guys, get cracking.\u00a0\u00a0 Death sucks even worse than getting old).<\/p>\n What was good about 2020?\u00a0\u00a0 Besides the election?<\/p>\n Well… for me… there was work.<\/p>\n I wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages of THE WINDS OF WINTER in 2020.\u00a0\u00a0 The best year I’ve had on WOW since I began it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe the isolation.\u00a0\u00a0 Or maybe I just got on a roll.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes I do get on a roll.<\/p>\n I need to keep rolling, though.\u00a0\u00a0 I still have hundreds of more pages to write to bring the novel to a satisfactory conclusion.<\/p>\n That’s what 2021 is for, I hope.<\/p>\n I will make no predictions on when I will finish.\u00a0\u00a0 Every time I do, assholes on the internet take that as a “promise,” and then wait eagerly to crucify me when I miss the deadline.\u00a0\u00a0 All I will say is that I am hopeful.<\/p>\n I have a zillion other things to do as well, though.\u00a0\u00a0 My plate is full to overflowing.\u00a0\u00a0 Every time I wrap up one thing, three more things land on me.\u00a0\u00a0 Monkeys on my back, aye, aye, I’ve sung that song before.\u00a0\u00a0 So many monkeys.\u00a0\u00a0 And Kong.<\/p>\n I will talk about all that in a different blog post.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, guys and gals, please keep yourselves safe and healthy.\u00a0\u00a0 I will try to do the same.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January has gone past in the blink of an eye. In the past, I have often written a year’s end round-up of sorts on my Not A Blog just before or after New Year’s.\u00a0\u00a0 This year, though… 2020 was probably the worst year I have ever lived through, for the country and the world if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[58,19],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6836"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6836"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6838,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6836\/revisions\/6838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}