- January: Like last year, when we started the year in Iceland, we started 2020 in a foreign county - this time Chilean Patagonia. I announce my departure from Facebook.
- February: On the first of the month I officially deleted my Facebook account. A quiet month with an extra Leap Day to lengthen this unending year even more.
- March: The pandemic cometh. This was the month things started to shut down due to COVID-19. The beginning of spring brought some hope it would not last long. The birds returned to our backyard while toilet paper mysteriously disappeared.
- April: On the anniversary of the start of my Appalachian Trail (AT) attempt I decided not to go back to finish the last three hundred miles. My annual exam shouted "Diabetic". We had eight inches of late snow.
- May: Gloves and masks became more plentiful … in the roadside garbage.
- June: I recognized that while I was accounted for … I was not present in the world. This lack of presence started when I returned from the AT and has persisted through the year. Omaha participated in the protest of inequality and injustice. Summer arrived and with it came a surge in COVID-19 cases. Is there a limit to human idiocy?
- July: We celebrated our twenty-third anniversary and my fifty-seventh birthday. 2020 not being satisfied with just a pandemic, Santiago had to be put down this month as well.
- August: This month included an almost tragic bunny tale, a return of a monarch, and the positive news of a negative result.
- September: I remembered 9-11 and the changing of the seasons. I struggled with my many AT what ifs. I got the flu which, in the time of COVID-19 is actually good news.
- October: The Wife and I did one of the most important things of the year and voted. The Wife had another birthday. We ended the month with a quiet Halloween.
- November: The elections dominated this month as it has most of the fall. Music helped get through some of it. Thanksgiving produced yet another surge.
- December: I updated my Appalachian Trail posts. The Christmas season started. I forgot. What kind of surge will Christmas bring? The vaccine has its work cut out for it.
- Walking: I restarted walking this year with a new purpose: coping with diabetes. I hiked 640.6 miles over 73 hikes. It is the fourth highest mileage since I started keeping track in 2007. I'm actually surprised how much I hiked this year. It didn't feel like that much.
- Biking: This year I didn't ride my bike at all. No excuse. I just wasn't present enough to go riding.
- Books: The funk I was in wasn't conducive to reading and I only read one book this year. Here are my Goodreads Stats for 2020. I did read some back issues of magazines but the real replacement for my reading was either sleeping or listening to podcasts (often both at the same time).
- Concerts, Shows & Music : COVID-19 … need I say more? No live shows at all this year. I did listen to a lot of music on Spotify. Here is my Spotify 2020 Wrapped if you want to explore what I did music-wise this year. The playlist really doesn't mean much since I mostly listened to my "Music I Like" playlist on shuffle so the 2020 recap is more a testament of what the Shuffle Random Number Generator algorithm picked for me.
- I posted 58 times this year - the lowest since I started Homer's Travels in 2006. I posted less than I did on the Appalachian Trail. Sad. I just couldn't get myself motivated to write. We didn't go on vacation this year along with almost everyone else. I didn't want to talk about the pandemic. I didn't want to post about politics. There was too much of that out there and everything else was overpowered. I didn't feel like adding to the dreary mess that we were bombarded with in 2020 so I didn't.
Here's to a Happy, Prosperous, Healthy, and Boring New Year for all. May all your dreams come true in 2021.
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