Breaking the bad habits of 2020

I remember my first moments of 2020. I had slept badly and was up before our room had any sunlight to speak of. In the dark, I reached over to my nightstand and in fumbling for my glasses, pushed them over the edge. From the noise they made when they hit the floor, I knew I had broken my only means to read small print.

I thought, well, I hope that is not an omen telling me how 2020 is going to turn out.

When I retrieved the pieces from the floor, I found that the situation wasn’t as bad as it seemed. One lens had popped out and it didn’t look like the frame was damaged. Maybe the optometrist could make it right when the store opened up the next day. I found myself with nothing to do but wait and not-see-so-well. Until then, I wouldn’t be able to read from any books or screens. By the end of the day, I tackled one of my year’s goals and started clearing out the garage.

This became one of the lessons I have learned from my years of new year’s resolutions: if I want to organize the house, all I need to do is put away my glasses.

Look, I know everything is going sideways at the moment. As I am writing this, there is a group of white supremacists being ushered in and out of the US Capitol building by complicit police. Closer to home, because our provincial government didn’t want to get in the way of people’s Christmases, COVID-19 has overrun my community and is now so unchecked that it was reported today that the local hospital is setting up a makeshift morgue.