2020: The Year That Made You Wanna Kick People In The Nuts

So yeah, 2020 was just one big jizz face. It was stepping on Legos with bare feet. A three-finger prostate exam. A complete fuckery. An Ikea store.

We moved from the teens to the twenties. The transition was smooth. Fine. Nonchalant. Meh. It went well.

For about eighteen days.

Then 2020 turned on us and spit fire. Spun on wicked, cracked heels, arched up, and showed long gangly teeth. The mouth opened and unhinged, releasing stingy murder hornets. Those fangs dripped with blood, death, scorn, hate, contempt, venomous despair, and an empty feeling of what the fuck. And 2020 lurched forward and sunk them in. Deep. Everywhere. In all of us.

And inside we went. Closed the door. Locked it tight. Bolted it. Put one of those old timey chunks of wood across it. And we waited. Waited for 2020 to walk away.

It didn’t.

Let’s talk writing for a second. As people who put words in sentences and eventually on paper, we tend to be a solitary beast. Not unlike the Krayt Dragon. But alas, we appear for pretzels and chocolate chips. And sometimes we combine the two with radiation. And come out of hiding for bourbon. Sometimes we answer the door. Mostly not. Otherwise, we hole up in the corner of a semi-dark room constantly complaining about the goddamn light being dim and say we’ll turn it up after the next sentence. Or paragraph. Or chapter. We never do. We ask Alexa for the time. Maybe the weather, too, but we don’t really care about the weather. It’s just conversation. We’re not going outside. The minutes turn to hours and the hours, well, shit, they’ve turned the page into the next day. And we write, constantly clicking control-s like it’s a nervous tick because, fucking 2020.

We realize we’ve been writing since sometime around…March. And we’re not done. We now have 137 works-in-progress. But nothing got done. We finished nada. Completions, zero. A big fat haha fuck you.

Holy shitballs. Where’d time go? Why do I have nothing finished? What the serious fuck?! Is Quarantimes over?

As we smooth out the dents and perma ass print from our chair, we realize it’s December. Yeah, that December. The exact last month of the year. 2 zero 2 one ahead. And we’ve been in solitude. And we realize hey, we kinda liked that. But we glance at our writing spreadsheet and see those WIPs. And we stress. A lot. But the bourbon helps.

We then flip month after month counting on one finger after another. It makes us feel bad. Disappointment hits like the underside of the desk after we dive down for a paper clip. Oh, just me? Whatever. Don’t judge me.

Is there a point to this?

Why…why yes, there is and thank you for asking.

The Point: whether you’ve completed a book, whether you finished a short story, whether you’ve done neither but have all those WIPs, don’t be deterred. Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t partake in self-ass-kickery. 2020’s done that enough already. Don’t get down. Be kind to yourself. To others. Keep writing. Those works will get done.

So…

As we bid a fond farewell to the one-year decade that was 2020, we shall box it tight, label it Shark Food, and sink it into taurus infested waters of the deep blue giving it a one-finger salute before it glides its way to a watery grave. But for sure Satan will intercept with tentacle-like fingernails, tear open the crate, remove 2020 and pet it like a cute kitten all the while gurgling, “My precious.”