Tag: New Year

Managing Expectations

2020 is almost over, and as we prepare to flush this year into the septic tank of history where it deserves to be, I find myself cautiously optimistic about the coming year. I’m eager to see what 2021 will bring, but at the same time, I also know that I don’t want to get my hopes up too high only to see them dashed if 2021 turns out to be as big of a dumpster fire as its predecessor.

If nothing else, 2020 has been a major learning experience in managing expectations. I don’t know if anyone told themselves in December, 2019, that this next year was going to be amazing, but I’m pretty sure nobody was planning to spend twelve months hiding at home, stocking up on toilet paper and disposable masks, and blaming politicians for being incompetent in the face of crisis (which is a lot like blaming fish for swimming). For this reason, as the clock ticks into the new year, I am keeping my resolutions and plans at a reasonable level.

For example, in 2020, I had planned to take an Alaskan cruise during the summer. That was cancelled. I had reservations for a writing convention in Sacramento that I was going to attend with my friend Wes Blalock. That also was cancelled. I also had purchased tickets to fly to Hawaii and spend a couple weeks in Kauai. Surprise! Also cancelled.

So, for this coming year, I am keeping my goals simple. For example, I am making a few new year’s resolutions that I think will be much easier to keep than the traditional ones. Instead of telling myself that I will eat better, exercise and lose some weight, I am simply going to try not to eat and drink so much that my heart ends up exploding in my chest. I am pretty sure I can keep this resolution. The good news, however, is that even if I can’t, by the time I realize I’ve failed to keep it, I will only have to live with the knowledge for a few seconds at most. I believe this is a winning strategy.

I am also planning on spending less time watching television during 2021. This should be an easy resolution to keep given that I think I set a record in 2020 for sedentary behavior. The couch has a permanent indent in the cushion from me sitting on it sixteen hours a day for most of the past 52 weeks.

The same will be true about my travel plans.

This year, I am no longer setting my sights on vacations and conferences. My expectations will be a tad lower. In August next year, I am scheduled to attend a writers’ conference in Louisiana. After the parade of shattered plans last year, I have decided this year that instead of telling people that I am going to fly to New Orleans, I will simply say that I am hoping to get out of the house. If my trip actually happens, that will be a bonus, but I won’t get my hopes up. If the flight is cancelled as everything else in my life over the past twelve months has been cancelled, I will instead step out into my backyard and walk until I reach the back fence. I can then announce to the world that I have successfully gotten out of the house. It is a low bar, true, but it is a goal I believe that I can reasonably achieve.

Overall, I have managed not to become too excited about the coming year. I have never really had a great outlook on life in general, and it isn’t just the big, world-wide, life altering things either. My life for the past several years has been an ongoing parade of minor events telling me that I need to lower my expectations.

Recently, we had a very nice casserole for dinner. The leftovers went into the refrigerator and I had planned to enjoy a second helping for my lunch the next day. Unfortunately, by the time the rest of my family had finished with late night snacking and breakfast the next morning, when I opened the refrigerator the following afternoon, there was nothing left for me. I made the mistake of getting my hopes up, and disappointment was the predictable result. I should have simply told myself that whatever I found in the fridge was going to be lunch. That way, after eating the last few olives out of a jar and munching on a slice of American cheese that had fallen out of the packet and slipped to the back of the crisper drawer, it would merely be sad. It wouldn’t also be a disappointment.

With a constant barrage of little reminders like this one, I am getting better at accepting the reality of my existence. I no longer hope that the two new cats in my house will stop tipping over the garbage can and scattering garbage all over the kitchen floor. I no longer expect that when I get takeout from any of the local restaurants that the food in the bag will be anything close to what I actually ordered. I have even stopped wishing that my children will grow up to be productive and contributing members of society. I just want them to get out of my house.

And, finally, I don’t need the new year to be a complete return to normal life. I would settle for it being marginally better than 2020.

Whatever your goals may be for 2021, big or small, I hope you achieve them, and I wish you a happy, and slightly less abnormal, new year.

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Forging Ahead Into a New Year

Old car suspended in the air

Here we are. Ready or not, another year has begun, and not just a new year but a whole new decade.

I know there are some people who will argue that the new decade doesn’t begin until 2021. They claim that there is no such thing as year “zero,” therefore the first decade was years 1-10. I tend to ignore these people because they are annoying. If the year starts with a 2, then it’s the 20’s in my opinion, and since this is my blog, I’m saying that January 1st marked the beginning of a new decade.

If you disagree, go get your own blog. End of argument.

When I was a kid growing up in the 1970’s, I used to wonder what the world would be like in the year 2000. Would we have flying cars? Would we have colonies on the moon, or commercial space flights? Would aliens find our planet and decide we should be blown up? (Yeah, I had an active imagination as a kid.)

Well, the answer to all those questions is “no.” Especially to the flying car. Where the hell is my flying car? Movies and TV have been promising flying cars since I was a child, and what have we actually been given? Electric cars.

How the hell is that a fair trade-off?

 And that was all supposed to happen by 2000. I never used to wonder what the world would be like in 2020, or what I would be doing because I just assumed that I would probably be dead.

I’m not dead yet. And worse, I still don’t own a flying car.

On the plus side, there have been some great inventions in my lifetime. Cell phones were invented and, just a few years later, they became cameras, daily planners, games, alarm clocks, stereos and a thousand other things all in one device. When I was growing up, I actually had to go over to a friend’s house if I wanted to talk to them. We had one telephone in our house that I was not allowed to answer for the first ten years of my life, and even after that, I couldn’t make outgoing calls because I might prevent someone else from trying to call us.

Now I can talk to five people all at once and never have to come face-to-face with any of them.

Which is convenient because, for the most part, I don’t like being around people.

Computers were invented before I was born, but it was in my lifetime that they became household items. The internet was also created while I’ve been around. Now, anybody can jump online and research the lowest price for wool socks, how to feed a llama, or where to go to find the best dentures. Any idiot can buy a domain name and start up their own blog in the amount of time it takes to boil a hotdog.

Okay, that last one hit a little too close to home.

There have been so many inventions in the past fifty years, that many of them have already disappeared and been replaced with other inventions. The VCR was invented, everybody bought one and then DVD’s showed up. Now, everyone still has a VCR, but it sits in a drawer somewhere in the house just in case someone wants to watch one of the two hundred VHS movies we can’t force ourselves to throw away.

The 8-track tape was invented in my lifetime. It was replaced by cassette tapes in the 1980’s, which in turn died a slow death when the compact disc was created. Compact discs (CD’s) are still around for the moment, but they are disappearing now that we can stream music directly through our cell phones. That is three generations of music players that have come and gone since I was born. Which is terribly depressing. I’m starting to feel really old right now.

So, enough dwelling on the past. Let’s look at what the future might hold. I predict that in 2020 politics and religion will continue to cause some tension-riddled meals in the Wilbanks household. I predict my children will continue to cost me more money and aggravation than they are worth. And, I predict that this blog will continue for a while longer as it is currently the only legal outlet I am allowed to deal with the frustrations in my life.

Strangling the aforementioned children is apparently frowned upon.

Beyond that, what does the future look like? Will there be space travel? Can we find world peace? Is there a cure to poverty and neglect? I don’t know. We shall just have to wait and see.

I’ll tell you one thing though, I damned-well better get my flying car.

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Enjoying Deep Dark Thoughts? Follow me on Facebook so you don’t miss a post. Just go to my page and click the “Like” button to receive updates on my blog and other projects.

And you can follow me on Twitter @gallenwilbanks.