It is day thirtumpteen of the lockdown, which has been extended until the end of May here. At that point we’ll start to gradually get back to something like normal, but definitely not normal yet. It’s necessary. I am one of the people who needs to avoid getting the ‘rona, so I think it’s absolutely necessary. It’s still weird and depressing, and sometimes I just want to wallow in that.

I mean, it’s nearly June. Nearly half a year has been spent aggressively doing nothing. Not only that, but as it creeps on it’s not only cancelled things in the past (like Paris and the Salon du Livre), but is preemptively ruining plans in the future (UK Meet in September has been cancelled, which sucks a lot because I was looking forward to it but was the right decision by the organizers). This was a jam packed year for me, and now I’ve spent a good chunk of it accomplishing none of the goals set for myself.

So I’ve decided to pretend that’s not actually happening. What I’m going to do is call this a mock-year, like when you did mock GCSEs at school. They might have been stressful–my friend did get Bell’s Palsy in the middle of a French mock–but it didn’t count at the end of the day. That’s 2020, it’s a trial run for next year.

Frankly, I think we should just roll the calendar back on Dec 31 and have 2020 over again. If we can’t, though that’s fine. I’ll just do that in my head. I don’t write checks anymore so it doesn’t matter.

It’s not real, of course. People have died or been life-changingly ill, we’ve all seen sides of our neighbors we might judge, and those things can’t be hand-waved away as just ‘practice’. On a limited, personal level though, it helps.

The birthdays I’ve missed and weddings that have been cancelled, are actually just coming back bigger and better next year. All the events that I didn’t get to go to, I’ll roll up to them when they come back with a year of prep under my belt and a bag of swag the likes of which you’ve never seen. If I convince myself that this isn’t a wasted year of my life–however useful it is to society–I can cope better.

Plus it will keep my puppy a puppy longer. He might look like a big dog next year, but we’ll all know he’s just a baby.

So, this year I’m going to take chances with my writing, bake stuff I never get around to normally, and–based on my cupboards–pickle anything unfortunate enough to cross my path. Or maybe some weeks I’ll just do nothing and finish my Justified rewatch. That is also valid.

It might not be what I had planned, or any of us except the most paranoid, but it’s ok because it isn’t going to count against it. Or if it is, we can worry about that when it happens. To 2020, the patched release, we’ll do it better this time.