In the middle of January 2020, I wrote this post that listed my priorities for the year. A lot hasn’t changed–I still struggle with priorities and I still am pretty much an all or nothing kind of person.

January and February were pretty normal around here. We took a trip in late February/early March to Las Vegas just as news was starting to trickle in about the virus. Nothing was out of the ordinary on our trip and we had one planned for April to Portland as usual.

Within two weeks of getting home, there were empty shelves in all of the grocery stores and Snake had moved home to work. The city was shutting down and we bought our first masks. It was surreal.

Needless to say, the trip to Portland was cancelled. Our plans for our outside building was postponed and my idea that I was going to write every day definitely fell apart. I think we didn’t write for about 3 or 4 months.

We tried really hard to look at the positives. We had work, realistically way too much all of a sudden, because people were moving everything online. We could do our work from home pretty easily because it was just a stepped up version of what we had done before. Our house is big enough that we didn’t trip over each other constantly and no one got sick. We were in much better shape than a lot of other people and we tried to remember that.

That just is easier said than done when everything that is “normal” in your life goes away. Date night out was not going to happen, no weekend movies, and even going to a store felt alien and scary. I didn’t go to a store at all for about 3 months and I didn’t go alone until the beginning of December. Snake took over all of the grocery shopping and other errands. Masks and I did not have an easy start. Even now I struggle with them but at least I’ve gotten to the point where I can do it for an hour or so. The people who have to wear them all day? You are amazing.

We didn’t see Snake’s dad until August. Even then it was masked and always six feet apart to make sure we didn’t get him sick. Wedding plans that were started last December for a family member have been modified from small to 10 total. There will be another one “in the after times,” but they will still get married in the beginning of January and not postpone their happiness.

What have we learned? We always thought we were introverts, but these introverts still want to go out once in a while. We learned that we could survive and support each other through things that we never thought we’d go through. We learned to appreciate things that we had always taken for granted. We learned that we need things to look forward to even if they are things that we wouldn’t have thought twice about before.

I have friends online who have been amazing. We shared feelings and supported each other through all of the crappy things that happened to all of us. We commiserated when we each missed events that we were planning, cancelled trips or missed holidays. We laughed about being excited when we found toilet paper or antibacterial wipes online. We shared pictures that we had been sent of people we couldn’t see. We loved each other through the worst pieces of the year and celebrated the small victories.

And Snake. He is and always will be my person. He and I have figured out how to get the house painted and our ramada up in the backyard. There’s still a lot to do out there, but we ended 2020 by crossing a couple of priorities off the list. Together.