The Year That Never Happened
A few days ago, the unpleasant anniversary of San Francisco’s shelter in place order ominously came and went like a slow drifting summer fog across the bay. I’d forgotten the exact date, March 16th, if you’ll forgive me. I would have been perfectly fine to keep on with my life without that unneeded bit knowledge, if it weren’t for NPR declaring it over and over again on my way into work. So I got to thinking, drifting in and out of my thoughts as I crossed the bay bridge and into the glowing lights of the city, of how long ago that day felt. Much longer than a year, certainly, a hazy decade is what it feels like. Yet, it could have been yesterday as well, this year, no, the year that never happened.
In March of 2020 I was probably the most burnt out I’d ever been in my career. My 40 story high rise and it’s accompanying 12 story mid rise were in the final stages of finishing up. This meant 7 day work weeks, hours that ran on and on into the grimy San Francisco nights. I’d been told I was getting my own job after that behemoth tower. A very favorable bonus from December held the delicate strings of more to come, if I could just hold on and finish on time…everything would work out like it was supposed to.
I was at a peak in my life. Peak stress. Peak performance. Peak spending. Peak earning.
And like any peak, there must come some reckoning beyond its highest point. A come down. A crash. A downturn. I thought my comedown would be my vacation, followed by a nice, slower paced, small job for me to run on my own. That was supposed to be my 2020.
Before the shelter in place order, I chose to close my eyes and pretend the virus would go away. Like how SARS went away during my time in the Navy. Or the swine flu during the recession. Or the blip that the MERS virus was. Maybe it would go the way of the Zika virus and vanish from the media coverage.
But alas, it did not.
3.16.20
The call came in the late morning of March 16th. We’d heard the order was coming for a few days, but chalked it up to rumor. Someone knew someone in the Mayor’s office, blah, blah, blah. Still, when the call came all of us watched glued to the press conference from our work computers as if we hadn’t a clue this might happen. It was a surreal feeling. Similar to watching the twin towers collapse on live television, but without the anger, only the shock.
Could an entire city shut down? In America? Yeah, I’d seen the news footage of Italy. Singing from the windows. Empty wet streets. Sanitation trucks blowing smoke over cobbled roads. Body bags stacked like some staged horror movie scene. Could all that happen here? In my city?
It did.
The noisy streets of the once bustling city became swallowed up by an unbearable apocalyptic silence. A silence that screamed that something wasn’t right. Screamed that we shouldn’t keep going about our business like things were normal. Normality was in fact long gone. Never to return to the world. Though I bottled up my normalcy and tucked it away in my mind, hopefully waiting for the day it would return.
“Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave“
No traffic on the freeways. The grocery stores ransacked. Muni buses hurdling empty down Van Ness like manic ghost ships. All in a matter of days San Francisco became a place I’d only read about in my sci-fi novels. There’s a quote that captures that time in San Francisco. A Cormac McCarthy character, Ely (the only character with a name in the book), says it best in the apocalyptic novel The Road: “Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.” That’s how we all felt in the following weeks after the initial order took place. When the hopes were this lock down would only last a month or two at best.
It must be some wired human condition that we trick ourselves into thinking things will be over sooner than the reality before us would say so. In the first world war, the widespread belief was that troops would be home before Christmas 1914. Germany declared after invading Russia in 1941: “Before three months have passed we shall witness a collapse of Russia…” We all know how that played out. And we’re all old enough to remember Bush on an aircraft carrier speaking in front of that “mission accomplished” banner in 2003. I know I’m using military operations as an example, but that’s probably the closest thing to a nation wide effort that would have been needed to squash this thing early on.
The year that never happened
What should have happened in 2020 didn’t. The stock markets should have dropped and remained low. It didn’t. The United States should have been leading the world as an example of how to properly manage the worst global catastrophe we’ve seen since…I don’t know, World War 2? That sure as fuck didn’t happen. The Forty-Niners should have been a playoff team last year. That didn’t happen either.
And now, nearly a year after those events of March 2020, things are opening up again. I’ve been given my first dose of Moderna. So has my wife, and my father, and in laws, and a third of my co-workers. It feels like things are taking a turn for the better, finally; despite the warnings of opening too quickly, or mutant variants that will compromise the vaccines. It feels like the world is coming back to a shadow of its former self. Like a word caught on the tip of my tongue, normalcy is right around the corner. If I look hard enough I’ll see it, I’ll remember its name.
The feeling is reminiscent of coming back to the United States after spending ten months aboard a ship of war. There’s an image in your mind of the world you left behind that becomes frozen in time. It’s an image of the world you used to know. A reality that died the day you left. Yet you live in this dead world while you’re away. You spend your alone time there in that world captured in your mind, reliving memories, imagining futures of a place that is forever changed by time and events. It’s like trying to capture a river. The minute you pull a bucket full of water from the river, that bucket of water is no longer the river, and the river is not the same river you pulled the water from.
Anyone who’s spent some prolonged time away from home might know the feeling I’m describing. It’s like space travel. While away, time somehow slows. You’ve changed so much, seen so much, lived so much, that when you return home, you realize everyone has been living out the same day over and over. You’ve somehow lived years, while the people in your hometown have miraculously only lived days, maybe weeks. And nobody sees this but you. They don’t want to hear your stories. They don’t care what you’ve seen or eaten. They only want to talk about the same thing they were talking about a year ago. It’s not their fault. They can’t see it. They can’t possibly know that you’re much older than time would benefit you.
That’s how I feel about this whole return to normalcy thing. Except this time I haven’t gone anywhere. Neither has anyone else. We’ve all changed more in a shorter amount of time than seems rational. We’re all Van Winkle, our nap has lasted years, and for me, that means realizing that while the surroundings are the same, the times sure as hell aren’t. I bet we all have images of what normal is supposed to be now. Packed bars. No masks. Crowded restaurants and parties filled with humans laughing and shaking hands. Maybe its travel. Or commuter traffic and in person meetings. Or the simple act of opening a door in public and not immediately thinking about where your hand sanitizer is.
Normalcy
I have the feeling that I’m waiting for something. Some solid cue. A switch to flip, a light to turn, before things are normal again. But it’s just the image in my mind that I took with me the day the shelter in place order took effect. The lock down started with a few words and proclamation, a switch if you will, but it will not be turned back in the same manner. There’s no stuffing this genie back into the lamp. 9/11 was the same way, there was no “normal” after that, just an acclimatization to a new world.
For us, we took the local ordinances pretty seriously. I stopped hanging out with my friends. We severely cut the time we saw our family. Eating out became something I’ve only done twice since last March. My life became a monotonous march of working or hanging out at home–for the most part. We’ve taken a few domestic vacations here and there, but the social aspect of what my life used to be is still missing. I also wonder how much of that has to do with my sobriety. Anyway, California opening up restrictions is a big deal for me. Since I’m doing the right thing by getting vaccinated, I plan on following along and getting out more. That probably means spending more too. Somehow my kids have convinced me to take them to Disneyland this summer, if things feel right (and the damn prices aren’t insane) we’ll take that trip back to “normalcy”.
I ate out in a cafe for the first time in months today in the nearby town of Walnut Creek. The cafe was crowded with people. We wore masks and were spaced apart 6′ from other tables. And I glimpsed it. Glimpsed my new normal world. I felt comfortable being in the crowded restaurant because I’d taken my first Moderna shot. I didn’t have some paranoid monkey dangling around my neck worrying about the virus; I know the vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting infected, it helps you fight it off before symptoms appear, but it still felt as though a weight had been lifted from my shoulders none the less. I also didn’t feel as though I were doing something wrong by gathering in a crowded place. That peace of mind was indescribable and I can only compare it to the precious moments after meditating.
My daughter starts real school in a week. Her and her sister are both signed up for recreational soccer after a missed season. And it’s damn time I buy the return leg for my Portugal trip and book accommodations.
Normal isn’t going to come back to me. I have to go to it. Wherever that is. I’m done waiting for it to show up on my doorstep to tell me its okay to get back out there. And yes, I’ll probably be wearing a mask when I find it.
What about you? Have you found your new normal yet?
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Good stuff as always, Noel. Yeah, it was definitely a strange, lost year for pretty much all of us. I get my 1st shot tomorrow and, like you, am participating in a bit of emerging “normalcy” like eating at a restaurant (although I sat outside to enjoy the sunshine), my weekly in-person gaming group is re-convening in a few weeks once we’re all vaccinated and most of all I’m booking lots of travel to see friends both domestically and later this year internationally.
I’m also planning lots of outdoor adventures It’s going to be hard work trying to get it all in. However, you’re right, normalcy won’t just happen all at once. It will be a slow, gradual process and will require us individually to meet it.
Congrats on getting the shot! I was able to get mine earlier than others my age in CA because I’m deemed an “essential worker”, but they never even checked my letter from work at the local CVS. I have a feeling they’ll shoot anyone who shows up lol. Yeah travel and eating out and gaming all sound like a return to normalcy. Happy to hear you’re getting your gaming meetings back. Some things are just better in person. Yeah, travel will be nice. I’m sure as the months wear on prices will be going up and up.
Thanks for taking the time to comment and read!
those were fantastic descriptions, noel. well done. i especially like the contrast of leaving a place and seeing everything you saw and nobody wanting to hear it.
i miss my friends and having real winter certainly changed the dynamic here the past 4 months. we had our first sunny nice day yesterday and our friend came over with her dog to sit in the back yard for an hour while the dogs played. just sitting outdoors in the sun in the garden she said “this feels like vacation.” i suppose that is part of the contrast and new normal that something we used to take for granted would now feel somehow special. i know i’m looking forward to hopefully going back to new orleans this year and having a beer in my favorite bar.
Thank Freddy. That’s right, the small things we used to take for granted seem like a big deal these days. If there’s a silver lining, its that fleeting change in perspective for all of us. Really good point you bring up about the new normal. Man, that would be cool for you to get back to your favorite bar this year. I’ll know you’ll make it happen. My wife and I have been talking about New Orleans for a few years now. One of these days I’ll make it down there.
Glad you are seeing normal coming. We are still a ways away as we are behind on the vaccinations relative to the US. We will get there and I am looking forward to when we do.
As we have been very similar to you following the rules and have missed that normalcy. Last week I actually looked back to see when I sent the email out to staff to work from home going forward. It was March 13th and I wasn’t sure if I should do it I remember going back and forth. However, I did send it and then on the Sunday they shut down schools and daycares and was very happy I did send it. It saved a lot of confusion for my team but it was a crazy time like your comparisons.
I do hope you make it to Disneyland and continue to enjoy being back to more normal times!
Hey Fred. Yeah I’m looking forward to the date everyone can have access to the vaccine. Few more months hopefully.
That time when things were shutting down was super chaotic. Looks like you made the right decision in hindsight and ahead of the curve in that regard. My company still has a ton of people working from home. They actually just let me start working from home 3 days a week. Yea I hope we get to take a trip this summer too! The good weather in combination with vaccines and opening up makes me feel optimistic about this year…
We’re still slowly working our way back to normal. We ate out a few times when we went on our road trips, but hasn’t done that at home. Our son will go back to school for 2 hours/day next week. That’s better than nothing. He gained a lot of weight and really needs to work it off. Soccer is still not back to normal so we put it off until Fall.
We’ll just ease back into it. I think we’re really lucky to come through this relatively unscathed.
That’s good to hear Joe. Yeah its a slow process I feel. I agree, better than nothing when it comes to going back to school. We happily signed our kid up when the option came around for both school and soccer-still a bit bitter at the soccer league for not giving refunds last year when no practices or games were played, but oh well.
So true about coming through this unscathed. I’ll knock on some wood for us, but it does feel as though a corner has been turned.
Nice summary of how many of us have felt through the past year. I haven’t really reflected on our past year, but man have things changed. We welcomed our son into the world just weeks before lockdown, and finished the year by selling our house and moving away from friends and family. It doesn’t feel normal yet for anyone, but honestly we won’t ever be going back to a ‘normal’ situation. It’ll always be different, and that’s part of the reason we decided to pull the trigger in the middle of the pandemic. It was a good backdrop for change. I do look forward to seeing family again, visiting friends, travel, and the things we used to do. Hopefully that comes soon.
Congrats on the birth of your son…man what a year to have been born! I’ve read a few articles about the next generation of young kids who’ve lived through this as being called Generation C (for covid). I’m sure this event will some how spin out to change the world for the better by the young kids molded by it as such a young age. Wow this really was a year of change for you, in a ton of aspects. I imagine moving in a pandemic was tough and moving is stressful enough without a rampaging virus. Great point about a good backdrop for a change. I know what you mean about fam and friends, I’m hoping by end of summer enough of us will be vaccinated that we can all put this social distancing crap behind us. Thanks for the comment.
I still remember the fear before and during the lock down. I just wrote about this anniversary, the one that no one wants to celebrate. The pandemic gave me a lot of time to reflect and learn to be more humble.
Hey Thomas, yea not knowing what was going to happen was certainly unsettling. Especially for people who had to keep going to work in the first couple months of it. After that I think we (me at least) got used to the fear of getting infected and it became normal. Crazy how we adapt. I remember listening to a podcast called Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, and he talked about the Cold War and how we all have “guns pointed at our heads” with all the ICBMs pointed at us 24/7 and we’ve adapted to that threat overtime. Back in the 50’s-60’s bunkers and the fear of nuclear war was a constant subject of anxiety. I’m just glad we have vaccines so quickly available to us all.
Thanks for commenting!
Noel,
I think we’ve tried our best to avoid having a year that “didn’t happen”—which is what I think Jenni and I have both sort of feared might happen. Rather, we focused on other goals or priorities we could still accomplish within the confines this pandemic provides. But, it’s certainly been a year much different from what we envisioned.
Like you, we’ve been catching flecks of normal. If you squint a little, you can see it. We had a short trip to the beach in NC and even went to the state aquarium. We just returned from a Sunday family dinner with Jenni’s sisters since everyone in the group is now vaccinated. Normal is out there.
But I’m not sure it will be the normal we left. Things will change. I’m just not sure what.
—
This is a bit beside the point of the post but I’m curious. What do you read—books, news, other blogs? What are your favorites? We both started writing about the same time (getting close to a year!) and it’s so neat to see how your writing has evolved. I read other blogs and am often excited to learn some new anecdote about tax strategy, become enlightened by an economic statistic, or see the connection between one mental model and another. But with your writing, I’m increasingly interested in your style and technique. I really enjoy the prose, you’ve got a good head for writing.
Yea the last year has a been a tough pill to swallow and accept. I think you and Jenni had the right mindset for setting goals within the confines we all faced. Luckily you’re right, normalcy is out there now. Glad to hear too you’ve been able to get some outings in. We’re so happy to see things start to open back up out here in CA. It feels great!
Thanks for the compliment. Yea we did start at around the same time. I’ll never forget you were my first commenter. That comment helped me continue to grind out the writing when my motivation for the blog was at a low, just knowing someone had read my stuff and took time to comment made a huge difference. So thank you for that!
You know, I’m a big reader (not as big since the kiddos arrived) but I love sci-fi and fantasy. Ursula K Le Guin and her Left Hand of Darkness and the Earthsea series, Gene Wolfe and his Book of the New Sun blows my mind and might be my favorite sci-fi books. Also love Orson Scott Card. Pat Rothfuss- his Kingkiller books top my list for fantasy right now. Then for literature, I love Hemingway. the nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has fantastic novels my particular favs are Red and Museum of Innocence. Cormac McCarthy’s book All The Pretty Horses is absolutely one of my favorites. Wilbur Smith’s historical Birds of Prey series and River God are amazing. I also enjoy the classics, particularly Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Then a smattering of non fiction history, mostly antiquity these days. News favorite is probably the Atlantic and the New Yorker as far as columns go. Then a dozen or so PF blogs which has been tougher to keep up on as work has intensified. There was a time in my life, in my 20’s when I was determined to be a fiction writer, then kids came and I got a promotion at work and so creative writing was put on indefinite hold. Appreciate the questions and nice words Chris!
How did I miss this great post?! Nice job! Just this morning, my colleagues and I were agreeing we’re done with Covid. We’re vaccinated and realize it’s not the panacea, but neither is remaining shut out from the world. For us, we’ve gone to work, gone to the grocery store, left kids at day care or sent them to school all along. We’ve never been able to hide, and most of us escaped unscathed and uninfected, so I feel like we have a different perspective on it than others.
We’re the ones telling the world to open up and live because that’s what we’re doing. We’re exercising caution, but we’re seeing family and some friends. Judging by all the packed suburban parking lots and the growing number of maskless people I see around Philly, people are over it. Restaurants are filling up. Some were empty only briefly, as I experienced last summer.
But the virus is here, it’s not going anywhere. Once it hit US soil there was little to nothing we could do about it. Our cultural lack of understanding about infectious diseases/viruses and experience with these threats precluded us from ever being leaders in this pandemic, other than finding a vaccine. Science and research we can do. Fully shutting down? Not a chance. Too many people took advantage of the first weeks of lockdown as a free-for-all party time (I know, I witnessed it countless times here). So, here we are.
Vietnam, who outperformed us in mitigating the virus, had experience with a similar virus from China and acted immediately. They shut air travel from China the day before we did, but they had closed their northern border to China before that. They also snatched up tests and relevant supplies before the rest of the world. Experience had taught them well. And they have a much more docile population and a communist government. Anyway, live and learn, right?
But, yeah, you’re not alone in longing for the pre-Covid world and the memories that will haunt us forever like 9-11.
I hope you have a great time at Disney! You need it. Enjoy!
Great comment Katie. I can’t even imagine being on the front lines like you have all been this entire time. Hats off to you and your colleagues for taking care of our country during this messy time. Crazy to think how close you were to the virus, yet like you say made it out unscathed. I’m certain that has to give you a very different perspective like you say.
Yeah I think America is truly “over it”. For the good and bad that might cause. You know, not enough is really said about the vaccine development here in this country (at least not in my news sources). I’m glad you mentioned that. I like your points about the science and research that can be done here versus the shut down. There is a price for a free society, and with that is inequality and the ability to disregard government. I often wonder how the history books will portray this time in our country? And the world? We’re living through an event that will shift the entire century I believe, though not as bold as the last world wars changed the 20th century, but more culturally and the way we view information and big tech and governments involvement in the economy.
I wonder your thoughts on a national healthcare system? I feel that those countries (in Asia) with a centralized health system were better able to keep up than our own privatized system. Would we have fared better if we had something like the NHS? Probably not, look at what happened in the UK. In Asia, they’re accustomed to following the big government for better and worse and in this case it served them well. Those are also smaller countries with lower populations that just follow rules and have great discipline built into their culture…as you point out. I’ll never forget being in Taiwan and waiting on a light to turn green so we could cross the street with a hundred people on the corner and not one car in sight! Nobody crossed. That would never happen here in the US or Europe.
Yeah I want to go to Disneyland too, weirdly. Lol I’m a big time disney/amusement park hater (though I own DIS). I think its just the act of doing something normal that’s driving me to go along with this strange urge. Thanks for commenting!
A “hazy decade” is a great way to describe this past year.
This particularly resonated with me, “I was at a peak in my life. Peak stress. Peak performance. Peak spending. Peak earning.” Good stuff.
There was poignant memory I have of last year when everything first shout down in LA, and I was driving on the freeway with no cars around me. It literally felt like you were in one of those post-apocalyptic dystopian Hollywood movies, and I remember thinking to myself – I will never experience this again in my entire lifetime. This is a true anomaly.
BTW… the niners reference was classic. You sprinkled that in just in the right place and at the right time. Hahaha.
I really liked this piece. That paragraph with the ship analogy was golden. I felt like I was living it. Great writing bud.
Thanks for finding that past comment in the spam. I’ve been having trouble with it and can’t figure out why that happens to random comments I leave. It’s like every 3 comments I leave on a blog one goes to spam. It’s friggin’ driving me nuts.
Keep up the good writing and looking forward to your next one.
Wow yea, empty LA freeways? I can only try to imagine how that must have felt. It was the same up here. Even though it was great to zoom home and to work, it just felt wrong. Great way to phrase it: “a true anomaly”. That phrase can pretty much sum up 2020. I remember being pretty upset about having to work through the beginning of the lockdowns, but man, aren’t we really privileged to have been able to keep an income stream through all this? For me to have been all worked up about “having” to go to work was really just 1st world arrogance on my part. But it was a bit frightening to see streets abandoned like they were in the beginning. I can imagine a place like Socal with the awesome weather, must have been tough to not go out and do shit.
Haha yea I know to look in my spam now every time I log in. Thanks for commenting. Hope you’re enjoying breaking in the house.
Great piece, as usual! No sense of normal yet, and really don’t know when that will come. We have a vacation planned this summer with extended family. Hopefully by then we feel more comfortable to do such things.
It’s difficult after such a long time to push the envelope. After being restricted for so long, we think ‘what’s a few more months? ‘ But like you say, we have to go find it, with masks on. Definitely with masks on.
Yeah I’m hoping normal will rear it’s head and we’ll be like “oh it was there along”. Nice! Happy for you and the vacation. We all need one.
I agree with you on the “what’s a few more months” sentiment. At least for mask wearing and protocol for those not yet vaccinated. Yes. Def with masks on. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment.