Last Year on Earth
Greatest Hits, 2020: My 15 favorite essays from my least favorite year.
Ah, so this is dystopia. As I annually do, I’ve curated a list of my favorite pieces from the year that was, each with a small snippet of director’s commentary.
In last year’s edition, I remember saying: “I initially wanted to cut this list to a Top-10, but, sadly, dystopia has been very good for business and has given me a lot to talk about.” Well, in 2020, we reached a level of hell that depressed me past the point of wanting to say much at all.
I wrote significantly less this year than I did in either 2018 or 2019. Instead I expended most of my energy merely trying to endure the irreconcilable — a global nightmare with two rules governing my proceedings:
- Don’t catch the coronavirus.
- Don’t run out of money.
I just barely did both. In a year of unimaginable hardship and grief, I know that makes me one of the lucky ones.
Along the way, I tried to put my thoughts to (figurative) paper and post these dispatches from the end of the world for what was left of the world to read along. Below the following stanza, I’ve scrounged what I believe to be my 15 strongest entries from our last year on Earth for you.
I’d like to wrap this introduction with a photo. It’s from March 7 (or 7 March, depending on where in the world you are). 5:24 p.m. local time. It was the night after they cancelled SXSW — the true commencement of the United States of Pandemica — and it was the the last photo I took before everything changed.
This year was a decade. I came into 2020 with high hopes on a personal level, despite my well-documented low expectations of the world around me. I was peaking: 2018 was the by far the best year of my life until 2019 zoomed well beyond even that. I was to start a business, expatriate, travel the world, give presentations and branding workshops, maybe publish a book.
By the time I took the photo below, I really felt like I was flying at uncharted altitudes. I mean, just read this caption:
“Tbh I just think I look really fucking hot which is a welcome change from how I used to see myself. I grew up most my life thinking…
