…at least for what I can remember. My late grandmother, who lived through two World Wars, a Spanish flu, a Great Depression, the Holocaust, and some other niceties, would not probably be that impressed with 2020. But for me –a Gen X with short memory and even shorter life experience– it has been something both unexpected and difficult to cope with at the same time. Its impact wave has affected, directly or indirectly, the lives of billions of people, mine included, and disrupted plans, changed schedules, shattered certainties, rewritten paths. One year ago, I had just launched a tiny zine (Frozen Wavelets) of speculative fiction and poetry, and I was weighing the pros and cons of still publishing a blog after six years (I guess this is a moment everybody reaches as a blogger soon or later). Fast forward 12 months, and the questions I have now are quite different.
I have even less time to devote to this task than in January 2020, but now I feel keeping my blog alive more important than ever, because life is more than just your daily work. Even if I didn’t –for the first time– write here about my blogversary last December, due to life constraints, I feel happy to have been able to celebrate it at all, silently or otherwise. Frozen Wavelets is, surprisingly, still here, after one dramatic first year of publishing life. All plans we had made have been scrapped by the pandemic, and just keeping it coming has been a struggle. I wouldn’t have managed to do it alone, and I have to thank many people for their support.
Enter 2021, the virus is still among us. We’re not out of woods yet, but if there’s anything good at the moment, is that the end is in sight, and it passes through (safe) vaccines and a collective effort of responsibility to put these harrowing months behind us. So, let’s cheer for a new year that is just starting. Enjoy your favourite fiction and, whenever possible, write about it: it will make someone else’s day a better one only for reading it. Behave responsibly. Wear a mask. And if you have no medical issues that prevent you to safely do it, get your jab. If not for you, for the others. Happy New Year 2021, everybody.
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