looking back

Looking Back at 2020

Fandango20 Comments

No words are necessary to assess what an awful year 2020 was. I’m not going to waste my time — or yours — looking back at why it was such a…

  • Shitshow
  • Dumpster fire
  • Clusterfuck

No, instead, as I reflect back on 2020, I’m going to focus on the few positive aspects of 2020 for me, personally.

  • My wife and I moved to a new home in February
  • We sold our old home for considerably more than we were asking in mid-March, just as the stay-at-home orders were imposed. Phew. 😅
  • Our first grandchild, a boy, was born in May
  • Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected President and Vice President in November.
  • Our daughter-in-law found out in December that she’s pregnant and our second grandchild is on the way.
  • No one in our family, nor any of our close friends, came down with COVID-19.
  • My blog reached 4,000 followers.

On a sad note, our 15-year-old mixed Shepherd/Lab died in November.

Anyway, my friends, I’m not going to make a speech or anything, but 2020 is over and we have a brand new year to look forward to. So think positively and make the best of the new year. I mean seriously, it can’t possibly be any worse than last year.

Can it?

I did specifically write this post for Linda G. Hill’s Just Jot It January prompt, but when I saw that her word for today was “speech,” I managed to sneak that word into the last paragraph of this post.

Blogging Insights — Looking Back

Fandango7 Comments

Blogging insights Dr. Tanya, at Salted Caramel, published another one of her Blogging Insights posts in which she poses one or more questions about blogging. In this case, she asked four questions about what she calls “retrospective introspection.”

Here are her four questions:

How old is your current blog/website?

I started this blog in May of 2017. This is actually my fifth blog, thus “fivedotoh.com” (as in 5.0). My first two blogs were on Blogger, then my third blog was on a platform called TypePad. And before this, I had a different blog on WordPress.

Do you ever look back at your site (i.e., read through your old posts)?

Every Friday I publish Fandango’s Friday Flashback, where I go back and repost a post I posted on the same date in a previous year. I sometimes go back to old posts from before my current blog, so, since I started my first blog in 2005, I’ve got almost 14 years of posts to choose from. It’s amazing to me that, more often than not, I don’t even remember writing those old posts. It’s as if I am reading them for the first time.

How long ago did you update your About Page?

I haven’t updated it since I first composed it in May 2017. I haven’t changed much in two-and-a-half years, so why bother updating my about page?

If you were to start a new blog today, what would you do differently?

Not a damn thing! I like my blog just the way it is. Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Be It Resolved

Fandango14 Comments

13D14C4A-A715-458A-ACCB-FB40BCA04DB7I originally wrote this post at the end of last year for one of Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompts. I thought, because of the subject matter and timing, it would be worth reposting it.

Many people use the approaching new year to take stock of their lives. They look behind at the past year and reflect on their achievements and failures. Often, they focus on the mistakes they made, their broken promises, and unfulfilled dreams. They resolve to improve themselves, to get a fresh start as the brand new year commences.

New Year’s resolutions are an effort to reinvent oneself; they are a form of self-motivation. People make them with the hope of changing their lives for the better. Unfortunately, most such resolutions are not kept for very long. So why bother?

Resolutions are all about hopefulness and people have been making these annual resolutions for centuries. The act of creating such resolutions has reportedly been around since Babylonian times, when the Babylonians were said to have made promises to the gods in the hope that they’d earn good favor in the coming year.

Some sources say that the tradition of New Year’s resolutions dates back to around 150 BC. January is named after the mythical early Roman god Janus, who had two faces, which allowed him to look both back on the past (the old year) and forward toward the future (the new year).

This became a symbolic time for Romans to make resolutions for the new year and to forgive enemies for troubles in the past. Janus would forgive the Romans for their wrongdoings in the previous year, and, based upon gifts and promises, would bless them in the year ahead.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. It’s not that I’m perfect and there’s no room for improvement. That’s far from the case. But I don’t like that feeling of failure when my resolutions to get more exercise, to eat healthier, to watch less TV, or to be a better human being inevitably fall short. So if I don’t make any New Year’s resolutions, I won’t beat myself up for not being able to keep them.

Having said that, the one resolution I do plan to keep is to continue blogging, so long as it’s still fun, fulfilling, and doesn’t become a burden.

Happy New Year, fellow bloggers. And for those of you who do make New Year’s resolutions, best of luck. Because the odds of success are against you.