2020: The End and The Beginning

2020 was some kind of year. It had its ups and downs. It seemed like for every positive thing there were about 10 negative things. Not to mention that March to about August seemed to last about 20 years while August to December went by in the blink of an eye. But was 2020 all that bad? From my own personal experience, it really wasn’t. Sure some things got thrown off track because of Covid, but overall I did have a decent year.

My year started off amazing. I was in Colorado for our annual skiing trip. We went to Winter Park and spent a week skiing before returning home. It’s a trip I look forward to every year. Sadly we won’t be going this time around. Covid is to blame. But life will go on. We will return when it is safe to do so. In the meantime, we will jusy have to go skiing closer to home.

April took a dive downward. I wound up with Covid with the rest of my family. We all recovered from it, but it was definitely an experience I won’t forget. It was not fun. For me, it lasted for about 10 days. While I was fine enough to go outside and walk around the house, I didn’t leave the property. I was not going to put others at risk and it was a long time after I had it that I decided it was safe for me to even go to the store again.

2020 has opened the door to many new friendships as well. I’ve met a lot of awesome people through Discord and Twitch and many of them live a world away. If it wasn’t for Covid, there’s a good chance I never would of met any of these people. I was only able to meet them because I was stuck at home for 2 months and spent a good chunk of my time online.

August brought another sad moment. I had plans to go to Sweden in August but we cancelled that trip because of Covid. It was going to be my first international trip. It was going to be such an awesome experience and I was so excited. But safety comes first. And while we didn’t go, we plan to make up for it with a trip to Germany in September of 2021.

As the year came to a close I couldn’t help but smile at all the things I was still able to accomplish even with the world in a state of uncertainty. I continued to take classes and I spent 2020 learning German. I’m not completely fluent in it but Ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch.

2020 was also the year where I was able to bring myself out of the massive debt hole I was in. I’m not 100% debt free, but I’m in a much better spot than I was 12 months ago and that alone calls for celebration. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do it but I did. And I’m so happy I did. It feels like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders and I can’t wait to start 2021 in a much better place financially.

Along with all the chaos I also wrote a new LEGO animated film as well as created a new comic series. I’ve spent a decent amount of time doing creative things like that as well as video editing. I needed to keep busy and I definitely did with those projects.

I’m excited for 2021. The world might not be back to normal, but there’s plenty of things I want to accomplish. I want to film the short film I wrote and my new LEGO animation. I want to read at least one book a month. I want to do more video editing. There’s plenty I can do this year. All I have to do it set my mind to it.

Time Travel

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of time travel. Going forward in time. Going backward in time. Meeting our heroes. Visiting with loved ones we miss. But the question arises. Even if we could, should we? Should we put ourselves into a situation where we could vastly alter our past or even our future?

While it isn’t certain whether or not we can travel through time, we have several reasons not to. We have countless movies that show us what could go wrong. Back to the Future shows us what could go wrong if those from the future return to visit themselves in the past. Timeless is a good example of how changing the past can affect the future. It still stands as one of my favorite TV shows, but when you mess with time, time messes back.

The music video for “Another World” by Gojira gives us a chilling look into what the future could hold. This is, of course, assuming we don’t change our current ways. And while we may not be thinking hundreds of years ahead, we need to. Because without today, tomorrow doesn’t exist.

However, there is a very basic way we can travel through time. It comes in the form of music. There are songs that takes us back to a certain time and place when we hear them. They remind us of people, places, events, vacations, the list goes on. And while we can’t exactly travel back to that time, for a few minutes, we do return to that time and we get a chance to relive it. Maybe even a little different than before.

My brain has a tendency to wander. I’m constantly thinking about new projects without finishing old ones. I have so many stories I want to write. So many comics I need to finish. Short films to write and film. The list goes on and on. But one of the things I haven’t gotten to yet is a story about time travel. I’ve always wanted to do one and I plan on doing it one day.

I did try writing a story in which the main character was following the clues left behind from Bonnie and Clyde in order to find a treasure. I never finished the story. And the middle got stale and boring. I’m not even sure I still have it. But in the original idea, the main character was going to travel back in time. When I couldn’t figure out how to make that happen, I scrapped the time travel aspect. But that’s a story for another post.

While time travel would be cool, I think it’s wise to not travel through time. Even if we could, I’d never go to the future. To see how things turn out would destroy our idea of the present. But to go back in time, that’s something I’ve often thought about. Seeing historical figures of the past. Hanging out with all these famous people before they were famous. As a history geek that idea excites me. As a rational human, I’d be concerned about getting stuck in the past. And while we can’t exactly travel through time yet, the idea excites me and scares me at the same time.