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Happy 2022!
As soon as I opened my eyes, I picked up my phone. At 8 am, no one else was awake, so I stayed in bed and unsubscribed to over 300 email lists. I didn’t intend to do this– in fact, I usually scroll through Instagram or catch a few Pokemon– but for some reason, today felt like the day. Most of the emails had easy-to-find ‘Unsubscribe’ buttons that required one additional click on a webpage. Some, thankfully, were one-click jobs. A few still had impossibly obscure ‘Unsubscribe’ buttons that led to multi-click surveys and then said, “It may take up to 10 days to process your request”. In this day and age, how could it possibly take ten days to unsubscribe?
And why I am subscribed to ‘USDA Foreign Agriculture Reports’? There were things that I signed up for when I was in college, with my .edu email. I worried that I might miss some important emails if I unsubscribe. But I was convinced, this morning, that my insane email Inbox contributed to my sense of FOMO, to my sense of not doing enough, buying enough, donating enough, being enough. This year, I want to do less. So I persevered. I tired of this about 300 emails into it; still, I proudly boasted of this achievement to L.
She said, “I’m so proud of you.”
“I hope this makes a dent,” I said, eyeing my ‘Unread’ email number (261,601), “or maybe it’s like spitting into the ocean.”
“Oh, honey,” she said. “I do it like once a week. You might even have to do it every day.”
I sighed, “...and not once a decade?”
I was going to do a a Year-in-Review email, but it feels a bit exhausting to go back over last year, especially when it feels like it was just yesterday that L and I sat at home for NYE because of COVID. Wait, it was. We’ve sat at home for NYE for two years in a row. The year before, we went to our favorite French bistro. Ah, those were the days. But, maybe, if we continue to do the next right thing, we can get to the bistro again.
So, I am going through the first picture in each month in my Photos.
Year-in-Review 2021
January: L gets her first COVID vaccine (I got mine in Dec 2020)
February: Hiking in Woodstock, NY for my birthday
March: We take a picture of my picture in Times Square, as a Fight CRC! Ambassador
April: Explore seaside Connecticut with L’s mom for L’s birthday weekend
May: We see the Kusama exhibit at NYBG
June: We stayed at an oceanfront resort in Miami
July: I was interviewed on Hellas FM, a Greek radio show. Also we sat in a box at a Mets game.
August: Spent a weekend in the Hamptons with an old friend and had dinner in the city with BIL.
September: Visited Governor’s Island and Little Island
October: Saw my family, including my grandmother, in Toronto for the first time in almost 2 years
November: Explored west Oahu for our first long vacation in almost two years
December: Saw L’s family in Michigan for Christmas for the first time in two years
Okay, I am glad I did that. Before I went through my pictures, I was thinking about all the things we had lost—the months at the beginning of the year when I was deployed to the COVID ICUs, the spring when we canceled our flights to Canada because not everyone was vaccinated yet. I was worried about doing COVID forever and not being able to do my job– surgery– which I didn’t fully resume until April. We all lost so much in so many ways, but then I reflect and I am astonished at all we did DESPITE COVID. We continued to move forward, one step at a time because we had to.
Most of our trips were socially distanced trips. The last few we took very cautiously. As Omicron rates rose last week, we canceled our New Year’s plans, and what would’ve been my grandma’s 90th birthday party, in Canada.
Those of you who have been with me for a while know that I don’t do New Year’s resolutions because I believe in trying to be better every day, and not just on an arbitrary day in the Gregorian calendar. But I do have wishes– and I wish for all of us to have a little more hope, a little more joy, and a little more peace this year.
May the only thing that’s negative for you in 2022 be your COVID test.
Stay safe, everyone!
*I realize that I wrote about unsubscribing from emails even as I write an email to subscribers. Flying Penguins Plus is meant to be a monthly, thought-provoking post, without anything to buy or do. I would like to make this valuable to readers, though, whether it’s a recipe to try or a link to read. But for now, since I am not selling my writing, you can purchase an FP pin or keychain bottle opener from my new store! (The store took me three hours to set up and NOT 30 minutes as advertised by the webhost. It is quite simple for now but it does the job. I hope to make the site fancier and link it to my main website in the future.)
Proceeds go towards future publications… stay tuned!
Until next time, always go black tie.
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