The significance of finishing Volume 46

It is by pure coincidence that the election of the 46th President of the United States happened in the year of the 46th volume of the personal daily journal kept by Yours Truly. It is also just a mere coincidence that the vast majority of the preceding forty-five volumes of that personal daily journal chronicle a first-person account of life and times in various localities in the nation’s forty-sixth state.

Make no mistake about it though. Volume 46 of the account of how I, the Route 66 Kid, has experienced the reality of year 2020 CE in the first-person has been the most surreal of all hand-written or Word file records authored to date. It will be impossible to write any history of the year gone by without using a litany of superlatives, most of which will not be the good kind. What can be said about a year of our life which had so many significant happenings long since booked on the calendar, all of which became subordinate to and at the mercy of one badly mishandled pandemic?

Even if Covid-19 had not asserted its crippling illness and lethality on our community, state and nation, 2020 would have been a major landmark year anyway, at least for everyone in America. It was especially a huge and significant milestone on the life timeline for Yours Truly. This was the year of my one and only calculated foray into politics seeking the Democratic nomination for my local state senate seat. This was also the year I ended a forty-two year career in the front line of health care delivery when I opted out of renewing my Advanced Practice RN license in March. All things said and done, after the voters chose someone else on the ballot of the June 30th Primary Election, on July 1st I actually did find retirement to be very becoming. Covid-19 however imposed limitations on all campaigning and group meetups that could only lower expectations. Also, events that led to the mass protests of the summer added dynamics that only made all political discourse all that more difficult.

The history of keeping of a daily record of my life and times dates back to my ninth grade year of junior high school. A visionary English teacher encouraged all her students to keep a daily record of their thoughts in her class. I believe I am the only one who did so completely through to the end. It wasn’t until the following year however that I began keeping a daily record of the happenings in my world and life as a matter of personal routine. With the exception of my time spent in Navy boot camp in early 1978, it has been a daily exercise of my intellectual hygiene and self-maintenance.

This evening’s Journal catalog entry #46-366 will mark the final post representing one observer’s description of a year in which the level of surrealism in daily life was matched only by the sobriety of the number and variety of losses sustained in it. Few if any people in Oklahoma, the United States and for that matter the entire World know anybody who has been completely unaffected by the imposition of a lethal pathogen. For a year that began with so much promise, it is ending with a ubiquitous sense of extremely high uncertainty. Despite a pervasive sense that the national ship of state has began making that long and slow turn back to the waters of competent and respected leadership, all of America has had to learn some hard and difficult lessons along the way. Looking back at year 2020, the hardest lesson that was played out on centerstage of a worldwide disaster was never underestimate the benefit of having a clear-headed, capable and competent mind at the nation’s helm. I realize that is something completely lost on 40 or so percent of the citizenry but everyone on the planet has now seen what a reality show host can do and how they can perform in the face of a worldwide disaster. On November 3rd, enough voters to matter opted to replace him.

As much as so many of us would like to have what golfers call a “Mulligan” on 2020, sadly there are no do-overs. The best we could all hope for is to never forget the failures that contributed to compounding the misery imposed by a pandemic and recommit ourselves to supporting leadership seeking to do the maximal amount of good for the greatest number of those governed. It is my hope that contempt, scorn and divisiveness can be transcended as we depart from the era of “alternative facts” and improved results will serve the good of all in the New Year. The significance of concluding Volume 46 of my daily recordings of my life and times is the mark of a new starting point. Year 2020 will not be forgotten anytime soon and certainly never by me or anyone I know. My detailed account of it will serve as a stark reminder of where we all have been. I therefore bid 2020 a fond farewell tonight and put the finishing touches on Journal Volume 46. Here’s to a hard-lived year and to easier times ahead.