Happy American Thanksgiving! In the past we’ve written group posts about gratitude. This year, we thought we’d do something different: lay bare our hopes for the future. Here is what the People of LWON are most looking forward to in 2020.
Craig: The numbers, 2020, are pleasing to the eye and roll off the tongue nicely. Twenty-nineteen feels like a debacle just trying to say it, like every other letter is trying to stop you. If that’s the case, I’m looking forward to clarity. I’m thinking of 2020 like a clear pool of water, which after the burning of 2019 should be a relief.
That said, I’ve got to appreciate 2019 for the snowpack it gave to the West, one of the most heartening winters I’ve seen in a while. I figure 2020 will be dry as dust, per usual, but I wouldn’t mind being wrong.
Ann: I’m going to pre-empt everyone else wanting to say this because I’m gonna say it first: bad things end, and so the current administration and the accompanying political and civil and ethical wars will also end, and please please please, let this end be in 2020.
Jenny: A new year is a fresh, clean thing, a time to discard the crusty bits that inevitably accumulate–like those black things in the corners of my dogs’ eyes. I hope to flick those away and get a better look ahead. Maybe there’s wisdom up there.
Plus, all the things one puts off with a “maybe next year,” I hope to revisit, and actually do, in 2020. A certain trip. Some important financial decisions. An herb garden.
Emily: It’s been three years since I moved back to California. Even though I grew up here, I’ve still had to find my people again, like you do after a move. This process usually takes me about three years, and I finally feel like I’ve found the pack of friends I want to run, feast, and howl with. I’m looking forward to spending a lot more time with them. My landlord also just gave us permission to get a cat: a major 2020 news item, as far as I’m concerned. I’m looking forward to playing with my 2019 birthday present, a shiny red boat! Also: ditto what Ann said.
Ben: I’ll join Emily in pet-related anticipation. 2019 was my first-ever full year sharing a house with a warm-blooded non-human: That would be Kit, the 30-pound mutt we rescued from a shelter in Spokane. The first six months of dog companionship were bliss. I was awed by the unconditional love, the therapeutic benefits of petting, the trippy mind-meld of teaching another life-form the rudiments of your own language (even if “stay” remains something of an alien concept). Eventually, inevitably, I started to see Kit’s warts. Her ferocious desire to be cuddled can be crazy-making when it compels her into bed with us at 3 in the morning, and her street-dog past left her with some problematic aggression around other critters (just ask fellow LWONer Sarah Gilman’s own beloved, Taiga, who may still be traumatized from their single meeting). Now that the honeymoon is over, though, I’m able to love Kit more realistically and, in a way, more fully: As one wonderful bumper-sticker reads, “Proud Parent of Two Great Kids Who Are Sometimes Assholes and That’s Okay.” In 2020 I’m looking forward to the continued deepening of my interspecies relationship, my own improvement as a novice dog owner, and the establishment of boundaries — and maybe, Cesar Millan willing, another Kit-Taiga summit.
Cassandra: I am 33 weeks pregnant, so I should be full of hopes and dreams for the future. But mostly what I want is a reprieve from the special brand of all-consuming dread that has come to define 2019. The apocalypse may be nigh, but I don’t want to feel the black weight of this knowledge on my chest when I wake up each and every morning. I need a break.