Creating a "Predictions of Varying Certainty" list to mark the New Year became my blogtacular tradition many years ago for two main reasons: 1) New Years resolutions are too mainstream/passe for a hep cat like myself, and 2) On average, nothing much changes from year to year. In adulthood, life becomes pretty routinized. Making reasonably assured predictions about what my life will be like for the coming year enables me to focus on the granularities, the little changes and achievements that gently steer my world in one direction or another, and track the gaps that appear between expectation and reality.
It's a tradition that explicitly, necessarily omits major unexpected events. Natural disaster. Death. Catastrophic accident. Diagnosis. Pandemic. It's the Big Bad Stuff, really, that hits you hard and by surprise. Life is filled with Good Things, of course, but they're more likely to be planned (weddings! babies!), smaller scale (promotions!), or slow burning (honing a new skill!).
Most years, I fail to appreciate the blessed anticlimax of my New Years listmaking. Every list filled
with mundane milestones and anticipated activities carries the unspoken
hope that the year won't actually bring much more than that. A boring end-of-year review means that my life wasn't derailed in one way or another by disaster or tragedy. Most years, I don't look back at my start-of-year predictions and feel prompted to think, "Oof" or "Hoo boy..."
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Predictions of Varying Certainty for 2020:
- Our baby will be born within a day or two of the estimated due date. GR and I will greet our newborn still undecided about their name.
- We will not take our baby on an airplane. However, we will travel with the baby to a different state. (Wisconsin counts but will be something of a cop-out way to fulfill this prediction.)
- In contrast to the 2016 Presidential Election -- every twist and turn of which I followed closely for months -- I will self-preservationally keep my distance from the 2020 election circus and will pretty much just show up to vote.
- I will spend fewer days in hospitals and/or rehabilitation centers than I did in 2019.
- I will either 1) go to one museum that I've never visited before, or 2) go to a concert for a band I've never seen live before.
- I will get an Instagram account, roughly five to seven years after everyone else jumped aboard that particular social media train. I will use it mostly for lurking and will actively avoid posting baby photos out of paranoid privacy concerns.
How prescient I actually was:
- The first half of this prediction is disqualified on a technicality: Our baby arrived four days ahead of his due date. And the second half only qualifies on a technicality, too: While we hadn't "officially" decided on his name, GR and I were 98% sure about what it would be and simply confirmed with one another that we were still feeling good about our choice after LT arrived.
- We did not take our baby on an airplane, or to a different state, or anywhere else. Without hyperbole, I can count on one hand the number of buildings LT has been inside during these first nine months of his life, apart from our own house.
- Kind of? I didn't bother watching the debates this time, nor did I read endless op-eds about what new horrors a [second] Trump term would bring; however, 2020's election did drive me to panic-refreshing the electoral map until Biden's win was called, and these days I'm following reports of various Republicans' seditious posturing, despite my ongoing horror and disgust, so... let's call this one a wash.
- This prediction caused some confusion among those who read it, given that I was fully expecting to spend three days in the maternity ward in 2020. This was a backdoor, not-inviting-jinxes way of predicting that my dad would stay on the road to recovery this year. I'm happy to call this one a win.
- NOPE.
- I suppose the pandemic made this, if anything, more likely to happen, but nope. Instead, I upped my Snapchat usage by roughly 3000%, using it as my platform of choice for spamming family and friends with in-the-moment baby photos and videos.
Predictions of Varying Certainty for 2021:
- GR and I will get vaccinated by the end of June (and not earlier than May). 'Til then, our lives during the first half of the year will feel like a very gradual reopening, as other, more at-risk family members and friends get vaccinated before us, community transmission levels go down, and our circle slowly widens.
- I will undertake between five and ten small home improvement projects (e.g., repainting a room or exterior door, replacing light switches or house numbers or light fixtures, etc.)
- LT's first word will be one of the following: dada, mama, duck, or up.
- GR and I will spend at least two nights away from LT, leaving him in the capable hands of an aunt/uncle or grandma/grandpa.
- I'll go on one of Chicago's architecture tours. (Never been! Hear they're great!)
- I won't return to work in an office, and will instead continue to work from home full time. I will, as always, love this setup.
