gardening, Gatherings, Health, holidays, pets, The Future, Uncategorized, work

Proceeding Hopefully

33 Comments

In about three weeks,  we will be in a new month and new year.  I have never gone through such an extended period of change at work, societal upheaval,  and perpetual anxiety.  I am beginning to see some glimmers of a more  positive existence,  and have allowed myself to have some hope.

It has been a few weeks since the governor of ND issued his mask mandate, and while there are still people who go maskless, the number of people wearing masks has increased very noticeably.  It is also very interesting that the number of new, positive cases has dropped precipitously since the mask mandate was issued.  Oh, I know it will go up due to Thanksgiving  gatherings, but the trend of increased mask wearing is encouraging.

Our Tortie was near death a month ago.  Now she is thriving on a maintenance dose of steroids.

My workplace is finally settling down after our move, numerous technology changes, staff turnover, and treatment paradigm shift,  with  good administrators in charge and people getting necessary things done that were neglected for a couple of years.

I try not to wallow in political news since it keeps me awake at night, but that is starting to look more positive,  too, in terms of the changes in administrations.  I also am hopeful now that the seed catalogue are arriving in the mail.

What glimmers of hope are you seeing? What are you hopeful for in the new year?

33 thoughts on “Proceeding Hopefully”

  1. I’m sorry you had such an awful year. I hope your hopes all prove true. I hope having Chris home more will be good for you both.

    Like you, I’m grateful that the worst human being ever to lead this country was defeated, although his capacity for doing harm remains a very real threat. I have high hopes for the vaccine, and I might receive it as soon as next week. But the virus has begun finding ways past our protections, and I don’t take it for granted that I’ll be here to celebrate the coming of another summer. The people I love are dealing with challenges, but all are okay at this time. If that holds true, 2020 will be a better year than the one we’re in.

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    2. I’m also wondering, Steve, about the availability of the vaccine as soon as next week? That doesn’t square with anything I’ve heard or read.

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        1. Does your building have an RN 24 hours a day? That’s generally what they mean by a skilled nursing facility. Those will have priority. The next tier of assisted living will come later.

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        2. This document breaks down who’s in the various groups – there’s a “Phase 1A – First priority”, “Phase 1A – Second priority”, and “Phase 1A – Third priority”. I think your building would be in the second group.

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  2. I read in the news recently that the government is returning about 12,000 acres of land to the Leech Lake Ojibwe – certainly not all of the land that should be theirs based on their treaty rights, but some. And that’s a good start. A retired judge is working to get historic status for a fire station building in Minneapolis that was home to some of the first African-American firefighters in the city – acknowledgement of a piece of history that is long overdue. Good steps forward for equity.

    While a lot of the world can still look sort of bleak out my front window (the lack of snow is both good and bad…), there are those things like my daughter’s wonderful friends, my church still baking cookies for Aliveness Project this year even though we had to do it over Zoom from our own kitchens (I have something like 50 dozen cookies in my back porch to deliver to them), a neighbor coming by with warm banana bread that counteract the bleak. I may spend Dec 31st throwing an entire ream of paper into a fire with all the things I want to leave behind from 2020 written on that paper… with hopes that the turn of a calendar page can also bring a turn towards new and better things.

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  3. I’m eternally hopeful because I believe in the collective wisdom and goodness of the vast majority of people in the world. It’s the one percent who f**k things up with their lust for money, power, domination, and ego boosting.

    We have self-imposed problems in the world because we’re trying (mostly) to make the world a better place for all–food, shelter, conveniences, travel, communication, etc. But I think we advanced our society so rapidly that we never took time to figure out how to mitigate the unintended consequences of our advancements. Ex: excessive use of fertilizer to grow more food to feed more people. Now we have health issues from too much meat and dairy and processed food that is cheap and convenient and tastes good but is unhealthy (cancer, heart disease, etc.) along with major pollution and groundwater issues and residual pesticides and other toxic chemicals wrecking our health in other ways.

    In short, humans have become too successful for their own good. But that only means it should be relatively easy to correct for those unintended consequences. Problem is, it will take a long time and no one seems to have the patience anymore.

    Even though the 12-month calendar is arbitrary, I love putting up that new calendar on Jan, 1 and thinking that so many great things are possible in the new year, no matter what happened last year.

    Hey, if you can’t be hopeful for at least one small victory in life, what’s the point, right?

    Chris in Owatonna

    *BSP* I’ve got a sale running until 11:59 pm, Jan.1 $2 off my signed, no delivery charge print books “regular price” of $20. Visit my web store here: https://chrisnorbury.com/buy-signed-copies-of-my-books/

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  4. Morning-
    I’m always optimistic about next year’s crops. But this year was a pretty good crop year. Be hard to beat in fact. So It’s unrealistic to expect it to be better than this years for farming. And 2019 was just a complete 180 for crops; hard to get in, hard to get out, it was just a mess. So for crops, I’m just hopeful it’s not as bad as 2019. Anything better than that will be OK. And if it’s as good as 2020 that would be too much and I’d just be waiting for the other shoe to drop then.

    Outside of that, I am optimistic about the country and our place in the world. I remain skeptical tRump will ever really go away.
    We’ve got a new grand-niece down in Charleston SC. I’d love to get down there for a vacation again and to see her.

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  5. The part that distresses me the most is not about the disease, the isolation… I believe most of us will survive this. What worries me most is how pervasive the lies have become, and how easy it is to fool a large portion of the population. I don’t know if the world will recover from this.

    But I am hopeful because we (the human race – physical and social scientists, researchers, educators…) keep discovering new things. And writers keep coming up with new stories, musicians keep coming up with new music…

    Two books with radical new ideas that have made me a little hopeful, especially if everyone on the planet would read them and took the information to heart – The Overstory by Richard Powers, and My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem.. And a film that I may have mentioned before: Infinite Potential: The Life and Ideas of David Bohm https://www.infinitepotential.com/ .

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  6. One hopeful thing that happened last evening is that Tribal Social Services phoned to see if Husband could evaluate a couple of their foster children. This is a different agency than the one he used to work for, and their request is something he is an expert in, so I see him having more tribal contact in mutually beneficial ways.

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  7. I am hopeful that the Covid vaccines will be effective and that enough people will get vaccinated so that we can get the pandemic under control and slowly get back to our new normal – whatever that is. I am cautiously optimistic about the new administration taking over in January – not that the Biden administration won’t be a whole lot better but that they still have to deal with fallout from the Trump years (and the 72 million who voted for Orangeman). I am also optimistic that I will be able to return to my music activities sometime in 2021.
    I have liked all of the above posts but WordPress still won’t let me “like” anything.

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  8. I’m hoping that the lack of responses to today’s question isn’t an indication that the baboons are hopeless.

    Speaking strictly for myself, I’m looking forward to not having the orange menace be the focus of so much daily attention by the media. I’m saddened that after everything that we have witnessed during the past four years, 70+ million people still thought he was the answer to their problems. I find that incomprehensible and disheartening. What’s worse, I know some of these people. My relationship with them has been forever altered.

    I’m looking forward, too, to a less chaotic and mean-spirited administration. They’ll not get everything right, but I hope that at least it will be more thoughtful and compassionate. They’ll have their work cut out for them, for sure. The current administration seems hell bent on leaving as big of a mess as is possible.

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    1. I’m afraid my focus has been on a personal health crisis and by the sudden appearance of COVID in this building. Because of a surge of concern, I was tested for the virus twice in seven days. A total of seven health care aides here have tested positive and a total of five residents have tested positive. This is not a large place, so it is worrisome to have so many of us confirmed as positive.

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  10. I’m having a couch potato kind of day. I have things that I could do but nothing that I have to do. So reading and TV and phone but it doesn’t make me feel very hopeful. I shouldn’t do too many of these days.

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        1. Might want to insert Victor Frankl’s “Mans Search for Meaning” in the mix, if you haven’t read it already.

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  11. I spent the morning doing homework and the afternoon outside doing some outside things in the nice weather. Changed the oil in the gator and a tractor. Worked on the chicken coop: added some new perches and some boards to help keep the snow out. Maybe. (It’s at the sliding doors so it’s not tight, but it will divert it a bit).

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  15. with my warehouse shut down the home based model will be interesting

    new business

    getting cancer cut out

    hanging with 2 grandsons on wednesdays
    (did i forget to mention denver michael gashi was born 12/1/20 and ari is cranked too)

    getting my health program back on track with the warehouse not being a 7 day affair

    biden

    for starters….

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