Julia Cho once told her 12-year-old daughter to “write down how you feel. Record it so your future self will remember.”
So how will you remember 2020 — the year when every day felt like a year in news beginning with wildfires, fears of nuclear warfare, impeachment, quarantine, border closures, furloughs, layoffs and protests; and ending with a historic presidential election, fears of civil war and record deaths from a global pandemic?
Future self: This was the year you felt like Anakin Skywalker — on the precipice of becoming Darth Vader — plagued by “abdominal pain, S-shaped poop,” and nightly nightmares of Padmé dying during childbirth. This was the year fear and anxiety climbed into your bed and took up permanent residence, unleashing a series of “wills”:
Will folks at zumba think I have COVID or brought it over from China (even though I’m an American who hasn’t left the country) just because I have an Asian face? (Related must-listen)
Will I lose my job?
Will I run out of toilet paper?
Will I catch COVID if I go to work or the grocery store?
Will I accidentally give my parents or grandma COVID if I see them — even while socially distanced and wearing layers of PPE?
Will anyone I care about get sick/die before it’s safe to see each other in person and hug again?
Still, in spite of the many many lowlights, 2020 gave us some highlights: Shorter work commutes (if we were lucky enough to work from home since March); and more time for long walks with the doggo (if they were already part of our existing quarantine house bubbles — if not, good luck finding one up for adoption).
So how do you measure this year in a life?
In books read (28), parks traveled (14), newly released songs favorited (426), vegan meals recorded (209), clothing thrifted (21), resolutions kept (1.5), hours of podcasts listened to (too many to count)?
Future self, here was my 2020 wrapped:
📚 Favorite books read:
I began 2020 with the resolution that I would read one Pulitzer Prize winning book or finalist in fiction each month. I was on track via audiobooks (even after libraries temporarily closed) until August (the month when I found out my work mom was leaving for another job); however, I did manage to finish 28 books in 2020 with the majority read in the earlier half of the year. Here were favorite books by month:
January: Jia Tolentino’s “Trick Mirror”
February: Celeste Ng’s “Everything I Never Told You”
March: Rebecca Makkai’s “The Great Believers”
November: Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s “This Is How You Lose the Time War”
December: Delia Owens “Where the Crawdads Sing”
Best book of 2020:
Rebecca Makkai’s “The Great Believers” (a 2019 Pulitzer finalist)
I read this beautiful and heartbreaking book back in March (very early in the pandemic when I still had motivation to do things). It was like two forms of time traveling (or emotional torture). Makkai takes readers to 1985, Chicago, and 2015, Paris — jumping back and forth through time between chapters so we’re learning about the past and future lives of Yale and Fiona, simultaneously. Simultaneously, I was reading about both our past (the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic and the AIDS/HIV epidemic of the mid-1980s) and our future — when COVID would weave deeper and deeper into our social circles, silently and suddenly infecting and/or taking the lives of those we knew.
🏞 Favorite walks:
As much as a global pandemic crippled our ability to travel, I still discovered new places in 2020 — parks I’ve never been to. Hiking became a new favorite hobby. Here’s a list of where I traveled (+ first visit documented in 2020):
Niagara Falls State Park
Glen Park
Akron Falls Park +
🎼 Favorite new music discoveries:
According to The Pudding’s really accurate “Spotify wrapped” AI which described my eclectic musical tastes as “Ira Glass in your AirPods/masters in creative writing bad,” I listened to way too much “Folklore” and “Evermore” on repeat in 2020.
Here are some other top albums (in no particular order):
And some favorite songs (in no particular order):
Full 2020 playlist:
🍳 Favorite recipes:
Raise your hand if you haven’t been cooking in quarantine? In 2020, FridgeToTable.com became my most visited sites, determining what I would make for lunch and/or dinner as I tried to avoid trips to the grocery store. While I wrote more extensively about quarantine cooking back in April, here’s a more complete list of some favorite comforting vegan meals:
Mushroom bourguignon (Trick is to put everything in the crock pot the night before and you’ll wake up to the most delicious meal.)
Black beans (Slow cook to your desired squishiness: if you’re impatient, you’ll have a wonderful black bean soup that you can mix with rice; if you wait longer, you’ll get burrito beans. Both are wonderful.)
Vegan Spanakopita (The parents like to buy spinach in bulk and this recipe uses a lot of it.)
Vegan Buffalo chicken rice skillet (I amend this recipe slightly because I come from a place where it’s taboo to put ranch anywhere near wings.)
Zoodle stir-fry with spicy peanut sauce (Or just make this peanut sauce and add it to ramen or the pasta of your choice.)
Green bean casserole (The parents also like to buy green beans in bulk.)
Vegan pumpkin pie fudge (Such an easy and delicious recipe! Side note: the parents have been making these delicious frozen jujube ginger treats that I adore!)
🛍 Favorite impulse buys:
One of my 2020 resolutions that I actually kept: Thrift shopping clothing over buying new. Of course, I didn’t know back in 2019 that a pandemic would probably forever change the retail landscape as we know it and that I wouldn’t feel safe going into my favorite brick-and-mortar stores — which helped curb shopping new. thredUP became my go-to place to look for athleisure and house dresses. Other purchases that helped me survive 2020:
“The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild”
An undated planner (I’m hoping this gets much more use in 2021)
🎧 Favorite podcasts:
🗓 Daily podcasts in heavy rotation:
“The Daily”
“Today Explained”
“Post Reports”
🌲 Best new old evergreen podcast discovery: Sweet and Sour
❤️️ Favorite episodes:
The origin story of “Typhoid Mary.” (“NPR’s Throughline”)
How to build a “Planet Money” episode (“NPR’s Planet Money”)
How a COVID hotel temporarily solved the Jerusalem Israeli/Palestinian conflict (“NPR’s Rough Translation”)
This dispatch from Radio Jupiter (“Welcome to Night Vale”)
This account of how Joe Biden overcame a stutter (“Presidential”)
And this reminder of why you should subscribe to your local paper 📰 (“NPR’s Hidden Brain”)
📺 Favorite comfort shows:
“Fresh Off The Boat” (+ Binged all six seasons in 2020)
“Kim’s Convenience” (+ Binged all four seasons in 2020)
“Bob’s Burgers”
“Schitt’s Creek” (+ Binged all six seasons in 2020)
“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (+ Binged all three seasons in 2020)
“Gilmore Girls”
“Grace and Frankie” (+ Binged season 6 in 2020)
“Avatar the Last Airbender”
“The Legend of Korra”
🎮 Favorite games:
2020 began with a card game: “Legend of the Five Rings” — a complicated Magic-like deck-building strategy game with gorgeous artwork which my brother has been raving about (he played an earlier version of the game and loved it). I bought him the boxed set, and it was a lot of fun, but we’d need to purchase another set or more cards to build complete decks to make it work properly.
Still don’t own “Animal Crossing,” the reigning game of 2020 (although I’ve watched “Animal Crossing” talk shows and this essay from Scaachi Koul is delightful), but 2020 was the year I completed the adventure map in “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.” Collecting spirits in “Super Smash” and collecting items to cook recipes in “Zelda: Breath of the Wild” (which I still haven’t beaten) stole an equal share of my time.
🔖 Favorite bookmarks:
What were some of your favorite 2020 hobbies and discoveries?