2020… and some apologies

I… ugh. You know, I’m usually happy to write yearly reviews, but 2020… it went THAT FAR and beyond. I don’t feel much happiness about 2020, if anything I feel justified rage at what this year ended up mainly consisting of.

Here I was, in 2019, thinking 2020 was going to be a great year. I was so wrong, we ALL were so so so wrong about our hopes for this year being a good one. It seemed like it was actually going to be an alright year…

…and then January 14th 2020 came along, and it all went downhill from there. What a way for me to start off my adulthood, huh? It all started with the Linux community losing someone who meant a lot to many people, and throughout the year more new lows were reached still.

Let’s be fair, though — this year messed with us all mentally in one way or another. It pushed many of us to the brink. 2020 truly is one of, if not the worst, years of my, and potentially many others’, entire live(s) so far.

On the plus side, at least some joy was had in 2020 due to how weird it all ended up getting, and due to many trying to make good out of an otherwise irredeemable year.

That being said, I guess I should contextualise, as much as I can, why I hate 2020 so much a year. Well, here it goes:

January 12th 2020 — foreshadowing for weirdness, but otherwise too happy

It was the day I finally became an adult. Of course, some of my weeb internet friends decided to take that as an opportunity to spam my DMs with… ‘spicy content’… but we don’t talk about that though. Otherwise, it was a nice birthday, with a nice outing to a restaurant to celebrate the occasion… the usual party stuff pretty much. It was a nice feeling finally being an adult…

…that was to last for only two days.

January 14th 2020 — a dark day for all the wrong reasons

I already wasn’t looking forward to January 14th 2020 for a while before that day, due to the fact it was the official end-of-life date of one of the very last decent Windows versions to date, Windows 7.

Anyway, the day inevitably came. After college, the night came, and rain heavily came down around the house, being way heavier than usual. I just assumed, and joked, that it was maybe because of the end of an era that was Windows 7’s end-of-life happening.

Little did I know, however, that something else had just happened that day that you could potentially say the rain was signalling having happened. I went to bed, getting ready for college tomorrow. During my sleep, very tragic news dropped in the Peppermint OS forums, with people now talking about it.

I woke up the next morning, checked Discord and found a link to a Peppermint OS forums post announcing the passing of Mark Greaves. I doubted it at first given prior events with claims of another person’s death (which were false), but as I read and inspected the post, I realised it was very legitimate and cried. No one saw it coming — all we knew was that Mark had back problems or something along the lines of that.

His death would inadvertently sent huge waves across the Linux community as people got understandably wrought with grief, including some irreversible changes. Mark was a good friend of many people across the whole Linux community, and he always will be missed by many, including me.

After that, well… the rest is history regarding the aftermath it had for Peppermint OS, history I’d rather not get into in this Medium post.

COVID.

Then, of course, COVID began. You know it, we all know it. Remember when I said things went downhill after January 14th? I WAS NOT JOKING.

At this point, it was more-so just fear-worthy than anything else regarding the prospect that it could spread to other countries (oh boi the foreshadowing), and so on.

Dramas Dramas DRAMAS!

Ok, on second thought screw doing this chronologically. I’ll just categorise each main talking point about what went on in 2020 in my PoV, starting with… the dramas.

As we all know, if you’re well-versed in Linux news, Linux Mint inadvertently, or purposefully, started a drama around the idea of blocking snapd by default in their Ubuntu-based Linux Mint, starting with Linux Mint 20. This understandably split people into two camps, and thus arguments happened. A lotta stuff occured because of this… and I personally made some mistakes along the way when getting involved in discussion about this situation that caused me to accidentally irk some people too far.

Then there’s the whole Smash Bros drama set. That was… something. I’m glad that people who were exposed for what they did are no longer in the competitive scene, not even gonna lie, but… man 2020 legitimately sucked for a good while for Smash Bros, and to a point Nintendo (more foreshadowing), fans. It really made a lot of us question our trust (now I think about it it’s kinda ironic that a game that’s basically about exactly that became popular later in 2020) for the people we consume the content of in so many ways.

But that’s not all! There’s also the CentOS drama, the recent Nintendo dramas (ugh, Nintendo), and the long-living Solus VS GNOME LibHandy situation still going on right now. This year is so full of personally relevant drama it’s not even funny.

Lockdowns and mental struggles

Lockdowns inevitably started happening later into 2020 once COVID started entering the UK and doing some damage… which obviously meant that for many financial troubles started ensuing… I feel sorry for those who got affected by that. Personally, I’m in a fortunate situation (I hope) to make use of lockdowns to get up to personal stuff, and Feren OS, so… eh.

Oh boi, the mental struggles though this year. Surprisingly enough, I personally somehow managed to stay strong until very late into the year when I seriously started to notice cracks forming in my mental state. At that point, things were starting to go worryingly downhill for me, and others. From losing someone who’s been with me for all my life, and knowing that I was the person who pushed my mother into making that decision to put them down and out of their pain, to worrying sick about internet friends who reached worryingly high mental instability, worrying about COVID, and eventually even learning about rather horrifying facts about how much WORSE 2020 could’ve been for me if things were different this year, I felt myself, throughout the year, becoming something I don’t ever want to be, and slowly feeling more and more insane by the minute near the end of 2020 from everything going on.

The fact that despite everything I’m still fine truly does make me wonder. It’s a good thing I have way too much of a will to live to ever get close to committing suicide — yes, 2020 pushed me so far at one point that the power of my inner will ultimately got tested.

The death of an 18-year-old cat

I should probably explain the aforementioned lost family member death. There was an 18-year-old cat (actually older than me) who was starting to show signs of age… and something started slowly making her suffer more and more by the day, and yet they ploughed on. During 2020, though, things only slowly got worse for her — the howls started getting more and more apparent, she started eating less, and she was being left alone quite frequently. She also did things she shouldn’t’ve, which led to me and others getting quite angry at her, but as we’d ultimately find out she did those things because of the truly painful situation she was in. I constantly tried to get her owner to get them help in hopes that they’d maybe be able to let the cat live on even longer, but they constantly worried that, because COVID, they wouldn’t be able to say goodbye if push came to shove.

Then, on one fateful day, she was unable to do an important bodily function, leading to an urgent drive to the vet with her in her vet cage… to which the owner finally made the request to the vet to put her down. They were right. I finally pushed them enough to let that cat finally be out of their pain… but at a cost even I didn’t realise until a few months later. The death of that cat, and not being able to say goodbye to them, unknowingly and understandably hit their mental health rather hard. It was made apparent by them a few months later in a heart-to-heart that this, combined with other personal things happening at the time, had pushed them to the point where they considered… let’s just say it scares me enough to know how the end of 2020 could’ve gone if things went even slightly differently, and quite frankly I don’t want to think about the fact I could’ve maybe even became the only one left in my family if THAT happened and the aftermath went the worst possible way.

Let’s… let’s just move on. I don’t like thinking about that possibility at all, that’s for sure.

Misc.

There’s many many more minute things that happened this year that made it worse, or at least minute compared to the stuff you just read above this, that I don’t really wanna bother listing right now. Let’s just say it all definitely furthered my hate for 2020.

Apologies

Now that’s out of the way, I think some apologies are in order. 2020 pushed me, like it did many many others, so far that I definitely became something I’ve never wanted to be at points to people, whether sometimes accidentally or in other cases ‘on purpose’ in that skewed sense of feelings from being pushed so hard by this year.

I’m sorry Zebediah for that rather inappropriate pun very near to the aftermath of Mark’s death. I said it thinking that some humour might lighten up the mood a bit to help combat the grief you were wrought with, but I immediately realised soon after that what I said wasn’t all that appropriate at all and was definitely too soon. That being said, I guess for you it was more-so just too soon rather than being inappropriate, but that’s besides the point. I’m truly dang sorry for that hurting you the way it did, it honestly wasn’t what I was trying to do when making that pun.

I’m sorry Alan for being so on your case about the state of SnapD to the point where I indirectly pushed you, from what I wanted to just merely be discussion in BigDaddyLinux’s YouTube stream chat, to being rather annoyed at me and then blocking me from Telegram over it… I was, and honestly am, just worried about the state of Snaps, and to be fair at that time that happened the main concern that discussion centered on was a very valid concern, although at least I can happily say now that said concern is no longer nearly as much of a concern as before. I’m still sorry for what I did there, and I’ll try my best to never have that sorta thing happen again without having proper research over time.

I’m also not proud to say that me realising I made a big mistake there really did make me wonder about if I should just… end it… at that moment to make sure no one had to then deal with me making those stupid mistakes ever again. Fortunately, as I already said my own inner will took over when it mattered the most, and my puppy was there for comforting when I needed it the most.

Lastly, I’m sorry to everyone I may have hurt or acted unprofessionally towards in those moments of ‘insanity’ or anguish — I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings in any way, but the way 2020 had been going has overall soured me quite considerably, even towards other people, and I’m not proud of any of that.

I’m hoping that maybe next year might be a year of recovery from everything that happened in 2020, as at least then I may be able to somewhat recover from the emotional changes 2020 inflicted upon me from everything that happened this year… if 2021 even happens.

Alas, there is one more thing I want to get off my chest before I go… strikeout. Strikeout is a fairly common formatting style to use for humour or sarcasm against (as well as crossing out spelling mistakes or old versions of messages if you decide to keep them) something in a discussion in Discord communities, and even on the odd occasion Telegram groups as well… and it’s a feature built into them, which means it’s there to be used whenever appropriate.

That being said, due to Telegram’s… text size… making strikeout hard to read, some people have been complaining about that, so this is a message for them:

Look. I’m just used to it from how meta it is in those aforementioned communities, so I’m sorry if it annoys you — it’s just instinct, really. That being said, I’ve been working on changing that for y’all slowly but surely. However, what I do not appreciate is when people, despite your status, act in a rather unprofessional manner about it by randomly bringing the fact I do that up, when I already told you I’m phasing doing that out for you and a few others’ sakes, as a means of spiting me. That kinda stuff outta nowhere is uncalled for and unprofessional, especially for someone like a social media manager. Besides, whenever people are a dick to me about me doing something, I usually decide to do it more to annoy them as punishment for their dickishness, just saying.