Stopping this year, looking forward to next year

It's December 30, 2021, and I obviously stopped working on this 9 months ago.  For whatever reason, I was not inspired by the topics or found that I was going to be writing the same things over again, but I really wish that I had bothered to keep up the journaling aspect.  It's been an interesting year from a pandemic perspective, and from a personal perspective as well.

First, we have not achieved herd immunity.  After an initial spurt of vaccinations, resistance set in.  I will not reflect on how I feel about that (though since I was born immediately after the polio vaccine was released you can probably guess.  The shadow of the polio epidemic with its death and disabling effects still loomed large while I was a very young child).  But, more than that, the coronavirus itself proved very, very adaptable, leaving us with a large range of ever more contagious variants though this most recent, Omicron, seems to at least be a little less lethal (especially if you have been vaccinated).

We took advantage of a little break between variants to take a month long trip by car across the country to see family and friends.  And, a few months later flew back to go to a conference.  This will probably be the last we get to travel for a while because of the contagiousness of Omicron, though as our daughter is expecting our second grandchild very soon we hope that we will be able to go back to Maryland in the next month or two.

Which brings me to 2022.  Amy Johnson Crow has a new set of prompts and has reframed the format a bit.   I'd like to do more writing in general and this seems like a good opportunity.  We start the day after tomorrow!