We try to write a holiday letter every year, because it’s fun. Enjoy.
Dearest quarantiners, shelter-in-placers, paper towel hoarders, electoral vote counters, esteemed colleagues, friends, and family,
Well, here we are. We made it. We briefly considered purchasing yellow gold star stickers that say “You Did It!”, but in an effort to spare the trees, we are sending those out metaphysically. It looks great on your laptop.
What is there to say about this year that others won’t? There are observations to be made, from the political to the personal.
We have landed on this: the unavoidable fact that life is short and nothing – no good thing but no bad thing either – lasts forever. But let’s focus on the former, because when those good moments happen, we must make the most of them. The good moments include but are not limited to: Family get-togethers, dinners at restaurants, parties, concerts, elbowing other people out of the way at concerts, stepping out of the office to grab lunch at a restaurant with a coworker, a really good in-person meeting, work conferences at generic hotels, pool parties, children’s birthday parties, adult birthday parties, weddings, and the zenlike solitude of the airport departure gates when you’re surrounded by a lot of people but are alone with your thoughts. You know it’s been rough when you can rhapsodize about the TSA, too.
This year, the list of good moments we enjoy grew to include: scoring paper towels at the grocery store, enjoying a really awesome home-made meal because what else are we supposed to do, outdoor weather that enables a desperately needed but appropriately socially distanced “hangout session”, sending the perfect meme to the right people to address the mood of the hour, a solid video chat with friends or family, and election results finally, blissfully, appearing to go the right way. It is within our power to recognize these moments as they happen, and enjoy them.
It has been a difficult year (not to speak of the last four), and it could become harder before it gets better. Surviving all of this b*llshit requires (non gender specific) brotherhood and community. We just need each other to have a socially distant drink, to video chat, to gripe and commiserate and panic and stress over vote counts in counties we’ve never visited and share the latest epidemiological news of the day. Normal stuff!
Such is the spirit of this year’s holiday letter. Hang in there. Enjoy the good times. We are safe and lucky and we hope you are too. We hope you have the opportunity to rest at the end of this year with those who are most important to you, and enjoy the holidays.
May you never have to have a Q-tip shoved up your nose in 2021.
Flavsdotcom 