And We're Back
Thank goodness that nothing big happened while I was busy securing a diploma
We could pretend that I didn’t, in fact, go a month and change without publishing a newsletter. Sorry folks. Getting a degree is a lot of work, apparently.
Or we could catch up on what’s been going on in the interim. Let’s do that.
My last update came on the morning of Election Day, which was somehow just a month in the past and not ten years. My doom-and-gloom analysis might have been a bit overblown. The Supreme Court did not, in fact, overturn Joe Biden’s win. They were asked to, but the nine members of the bench kindly told the plaintiffs to shut up.
That does not mean that there wasn’t a concerted legal effort to wreak havoc on democracy. We were lucky those leading the effort were secondary characters from a Marx brothers movie, prone to misspelling key parts of their lawsuits and having all the legal standing of a younger sibling throwing a tantrum over wanting a pony. We were lucky that fascism’s legal team was a confederacy of dunces.
Some other things have happened since we last spoke. There’s not one, but two approved COVID-19 vaccines. We also passed the 300,000-death mark in the United States, with a record 3,400 occurring yesterday.
There is no end in sight, despite the beginning of the vaccine rollout. The general population will not have access to the shots for months. Every stat we don’t want to see go up is doing so at supersonic speeds.
That’s just in time for the holidays, of course. My family has already made the bitter choice to stay home on Christmas instead of going to see our relatives. It sucks. It really, really sucks. But it’s the right thing to do. I encourage you to consider doing the same, on Christmas and on any other occasion you feel the urge to gather indoors.
Taylor Swift released another album. Baby Yoda got an actual name. Cyberpunk 2077 finally came out and it was a glitchy disaster. People spent a lot of time watching Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant scowl at each other.
Oh, and I finished school. Did I mention that I was getting a degree? I did that.
I fucking finished college. I’m done. I’ll be getting a diploma in the mail at some point next year.
I’ve crowed about this on no fewer than three social media platforms and I reserve my right to crow about it here too. I spent a long time thinking I’d never get here and it’s more than a little surreal that I did. I still have some Bad Brain Days but it’s not as bad as it used to be.
So now I’m a 26-year-old soon-to-be college grad, drifting afloat in the yawning maw of the gig economy during a global pandemic. Which is to say, uh, if you’re reading this and happen to be in a position to hire me for a full-time job where I get to write and/or edit things?
Yeah, hit me up. Please.
As for Where We Are’s future, I’m hoping to get back to our regularly scheduled program. Some personal blogging, some politics, some pop culture, and whatever else pops into my deeply warped head. You should subscribe if you enjoy my angsty and irreverent Twitter presence, or if you want to support me while I search for steady gainful employment.
There’s always been something of an inherent question to the name Where We Are. Where, exactly is the “where” I’m referring to?
Let’s find out together. Because I sure as hell don’t know.