Ending the Year with Gratitude

I was planning on doing my last post of the year talking about how you could do holidays over Zoom. A typical post about how you can use technology to organize your digital life: this year, however, has been anything but typical. I think that it’s essential to recognize that. While in most years, there would be one defining event that would cause people to say later things like, “Hey, remember that year when that one thing happened?” This year we’ve been saying, “Hey, remember that thing that happened last week?” There have been so many defining moments and so many different things that have been highlighted throughout the year that it would be impossible to cover it in one post.

1) I get the pessimism – 2020 has been a really crap year. If you look at the long list of all the things that have gone well and put it against all the crap that has gone horribly wrong, you’d find the former list WAAAAY shorter than the latter. I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve spoken to who have all agreed that this was a terrible year and everything is awful. I have to admit, while I try to stay positive, I found that even I was under quite a bit of stress and anxiety throughout the year. With so much change and so much negativity everywhere, It’s been tough to keep a positive attitude.

2) Vindication of home technology – When we were all (or most of us) forced to work at home, I feel like it showed how important it is to have all of your files set up in the cloud. It’s also been a stark reflection of how businesses can operate online. The Conferencing software, which before was neat to have, has now become an essential tool that we use nearly every single day. I remember and the end of 2019 and the very beginning of 2020, there has been chatter about breaking up tech companies, but now you don’t hear about it at all. I think it’s because we have discovered how useful it is to have the technology that we do in our homes, and we have re-discovered how to work, live and interact through our technology. While I’m not willing to talk about regulation of the tech industry here (that’s likely a different post entirely), I like to think that the point of having a complete system in place with one company has not been lost in the shuffle.

3) Having Hope – This may seem a bit old fashioned, but I think it’s important to have hope while transitioning from one year to another. Hope for the future, hope for each other, hope that everything will work out. If I’m perfectly honest here, I could not do all of what I wanted to get done this year. I did get some of them done, and for that, I’m quite grateful. I’m hopeful that next year will be better and that the future will be brighter. With the news every day talking more and more about Vaccines on the way, I’m hopeful that we will get back to where we were before this Pandemic hit. We will be able to find each other again. We will be able to get on with our lives again. I’m hopeful that when all of this is over, the lesson we take is how we came together in historical ways and got the COVID situation sorted together. It’s not about what sets us apart, but what makes us come together. 

Well, That’s it for me this year. I’m going to be taking the next couple of weeks off. Spending some time with my family, doing holiday stuff, and planning for the new year. Thank you so much for those of you who’ve tuned in this year and have enjoyed my posts. I’m certainly hoping that you’ve enjoyed reading them as I have enjoyed putting them together. When I come back in the new year, I will for sure be talking about all-new ways that You can organize your Digital Life.

See you in the new year!!!

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