Last year, following a suggestion by my friend Víctor, I wrote a so-called brag document where I related all the achievements I got during 2019 in an attempt to feel better about myself. I tried to do the same for 2020, but found no achievement to tell about. For me, same as for most people, this year has been between awful and catastrophic.
This is the list of achievements happenings during 2020:
- I lost my job. The motives were unfair (at least as I see them), so I won't go into further detail.
- My depression is not getting better. Peaks are getting worse and longer.
- My joint pains are getting worse. They are not continuous, but more or less like sinusoid curves with different phases for arms / legs / back.
- My gastroesophageal reflux disease and Barrett's esophagus is getting worse.
- One of my dearest aunts died of COVID-19. My uncle (her husband) also died some months earlier, though due to unrelated complications. On the other hand, my son also got a COVID-19 infection but he recovered quickly and without further problems.
- During August, I had a three-week-long sickness with continuous 39º degrees of fever. I got two PCRs made, but was found negative of COVID-19. No explanation was found, so I don't know what the disease was, and finally just went away. Having a fever this high and for this long is not nice when you are 52 years old.
- Finally, on December 9, my wife and I were confirmed COVID-19 positive. We have moderate symptoms. Let's see what happen.
- I wrote a 20000 word horror novelette (in Spanish) for a contest. I didn't won.
- I wrote more than 10 short stories for several spanish writing contests. I didn't won any of them.
- I wrote several short stories as a way of keeping my mind busy because confinement was driving me mad. They are written in English and can be read here.
- A spanish satellite I worked on since 2011, the SEOSat-Ingenio, was launched on 17 November 2020 but the Vega rocket that transported it malfunctioned and crashed and everything was lost. The picture above is a digital rendition of a situation that will never happen. My work in this project was already finished and validated, but I cannot help feeling a bit sad about it.
- I'm somewhat sick about free software development, so I delegated the maintenance of the Minimum Profit Text Editor and the rest of my still alive software projects to some fellow developers. Overall, they are doing a good job. Sometimes I have confronted feelings about this, though.
- Due to money restrictions I had to sell my car. Man, did I loved that car.
- I moved back to Madrid to a tiny (27 m²) flat. It was also for money reasons, but I like this city and I don't see this as a totally bad thing.
I'm experimenting a feeling I never had before: that nothing good will happen to me ever again.