Whew, what a year, 2020 has been quite a rough year.
I could probably wrap up my year in review blog post with just the line above but I figured it's probably more cathartic to dive into what this year has been like for me.
January
Even before Covid was a very big thing in the US, I started the year off by wrapping up an extended Christmas and New Years vacation back home in Washington state. I had been feeling a bit out of sorts for the two or three weeks around the end of December and didn't feel any better at the turn of the new year.
I ended up going to the walk in clinic after I got back to Boston (around the 21st) and they rushed me off to the hospital (or rather told me to go there immediately). I ended up staying in the hospital for about 3 days.
I was diagnosed with Diabetic Ketoacidosis, with a blood sugar reading of just above 500!
For those that don't know, a usual healthy blood sugar reading is around 80-120
Ultimately, I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, and was told by several doctors that I needed to get this under control. I'm immensely thankful to my parents and grandmother for flying out to Boston to stay with me while I was in the hospital and as I got re-adjusted back into my regular life.
Thanks to the new diagnosis I had a whole suite of prescriptions that I needed to take, including insulin. Outside of my diagnosis, January was pretty quiet.
February
Most of February was filled with me still adjusting to my recent health scare. About mid-way through February, Wayfair underwent it's own change.
Around early February, Wayfair (where I worked) announced that we we're letting go of a decent chunk of the folks that worked across the company. Many of the folks that I had worked with in the past were unfortunately being laid off.
This was a pretty big change, through my history at Wayfair we had never had large layoffs, and in many ways it was a first for the rest of the organization as well.
Myself and my direct team were thankfully not impacted, but our partnering teams were unfortunately hit.
March
There's not too much to call out about March, I think most readers (at least those in the US) know that this was when the beginning of the Covid stay at home / quarantine started for most folks.
At Wayfair we started it as a two day (Thursday and Friday) "trial"[1], and then ballooned to the end of 2020 through to June of 2021 at the time of writing.
For most of March, I ended up working from my studio apartment, fashioning a hacky standing desk by setting my laptop on a folding chair that was set on top of my desk[2].
April: aka March 2 - June
These months all blended together quite a bit for me, working 10 hours a day or so all from my apartment, and barely leaving my apartment for anything besides a weekly grocery run.
It wasn't until June that anything really notably changed for me, given that our date by which we were expected to return to the office got pushed back from July to January, my parents convinced me to fly back out to Washington to work from home.
I took them up on the offer and have been working from Washington since then!
July
During the month of July, my parents and I started work on tearing down the existing deck on the house to build a new one. This work ended up taking almost two full months to complete.
During July, my parents and I took a few weekend drives up and around Leavenworth and Wenatchee.
A bridge crossing just off of Highway 2
A view of the Little Wenatchee River
August
August was pretty similar to July, the notable events for me was visiting Mount Rainier National Park with my family as well as taking a trip over to Winthrop Washington.
Rainier
Sunrise at Mount Rainier
Winthrop
Ross lake kayaking
Ross Lake
In addition to the above two trips, we also took some time to go camping up at LaConner Washington, and enjoyed a few hikes up there as well as some delicious fish and chips!
September
We finally finished the new back deck on the house in September!
October
On yet another trip, this time with just my parents, we went over to Wenatchee to stay for a night and do a few hikes around the area.
November
November proved to bring an interesting Thanksgiving, usually for Thanksgiving we invite over several members of the family to our house to have a nice large dinner. Due to Covid however, we opted for smaller, yet still traditional Thanksgiving dinner with our close family.
To wrap up November, my parents and I took a drive up to Baring Washington, and went on a hike up to Baring Lake. The whole trail we had to scramble over large trees that had fallen across the trail, sometimes proving to be pretty difficult to cross over. However the views were totally worth it!
December
To wrap up this really wonky year, December has been remarkably average for me. Our Christmas was pretty laid back this year, obviously skipping the usual get together (like we did for Thanksgiving dinner).
I still have a lot of questions about what my life will look like as we go into 2021, but I feel like I've gotten over the worst of it through this year. Not only with Covid in the US, but also my personal health and my journey so far with diabetes.
I started off this blog post thinking that I would generally try to tease out a point that would make the year make sense and I had thought it was going to be something that was very negative, but as I got into it I found myself scrolling through hundreds of pictures that I took over the past 6+ months and surprisingly really enjoyed the memories of this year.
While this was a very rough year, I'm leaving it behind even more thankful of my close family and friends who have been there for me when I needed them the most.