Look, 2020 has been a helluva year. I get that. I won’t enumerate all that has gone wrong this year, because we’ve all lived it and it’s still too soon. And that’s why I want to discuss my best things. Positivity never goes out of style and can’t be beat for long. So with that in mind, here is a brief accounting (in no particular order) of my top objects and experiences from 2020.
Best Of
#1: iPad Air 2
Inherited from my dad, this 9.7” glass and aluminium wonder has helped me create and do many other awesome things. Shoutout to Apple for designing a smashing bit of hardware and software. The Air 2 isn’t the latest and greatest, but it does the job and it is still solid. I just love it for watching my favorite YouTube channel, Tested, in the evenings, or playing Scrabble, or editing photos. Eventually I will upgrade to the newest iPad Air (in green! and with an Apple Pencil) but for now, this thing really rocks.
#2: Canon SL3
Using the one and only pandemic stimulus check I received, I paid off some debt and bought a new DSLR: a Canon SL3. I have yet to really put it through its paces, but already it has proved its worth. I love the flip-out screen. It takes beautiful, high quality photos and is a joy to use. Plus it looks great; I got the white camera body and hoo boy is it snazzy. I want to purchase a few additional lenses for it when I can afford them, but for now the 18-55mm it came with is adequate for most of what I use it for anyway. Shoutout to Canon for a quality camera.
#3: The Mandalorian
Debuting at the end of 2019, the Mandalorian is a fantastic space western. Set in the Star Wars universe soon after the events of Return of the Jedi, the show follows a lone Mandalorian bounty hunter on his way through the galaxy. Season two debuted in October of this year and has just completed. I watched it every week as it was released on Disney plus with my wife. It is certainly the highlight of our week and something we look forward to. The production value is sky high, the acting is superb, and Baby Yoda, who we recently learned was named Grogu, couldn’t be cuter. I love everything about the show, and it has done what all good entertainment should do: given me an escape from the occasional dreariness of life on Earth and rocketed me off into a galaxy far far away. Shout out to Dave Filoni, Jon Favreau, and all the women and men creating that show.
#4: The Mandalorian
No, I’m not repeating myself. I’m talking about my Black Series 6″ action figure. Somewhere in 2009 or 2010 I started taking pictures of some 3.75” Star Wars action figures. I don’t even remember where or why I got the original two figures, two stormtroopers who I named Kyle and Kyyle, but I started taking pictures of them as a way to have fun. Through several years I took hundreds of photos. It was a ton of fun and a creative challenge. At least two years ago I started to collect Hasbro’s Star Wars Black Series action figures with an idea to restart taking stormtrooper pictures. While I have taken several photos, I haven’t done so on the scale I used to. But this year I acquired a Mandalorian action figure and it is beautiful, well articulated, and just plain fun. Shoutout to OT Customs for an awesome cloth cape for my Mando action figure, purchased via eBay. It really looks great and elevates my humble Mandalorian action figure.
#5: Tested
I’ve been a fan of Adam Savage since his days on Mythbusters, and towards the end of that show’s run, Savage joined a small startup called Tested. Tested has become centered around Adam Savage and his obsession for making things, usually prop replicas or costumes for cosplay, but really just about anything he dreams up that he possesses the skills and materials to make. Since Covid 19 forced everybody into lockdowns and social distancing, Savage took to self recording One Day Builds and other videos alone in his shop. Watching his videos on YouTube has been a high point of each and every week, and this fall I took the plunge to become a patron of the channel for a few bucks a month. This allows me access to behind the scenes and exclusive videos, which is well worth the price of admission. Shout out to Savage’s editing crew.
#6: Art
I battle depression each and every day. I started a project for 2020 that I had no idea would come to define a really bad, no good year. My wife crochets constantly, and one thing that she showed me is a mood blanket. Comprised of various colored squares that represent various moods, it allows the maker to create a blanket that reflects their state of mind over a period of time.
I don’t crochet, but I do paint. So I took a 16×20” black canvas and divided it up into one inch squares, each square for a day of the year, excluding Sunday’s. I then assigned different colors to different things: blue for depression; silver for productivity. Green for reading or writing; red for artistic endeavors and photography. Yellow for LEGO fun; purple for special days. The idea was to assign each day a color based on what I did that day and track how many days my depression kept me down, or how often I accomplished something, and what. At a glance I could see how 2020 was going and have a map of my mental health. 
I started in January, having no idea what 2020 would bring. It has been fascinating to see the year unfold on this mood painting, and also to see how few days I actually was unable to master my depression. There are plenty of blue squares, to be sure, but way more of the various other colors. I am so glad to see that I have an upper hand on my depression and also that 2020, bad as it has been, has been unable to join with my depression and overwhelm me. My mental health remains a daily challenge, but it is not my master. I will have this painting as a perpetual reminder of that fact. Shoutout to my wife for a fantastic idea.
Christmas?
I am posting this 6 days before the big winter holiday, and while I may receive some awesome stuff under the tree, I didn’t want this to become a “what I got for Christmas this year” list. I think to really appreciate something you’ve got to live with it for awhile and use it and have it enter your life. Each of the things on my list have done that and earned a “best of” label.
And certainly this is not an exhaustive list. I could have added many things here, among them a little leather journal that my wife bought me and that I use for recording the odd poem. I don’t write nearly as much as I should, which is why it didn’t make the list, but it is a fantastic little journal.
Wrap-Up
I’d be interested to hear your best of 2020. Send me an email and let me know what brightened your year. As I said, there is plenty of 2020 to feel bad about, so let’s all focus on what there is to feel good about. I am sure there were at least one or two things that made 2020 not quite so terrible.
Thanks for reading. May 2021 be kinder to us all.
a simple man 