January 7, 2020: Capturas antes de la pandemia…

I was going through my photo album of 2020 and found the above pic among the first ones I took in 2020. It was taken on January 7 from my hotel room in Las Vegas during a business trip. It was an intense week of work, but also filled with good memories and fun times with my colleagues, including a spectacular party to wrap up yet another CES. One could say the New Year was looking… peachy.

Barely nine months later, though, in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic, I found myself unemployed; unable to visit my family in Mexico or my partner’s family in France and pretty much uncertain about what the future might bring.

In 2020 I attended not one, but two Zoom funerals of friends who lost their fight to Covid-19. I wasn’t able to be with a friend when she lost a close relative to a non-Covid related illness.

Oh, and I wasn’t even able to say good-bye to my colleagues of 7 years. My office stuff was boxed and shipped to my home via FedEx, but the one thing I needed to recover in one piece –a beautiful Made in Toluca Darth Vader statue– arrived in a million pieces. (I really loved him. Look how great he was!)

I just paid a ton of pesos for a Made in Toluca #DarthVader He is el mejor! 🇲🇽 #TheForceAwakens pic.twitter.com/KGLjtnc8Z8

— Laura Martínez® (@miblogestublog) December 16, 2015

To put it bluntly, this year sucked. BIG TIME.

At the same time, while writing this I feel ashamed for even complaining. After all, I have my health and my family in Mexico is fine (a miracle, considering the mess the government has made in dealing with the pandemic.) I got a couple new gigs with people I truly admire and who –for some reason– really really want me to work with them. Yay!

So….in the spirit of the moment, and in an effort to not feel so depressed, I decided to write a sort of TOP TEN list of the “Not-So-Sucky” things that happen this year.

So, here goes.