Hey Pandas, How Did The Year 2020 Affect Your Life? (Closed)

I´d say much less than many others. I continued to work like before, alone in a room. And as I´m a lonely introvert my social life didn´t really suffer from it either. Also while some of my family got Covid luckily all recovered pretty well.

What sucked much more for me was the constant and repeated evidence that a significant part of society is made up of idiots as the crisis continues.

I lost faith in humanity, I questioned my career in medicine, I faced grief for colleagues and patients and patients' families, I carry new nightmares, and I am still angry. So angry that politics turned a containable disease into this mess.

Ugh- Starting in March I had to wrestle to keep my girlfriend's spirits up and fend off her depression almost daily. My brother took his life then in April. My Dad began his battle against Cancer.

The tension that mounted daily as it seemed the police had decided it was open season on people of colour. The 45th failure of a president began to spread fallacies or voter fraud and by doing this, all of the white power extremists decided it was their time to shine. THEN a serious bout with Covid in September. So- still here, still trying to stay positive, and still living with lies spread by a failure of 45.

I transitioned my business to virtual. Went from a struggling local business to doing business internationally. It was a long road but it was the best thing for me. 2020 my business grossed $23,000 USD. 2021 it grossed $164,000. 2022 I’m expecting to gross closer to $500,00.

To clarify, these numbers are business, not personal income. Last month my business expenses were over $30,000. I’m by no means rich, but I did get my family out of the side of town where we experienced car-jackings and shootings frequently.

As an anxiety sufferer, the beginning of the pandemic made me feel relieved. I was in a great position where I could spend my time riding it out mostly without leaving my home.

Flash forward to 2022 and my anxieties have increased triple fold. I didn't realize that for so long I was internalizing my fears and because I was home safe, allowed my anxiety unknowingly get worse. It's much harder to do things I was able to before and I am constantly talking myself off the ledge. I was socially awkward before but I'm socially paralyzed at times.

I even have a hard time leaving my senior dog home alone and get sick with worry even though he is healthy as can be.

Terrible.

Severe depression, burnout, and a, so far, permanent spike in anxiety

I wasn't allowed to be with my husband when getting chemo. He had to go through this alone and it sucked. The years before 2020 I was always with him, radio/chemo/consult/whatever.

I got fatter.

Hmmm, well...got laid off due to COVID shutting my place of work down. My wife of 10yrs decided she no longer wanted to be married. Was forced to relocate to a place of my own for the first time in 12 years. On the good note, ex and I are still good friends, being that we've known each other since Jr. HS. I'm working 2 jobs and am now more financially stable by myself than I was married. Go fig.

As an introvert, I love how 2020 helped normalize social distancing. There is no going back for me, step back and don't touch me please !

Well...

Third day of the shutdown, we had a major earthquake and I lived and worked close to the epicenter (different directions) and got to enjoy major aftershocks for months.

In April, I had a mini-stroke that's affected my walking (when I have a migraine) ever since.

In August, I had a migraine that put me in the hospital and aggravated the walking issue.

In December, I was exposed to a covid by a close relative, but the symptoms didn't start until New Year's day, so does that count?

Other than that, I'm an introvert and an essential employee, so...not so much.

I work in retail. The lockdown ramped my anxiety up to eleven due to all the rude, entitled customers who came into the store. A plus was that my ocd with washing my hands all the time became normal and I didn't get covid.

2020 irrevocably changed my life.

On March 13th of 2020, my dad was emergency transported to the ER with severe breathing difficulties and stayed in the ICU there until being transferred 200 miles away to a more specialized hospital. COVID was in full swing so I didn't get to see him again until he was transferred in April to a local hospice to die of cancer. At least I got to visit him daily in there; I think he knew maybe twice who I was, or that I was even there with him.
Also in March I contracted COVID possibly from one of the EMS crew who came for my dad. It was horrible but I was under so much stress from my dad being in the hospital that I don't really remember a lot of it. (It's August 4, 2022 and I still have "long COVID" symptoms.)
The fatigue never ends.
My dad was my last close relative so between his death, having COVID, recovering from COVID, having to live isolated and all the restrictions because of the pandemic, plus deep financial problems, etc., I fell into a nasty depression.
Depression hid most of my own health problems and symptoms of impending health disaster.
All that culminated in having my leg amputated in 2021.
Life has yet to improve. I'm hanging on by a thread.

I was always a very social, extroverted person who enjoyed gatherings, restaurants, entertainment, etc. I grew up in a very large city and have (almost) always lived in big cities. COVID, the Trump years and just the overall tenor of discourse in the US changed me. Eight weeks ago, we moved to a VERY rural area in a part of the US I'd never even visited. I love being alone w/my spouse and don't really care if I never see anyone again.

My 2020 was possibly one of the best years of my life despite all that occurred. I made so many new friends (still friends with all of them) and had an amazing summer.

being retired, i wasn't impacted as much as others in regards to income. i had also been paying attention at the end of 2019 and shortly after the beginning of 2020 i started making masks - an activity that my family viewed as over reacting to the news until they discovered they couldn't find any available. however, my finances did take a hit because my son and his wife had to decide who would stay home with their young child. since she was a supervisor with good benefits, my son became househusband. since they live next door i started cooking evening meals to help their budget as well as his cooking skills. i had been raising my other grandson who is autistic and 2020 was his graduating high school year. that was probably the most stress as he was so worried that he wasn't going to graduate and then when they closed the school for long distance learning he kind of panicked. but, he did graduate although there wasn't a real ceremony. however, the high school wanted to do something so the few teachers that could play instruments set up in front of the school to play pomp and circumstance and each student stayed in their respective cars until their name was called. they then crossed the sidewalk in their cap, gowns, masks, and gloves, shook hands, got their diploma, and back to the car. 50 yards away other teachers in the parking lot cheered. if not exciting it was memorable. what i did learn is that i don't need to shop as much as i used to and now i seldom go out for little errands but, rather, shop once a month. better on my budget. actually, being witness to the changes that have occurred over the past two years for everyone has made me realize how fortunate i had been during that time.

I stopped exercising and porked up.

We bought a house and moved 120 miles to be closer to family. We moved in at the beg. of February with plans for lots of pool parties and family gatherings. March rolled around and all of that went down the drain. I was working 3, 12hr shifts a week at a medical facility 150 miles away from home. I had been camping until they closed the campgrounds. Then I slept in my car in parking lots until they closed down intra-county travel. I ended up having to leave my job. I managed to get another one that was super close to home and I was really excited for, but ended up loosing it 3 months later to the day due to covid issues at that office. Then I was out of work for several months while trying to find something else. Of course we were staying isolated and trying to make ends meet during this time. It was rough, but thankfully there was a lot of community support. The hubs and I kept of good humor and did a lot of DIY updating to our new home. Eventually, I just happened to see that literally my old position at a local hospital was open, So I applied. It was kismet! I am so happy to be back! Things are doing better now, we managed to not get Covid until we were vaccinated and boosted, so it was very mild for both of us. We are now starting to do those pool parties and family gatherings again. It's so nice to be close to our family and friends again.

It affected me pretty badly. My sister and I started fighting so much more, that leading her to a mental hospital.

We didn't have any work from home option so I was at the office all the way through. I liked that there was no traffic, no forced socializing and less crowds. I could easily say "nope, the rona" and everyone would understand lol. I basically go from home to work to class(online) to sleep and repeat. So it didn't really affect my day to day life.
What it did have a huge impact on was my projects. I began renovations at home and prices have basically doubled or tripled in some cases for materials. So that's made a huge dent in my budget and completion.