2022, the year we tried to get back to normal. 

Sometimes I forget that two years have passed since the whole world suddenly halted to combat Covid-19. In 2020, you could not escape the reality of the virus. In 2021, we slowly tried to raise our heads out of our bunkers but were brutally knocked back by Delta and Omicron. In between, we had isolated birthdays, voting by mail, attempted coups and countless other life events pass us by.

Some tried to ignore the realities of a pandemic. They desperately grasped for any excuse to return to normal, to shirk any sense of responsibility in their bid to assert their dominance over nature. Those who survived showed no penitence for their actions, only moving on to the next conspiracy theory.

When 2022 came, Omicron's original variant was still surging across the planet, keeping travel a dangerous affair. However, thanks to vaccines, country after country eventually relaxed their restrictions and tacitly gave the green light to resume regular activity. 

For me, that meant travelling and a slow return to hanging out with my friends. It meant taking risks that were unheard of just a few months earlier. It also meant returning to work after literal years of working from home.

2022 also brought massive political and social change in the country I where I live and the country of my birth. Women had their reproductive rights stripped away from them by the United States Supreme Court. The UK had three Prime Ministers and lost a Queen. I lived through the hottest British summer ever and watched the best mid-term result for a sitting American president since 1934, and who can forget waking up to seeing Will Smith's handprint on Chris Rock's face?

But as this year comes to a close, I look forward to the future with a slight sense of hope. 

Those of you who are frequent readers of this blog know that I do not often write of optimism and hope, but to my surprise, the American public has transformed from a group that could barely be bothered to vote to a force that resisted an authoritarian attack on our democracy. The people did not just retweet and post their opinions, they expressed them at the ballot box, with young people voting in droves across the country.

These things, cynics said, would never happen because the young don't vote because they don't care. Well, it's pretty clear to me they may have saved the country. 

Like every new year, we will enter the new with the problems of of the old. Putin is still attempting to destroy Ukraine, and the Republicans are still trying to help him achieve his goals, and of course, Covid isn't gone, but with just enough people on the right side of the equation, we still hope for a better future.

At least, that's what I'll keep trying to accomplish.

Happy New Year.