End-of-year: 2020

It feels so weird to think that last December, when I wrote my previous year-end blog post, nobody had any notion of a pandemic, and I just complained about Warhammer. In March, the coronavirus really started to hit, and my teaching for the rest of the spring was cancelled. We eventually got the virus sort of under control, and I was able to do some teaching (with appropriate precautions), until we got into the second wave and I was back distance-teaching over Zoom again.

I did a couple of pandemic diary entries on this blag, but I couldn't be bothered to write one for September, and then decided I might as well do the November one here. There really hasn't been that much to tell, to be honest. We've mostly been keeping to ourselves; our entire social and board-gaming life is on hold, we wear our masks, and are incredulous at the constant bullshit some people keep coming up with to complain about the restrictions. We're very lucky and privileged to be able to live this normally, but I can't wait for this shit to be over.

One of the most striking things that's happened throughout has been far too many people showing their true colors, so to speak. People on the social media have just come up with the most ridiculous nonsense, from sharing whiny posts by superrich promoters angry they can't make even more money to, sadly, totally irresponsible corona trutherism. The end of the year is sort of crystallized for me in a moment from November, when cases were going up dramatically and new restrictions were coming into force. I was having two simultaneous but separate conversations on a messaging app. One was with a person who was very irate that bars were being closed and gigs were being cancelled. The other was with a friend who hadn't been able to spend time with their dying father because of the pandemic. He sadly passed away while the visiting restrictions at the hospital were necessarily draconian, so his family could only be there for brief moments.

I really cannot bring myself to shed any tears for the nightclub owners. You read some of the stuff our event industry puts out, you'd think that the pandemic was something the government invented to make their lives miserable. The selfishness is astounding.

But even more than that, it has at times been unfortunately enlightening to see who can deal like an adult with having to tenporarily restrict your behavior to protect other people. Like I've said before, we are a nation with a permanent hardon for "exceptional circumstances": our nationalism is thoroughly militaristic and dominated by fantasies of past and future wars. And then when people brought up in this culture suffused with imagining collective hardship actually encounter a real-life situation that calls for the virtues that we, as a people, supposedly cultivate, they panic-buy all the toilet paper and peanut butter, and throw a tantrum when someone asks them to wear a simple facemask.

Turns out a pandemic is a hell of a mirror.

**

On to more frivolous things. I already complained about Warhammer last year, but it's only gotten worse since. I talked about Chaos Marines then, but I think it's the loyalists who really underline how absurd 40k is right now.

The first Space Marine codex for 8th edition came out in July 2017. Fairly shortly, they came out with codexes for the Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves and so on as well, which referred back to the vanilla Marine codex. The campaign book Vigilus Defiant came out at the end of 2018, and it had specialist detachment and other rules for Marines. At least some of these rules were then incorporated in the second eighth edition Marine codex, which came out in August 2019. It was shortly followed by the Psychic Awakening book Faith and Fury, which revamped rules for Marine Chaplains and came with a bunch of other stuff as well, and the previous single Chapter codexes were replaced with a line of Codex supplements. Until, of course, 9th edition came along, and the very first codex to be announced was Codex: Space Marines, coming out in 2020.

So from 2017 to 2020, i.e. four years, there have been three Space Marine codexes, two sets of supplementary codexes, and two campaign books with Space Marine rules. This is completely ridiculous. I'm a collector more than a player anyway; the only reason I'm really interested in the rules is because I like the units I build to make at least a little bit of sense. But frankly, at this point the investment required to keep up with the constantly changing rules is way too big. So I'm sticking with eighth edition for the time being.

**

Obviously the pandemic put a stop to all our boardgaming activities; when the best way to catch the virus is in confined spaces with lots of talking, gaming is definitely out. So instead we've been playing Here I Stand by email; we started in March, and the game is currently in its third turn (!). Frankly, at this point we can hope that the pandemic will end before the game does, and we can finish it live! However, with next to no social contacts in real life, the email game has been a blessing, and I think I like play-by-email enough to want to do more of it. I'm very grateful to everyone who's participated.

I also managed to play a game of Blood Bowl, and with our Turboleague rules, that's enough for a season! So for the first time since 2012, we have a Turboleague champion. I'm hoping I can keep playing at least one game of Blood Bowl every year - and maybe even win the league one of these days!

**

Finally in hobby matters, I want to return to the sort-of New Year's resolution I made last year, to finish modelling projects before starting new ones. I feel like it's been working for me. Hell, I even managed to finish the project that got this whole Warhammer-and-whatnot spree started in the first place. I also made some Renegades and Heretics infantry and tanks, a whole detachment of Adeptus Custodes, and decided to not collect a Sisters of Battle army. It's felt really good. I've still got quite a few unfinished projects lying around, and in pursuit of this notion of finishing things, I've decided to make an additional resolution: in 2021, I'm not buying any new models unless they're part of a project that I already started. So I'm going to stay on the lookout for new figures for my Blood Bowl stands, for instance, but I'm really going to focus on getting stuff done.

Since my several jobs are all academic and mostly social, I've been very grateful to have a hobby where I can work with my hands. It' very therapeutical to concentrate on building or painting something physical and tactile. Next year, I hope to get started on building a proper-sized game board and terrain, just in case we ever actually get to play something again.

I'm also very pleased to say that we managed all of a single session of Cyberpunk 2020 this year! Our Rogue Trader campaign is still ongoing, but because it was 2020 we thought we'd roll up a couple of characters just for the fun of it. We played one ex tempore session before the pandemic. I really can't wait for things to get back to something lile normal again.

**

So that was the hobby and pandemic year of 2020. In personal terms, it's now been two years since I quit my PhD. I'm still angry and bitter about the conditions that led to my decision, but I couldn't be happier that I made it. Sure, any kind of financial security or even quasi-semi-permanent employment is nowhere to be found, but at least I now have several years of actual teaching experience that I've gotten paid for, and quite frankly, based on the feedback I've gotten, I'm good at it. This coming spring, I'll be teaching high school history to people applying to study business, and lecturing on the history of heavy metal and the environment - in separate courses! Conditions permitting, I'll probably be giving my first lecture on Tolkien and theology next fall, but it isn't official yet.

To give you an idea of what it's like to be a teacher in Finland, this past year I've worked for seven different employers, and I'm not really making anything like enough money to actually support myself. All that talk about how teachers are supposedly valued and well-paid in this country is, frankly, complete bullshit.

However, this is the trade I have, and I'm going to see if I can make something of it. It's not like switching careers to IT seems to be possible. It's worth reminding myself that when I started this blag in 2007, an unimaginable thirteen years ago, I had no job, no degrees and no notion of any kind of future for myself. Now, several shall we say interesting years and a prison sentence later, I have a university degree, several peer-reviewed papers to my name, a professional certification, and I'm good at my job. Back in 2007, any one of these things would have seemed unimaginable. Life in 2020 is so strange and precarious that it's easy to feel like nothing matters, so I think it's worthwhile to remind oneself that we've come a ways.

On that note, I'd like to wish the three people who read my blog a very happy holiday season, and an excellent new year. I hope we all stay healthy and take a few steps forward next year as well.