Pretty much the entire day I've heard people say that 2020 has been the worst year of their lives. I thought that sentiment was interesting given it seems like an obvious answer (given COVID largely) but I got to thinking, was it really all that bad for me personally? When I thought about it aside from March and April the totality of 2020 wasn't really all that bad for me. I ended up getting to a lot of outdoor oriented bucket list items done, spent two weeks in Mexico before March, got to build my garage gym after kicking down the road for years, and for the most part had a slight renaissance in terms of my career. So to that end, I wondered what actually the worst year of my life?...and the best?
In terms of the worst year that was obvious for me, it was by far 2001. I moved across the country in 2001 right out high school on my own dime which in retrospect was a steep transition. Money was extremely hard to come by and career prospects were non-existent. I recall not having enough money for food at time and not enough life experience to find the resources to do something about it. I also didn't have health insurance and ended up getting Valley Fever for awhile to top it off (at least I lost some weight I needed to lose for physical agility tests). To top it off 9/11 happened and that really made finding steady employment a difficult to thing (especially since I was 18 at the time). Things got gradually better progressing to 2004 but 2002 and 2003 were on a high plain of misery also.
Conversely I would rate 2017 as the best year for me personally. It wasn't the best year for travel but it was really high up there was over 20 National Parks visited. At work things were good and I even reached a running milestone that I was trying to achieve for years. To top it off I ended up meeting/dating my future wife.
I know this is a subject measure but I thought it would be interesting to find out what other posters have for their best/worst personal years.
Edit: Another strong contender for worst year would be 2010. I got hit by a car when I was out running (driver ran the stop sign) and spent a large portion of the year in physical therapy. I also foreclosed on a house partially due to that accident but more so because of the economic recession obliterating 70% of my home value. 2015 wasn't very good given my Mon died after a prolonged fight with lung cancer. I also ended up in the hospital after losing 15 pounds of water weight during a run. The amount of heart monitors I was hooked up after that incident is something that I ever forget, truly miserable experience.
2016 on the other hand was probably all the time best travel year. My Dog and I moved back to the West Coast which was an instant boon in relieving how bored I was in Florida from 2013-15. I do have a lot of affinity for my road travel in 2012 given I worked 150 nights on the road and visited 24 National Parks.
Great thread! I thought about saying something along these lines in the New Year's thread, but didn't want to start rambling over there.
Of course "2020! Worst Year Ever!"™ is the cliche thing to say, but for me, 2020 was definitely not the worst year. It was certainly the weirdest, but in a way that I personally found more positive than negative. Less socializing is definitely OK with me, the reduced travel was depressing at first but you get accustomed to it after a while. More free time has been a positive thing on balance. I do struggle with time management as evidenced by how much time I spend here and on Google Maps, etc., but I've had a few big projects going on which has forced me to balance things out and kept me from getting bored - and in fact at times I've felt busier than ever before.
I'm pretty young, of course, so take this with a grain of salt, but I'd say 2015 for best year. That was my sophomore year of high school and that was right at the point where I started to feel like an adult, but without the stress and responsibility that comes with being an actual adult. I see 15 and 16 year-olds now and can't help but smile, remembering how much older I felt at their age than I actually was. Good times though.
I had - or at least think I had - a fairly normal life as a kid, and sometimes I feel like I can hardly remember anything prior to about 2010, so for worst year I'm going to go with 2018. It was my first year with a full-time job, and various factors caused a lot of stress, some of it self-inflicted, to the point where I started to really worry about my long term mental and physical health. That kind of blended into 2019 when things gradually got better, then 2020 happened and here we are.
Like I alluded to in the New Year's thread, I often question what the pandemic has done to my sense of time. It's almost like time is going both faster and slower than usual depending on how it hits you in the moment, while simultaneously not really even mattering anymore. Sometimes 2019 feels like it was just the other night, other times it feels like it was a completely different lifetime. It's weird.
2004 was my personal worst. Two eye surgeries, the first of which included an implant that left me temporarily blind in one eye, until it recovered enough for the second surgery to remove the implant. Then my mother died. Her prolonged illness meant time off work for several cross-country flights to visit her as her condition deteriorated.
Society-wide, 1968 was pretty awful. Two major assassinations, serious social unrest over both the Vietnam War and race relations. The 9/11 attacks in 2001 were also painful, but I think less of a threat to social stability.
Personal best was probably 2008. My office got an unexpectedly quick win in a merger litigation that had kept most of the office busy. We went instantly from "totally swamped" to "desperately looking for work to do". My management welcomed my request to take most of the summer off, which made their "looking for work" effort easier. That summer was wall-to-wall road trips, including a cross-country drive to the Pacific Northwest which I don't normally visit often.
2020 wasn't the worst year, but it's been very strange.
I think it was 2017 where our fiscal situation nearly collapsed and got pretty dicey (long story -- thought we had a solid backup plan that fell through from taking a risk). That was more stressful than 2020.
If it weren't for COVID, this year would be pretty unremarkable, even with wildfires, race riots, and the various famous people we lost. I'm sure that in 1942, people also took non-war related events and concluded it was also the worst year ever.
Personally:
Best 1985
Worst: 1995
2009 was the worst for me. Mrs. wanderer had a bad health scare (Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) where the chemo was worse than the disease and we almost lost her a couple times. I had a hard time dealing with that, the day job, and maintaining the household. But it also taught me a lesson in what was really important (loved ones) and to not sweat the small stuff of everything else. (She recovered and has been doing well since.)
2007-2010 was one long dark winter for me. I'd have to say 2015 may have been my best personal year. I got to travel solo for the first time unimpeded and attended three road meets.
Maybe it's because I'm young, but 2020 was my worst year. I know the OP said that taking out March and April, the year was decent on balance - but for me, life didn't really change in May, or June, or October... schools still closed, hangouts still cancelled, vacations and proms and friends' graduation parties all tossed down the shitter, as they are for the foreseeable future. Maybe, for me, it's the fact that the year tried its damnedest to go out on a bad note - in December, my diabetic grandma got COVID, my puppy ended up in the ER, and my friend almost killed himself, before the year finally ran out of time.
Best year? As strange as it sounds, 2020 (before the virus wiped it out) was on track to be the best year of my life. The school year was going great, I had straight A's, I got a girlfriend, I was playing soccer, I was making money, I wasn't spending hardly any weekends in State College. Then, like a flipped switch, every single one of those dropped off.
So fuck 2020. Hopefully 2021 is better - with vaccines coming, I think it will be.
best probably 2013. Got married, my first year playing fantasy football. Worst would be a year in Junior High probably 1983. Most mixed year would be 2006 easily enough good things happened to make it my best but also some really bad things happened to make it my worst.
This time last year I was only a few months away from traveling to Tokyo for a week in Japan. Now...I'm a few YEARS away from such a trip. I was also planning a short trip from Indy to Paris last year. But that's not the only reason last year was my worst. It began with my mom in the hospital. She then moved to a nursing home facility for rehabilitation and then back home. At the end of January she went back to the hospital after almost dying and then back to the same nursing home and then back home and then back to the hospital and same nursing home for a third time. This was all before April 1. By the end of the month she had contracted COVID and died early in May. We never had a funeral for her, we couldn't as churches were closed. I don't think there's ever going to be a strong contest for worst year.
Either 2016, 2017 or 2018 would contest for a better year as I traveled to Canada, New York, Chicago, London and San Francisco all cities I've wanted to visit.
While I wasn't alive then, I agree with 1968 being pretty bad (from a United States point of view).
Personally 2020 wasn't so bad for me, but I can see statistically that a lot of people will justifiably say 2020 was their worst. Nothing wrong with that. Everyone's mileage will vary.
2014 was easily the worst year for me. My grandma died of a massive stroke that escalated into a heart attack here at the house. By the time the ambulance got here, it was too late. That really fucked me up since I spent 95% of my life with my grandparents. We were very close. My grandpa had already died in 1999 from COPD, and while that hit hard, losing my grandma was worse since I was around her more since she outlived him. If it wasn't for that, I would've said 2020 was the worst because of Covid. I've been fortunate so far to have avoided catching that shit, but the impact of it screwed things up for me.
As for my best year, I'd say it's a tie between 1996 and 2001. In 1996, both my grandparents were still alive and the only worse thing that happened was when I caught chickenpox from someone else in my 1st grade class during the first part of the year. That sucked. Other than that, everything was copacetic. In 2001, I had a damn good summer hanging out with friends in my neighborhood and Christmas that year was awesome.
I lost track of which thread I was reading. Off to a good start this year!
Quote from: 1995hoo on January 01, 2021, 10:43:11 AM
New Year's Eve felt like sort of a conundrum for us. My wife's sister was born on December 31. But she died of cancer last March, so it made "celebrating" seem just wrong or weird. We did raise our glasses at dinner in recognition of her birthday.
For me, 2020 was by no means the "worst" year of my life. It was my first full year in my current job, which is the best one I've had (not the best-paying, but the one for which I'm best-suited and that I enjoy the most). The telecommuting due to the pandemic wasn't a huge issue because I was already telecommuting anyway. I agree with other folks who say it was certainly the "strangest" year they've ever had. Biggest thing for me was not having sports to watch on TV at night and on the weekends for most of the spring and the first half of the summer. I felt kind of lost.
I'm not sure what the worst year of my life was. Problem is that even in the worst years, there were positives to balance out the bad.
Worst: 2014
Best: 2018
Worst: 2004 because I was coerced into confessing to something I didn't do and was suspended from school for 10 days, but then wasn't allowed to come back until March of 2005. After I was suspended, the things that I was coerced into confessing continued. It wasn't until my senior year 2006/07 that I received a written apology.
Best: 2019 because I finally got a place of my own
Honorable Mentions:
Worst: 2017 (became homeless, found a transitional house, rose up to be house manager in 2018)
Best: 2012 (kicked my pill habit and moved back to Massachusetts after spending 16 years in St. Louis
My best was probably 2019, as I got my driver's license, went on some fun trips, won a fantasy football tournament, and picked up music.
My worst would be 2020. Sounds cliche, but it was already horrible before the pandemic even started.
Worst: 2015
Best: 2013
Worst: 2020
Despite not having to worry about my job (thankfully) during the pandemic, everything else seemed to go wrong. My depression issues resurfaced, and my mental health tanked in the beginning of the year. I destroyed a lot of close friendships as a result. In the middle of the year everything came crashing down. I started having panic attacks that would convince me I was dying. Suddenly I couldn't think without worrying. I got diagnosed with 4 separate anxiety-related disorders and am on medication for it now. Even now I still have trouble with my anxiety. I've also felt increasingly lonely and sometimes my depression kicks me into that state even harder. I don't have many friends I can hang out with in real life; my social interaction is quite low, and it's shown on me. I'm too anxious about meeting people in real life to try and make friends, my insecurity issues are pretty severe and as a result I just kind of feel in limbo.
Best: 2020
Huh? How could 2020 be my best year? Well, in short, even though 2020 was the worst, I made a lot of positive changes in 2020. I finally started to get outside more and see the world. I forced myself to try new things and step outside of my comfort zone. I found someone who I enjoy hanging out with so much and we are able to talk about anything bothering us without fear of judgment. It sounds weird, but the changes that happened in 2020 negatively also forced me to change in positive ways. I really shed my old temper and became a much softer and kinder person. I found new interests that I enjoy a lot. I don't think I would've found them any other way then to be forced into them like I was.
Honorable mention: 2014 as my worst. Without going into too much detail, I was borderline suicidal this year. A lot of my mental health issues first showed themselves during this year, and I just brushed them off until they resurfaced violently last year.
Quote from: Zeffy on March 25, 2021, 10:55:27 AM
How could 2020 be my best year? Well, in short, even though 2020 was the worst, I made a lot of positive changes in 2020.
I think that's great news. Maybe it means the best/worse dichotomy will begin to narrow from here on out. Hopefully?
Quote from: kphoger on March 25, 2021, 10:58:45 AM
Quote from: Zeffy on March 25, 2021, 10:55:27 AM
How could 2020 be my best year? Well, in short, even though 2020 was the worst, I made a lot of positive changes in 2020.
I think that's great news. Maybe it means the best/worse dichotomy will begin to narrow from here on out. Hopefully?
That's the hope. I can easily say there's been significant improvement since July 2020, which is when this all started. I'm just going to keep pushing myself out of my comfort zone and trying new things to teach keep reinforcing my progress.
Trying new things is, I think, a good idea. New people can and will let you down now and then, but new activities are entirely up to you.
I thought I had already posted in this thread back around the time of the OP, but now that it resurfaced I see I never did.
So I'll contribute now and echo
Zeffy's sentiment that 2020 was both the best & worst.
The early stages of the pandemic sent me down a dark path worrying/stressing about if things would ever be the same, but on the same token the lockdowns afforded me the chance to slow down and finally confront some things from my past that had been buried for so long I didn't even realize they were buried. And this has allowed me to learn much about myself & why I do things the way I do (the big one being finally acknowledging to myself that although undiagnosed, I likely fall somewhere on the spectrum), and I've begun to change my relationships with my parents & my brother for the better (I later learned that he's gone on a similar soul-searching experience during the pandemic, so we now use each other as sounding boards for things we're working thru).
Quote from: Zeffy on March 25, 2021, 10:55:27 AM
It sounds weird, but the changes that happened in 2020 negatively also forced me to change in positive ways.
This is exactly how I feel - all the good that came for me in the back half of 2020 (and continuing into 2021) wouldn't have happened without the bad in the first half. I don't think I'd be where I am now if the pandemic never happened.
Quote from: kphoger on March 25, 2021, 11:22:41 AM
Trying new things is, I think, a good idea. New people can and will let you down now and then, but new activities are entirely up to you.
This is something I'm working to get better at as well.
2003 was pretty awesome in that I graduated college and met my wife a month after.
2009 might have been my worst from a job perspective, the Great Recession really took hold early in that year, but my oldest daughter was born that July so a mixed bag I suppose.
Worst for me was probably 2017. I lost both my parents in the span of 4 months.
Quote from: jmacswimmer on March 25, 2021, 12:32:37 PM
I thought I had already posted in this thread back around the time of the OP, but now that it resurfaced I see I never did.
So I'll contribute now and echo Zeffy's sentiment that 2020 was both the best & worst.
The early stages of the pandemic sent me down a dark path worrying/stressing about if things would ever be the same, but on the same token the lockdowns afforded me the chance to slow down and finally confront some things from my past that had been buried for so long I didn't even realize they were buried. And this has allowed me to learn much about myself & why I do things the way I do (the big one being finally acknowledging to myself that although undiagnosed, I likely fall somewhere on the spectrum), and I've begun to change my relationships with my parents & my brother for the better (I later learned that he's gone on a similar soul-searching experience during the pandemic, so we now use each other as sounding boards for things we're working thru).
Quote from: Zeffy on March 25, 2021, 10:55:27 AM
It sounds weird, but the changes that happened in 2020 negatively also forced me to change in positive ways.
This is exactly how I feel - all the good that came for me in the back half of 2020 (and continuing into 2021) wouldn't have happened without the bad in the first half. I don't think I'd be where I am now if the pandemic never happened.
Quote from: kphoger on March 25, 2021, 11:22:41 AM
Trying new things is, I think, a good idea. New people can and will let you down now and then, but new activities are entirely up to you.
This is something I'm working to get better at as well.
I definitely can relate on the whole "finding yourself" and learning who you are thing - I've really come to learn a lot about who I am as a person, and I can see how to improve them for the better. The "old me" just pretended like those issues never existed, and the "new" me is not only aware they are part of me, but is also working to make them work
with me and not against me. It's a holistic change and combining that with other aspects of my life that have changed, have really helped make a positive impact despite being a rough time.
Quote from: Zeffy on March 25, 2021, 01:16:17 PM
I definitely can relate on the whole "finding yourself" and learning who you are thing - I've really come to learn a lot about who I am as a person, and I can see how to improve them for the better. The "old me" just pretended like those issues never existed, and the "new" me is not only aware they are part of me, but is also working to make them work with me and not against me. It's a holistic change and combining that with other aspects of my life that have changed, have really helped make a positive impact despite being a rough time.
Good for you, Zeffy!
Seriously, our society doesn't talk much about the ages 20-30 where you really find out what you're made of. You can find people to validate you, but you have to define it for yourself. And it's okay to change, too...we put too much pride in just being steadfast in the same things since we were kids/teens, which might be great for some people, but it's not that way for everyone (or arguably, most people). They just talk about being done with the teenage years and then assuming you're on Auto-Pilot Adulthood from then on, which probably made sense 100 years ago in smaller towns and in a less-complex world than today.
In a similar vein to the above discussion, my best year was probably 2010 where I took my first extended trip overseas alone. Spending a month and a half traveling definitely helps you reset some things about yourself and after that trip, I was a lot more confident in myself and then took steps to become a better/more responsible person, a process that took a while. I'd say my worst year was probably 2004 where I went through a bought of minor depression and dropped out of college.
Chris
Quote from: formulanone on March 25, 2021, 01:47:20 PM
Quote from: Zeffy on March 25, 2021, 01:16:17 PM
I definitely can relate on the whole "finding yourself" and learning who you are thing - I've really come to learn a lot about who I am as a person, and I can see how to improve them for the better. The "old me" just pretended like those issues never existed, and the "new" me is not only aware they are part of me, but is also working to make them work with me and not against me. It's a holistic change and combining that with other aspects of my life that have changed, have really helped make a positive impact despite being a rough time.
Good for you, Zeffy!
Seriously, our society doesn't talk much about the ages 20-30 where you really find out what you're made of. You can find people to validate you, but you have to define it for yourself. And it's okay to change, too...we put too much pride in just being steadfast in the same things since we were kids/teens, which might be great for some people, but it's not that way for everyone (or arguably, most people). They just talk about being done with the teenage years and then assuming you're on Auto-Pilot Adulthood from then on, which probably made sense 100 years ago in smaller towns and in a less-complex world than today.
Honestly, I used to be afraid of having to change, but I see now how it's your perception of having to change and how you view it as what's important. A lot of anxiety used to be related to age-related changes that I used to fear, some of which I still do have a fear component of, but nowhere near as strong as it was in the past. I think not letting it consume you is a big part, and that's something I think has helped with getting me into a better place as this year treks on.
Best: 2019
Worst: 2020
2020 was definitely a mixed bag for me. Only one person close to me got COVID, and he survived with no long-term effects. I got a new (better) job in February, and a raise in April. I saved money not eating out or putting as much gas in my car. But, I spent a lot of time home alone, did not travel, and saw very little of my children or grandchildren. I also had to give up singing - I sing in a couple of community choruses and my church choir, and all that stopped completely. Overall, 2020 was not real good, but not the worst.
2010 was probably my worst - I lost a business, came close to declaring bankruptcy, and my marriage of 28 years ended.
Not sure if I can pick one best year, but 2016 was one of the better ones. Lots of travel, my daughter got married, and my son had his first child, making me a grandfather for the first time.
I agree that 2020 wasn't the worst year. To say that is not to discount the experiences of those for whom it was the worst year. We're all allowed to live our own lives while still making sure that we're not putting others in danger. The first half of 2020 was pretty forgettable. We all remember those last few days of Covid not being much of a public concern, but after that, days quickly started to blend together. It made me realize how important a structure is. Needing to physically be somewhere at a certain time every day, or most days, is a must for me. Some of that returned during the summer and fall months, which was nice. Overall I would rank 2020 closer to the top than the bottom, but that is obviously just my perspective. And recency bias is a real thing, so we'll see what my answer is in a few years.
I don't really think of myself as a nostalgic person. New cars are worth more than used cars for a reason. I romanticize certain things about past years, but it should be obvious that very positive and/or very negative memories are going to define our cumulative view of a given year once it's a ways in the rear view mirror. The day-to-day stuff just gets phased out of our memories over time. So for that reason it's difficult to judge what the best year was, but if I had to pick I would go with 2019.
2020. COVID-19 fucked me up hard. Although 2009 was pretty iffy for me as well
Quote from: thspfc on March 25, 2021, 08:25:54 PM
The first half of 2020 was pretty forgettable. We all remember those last few days of Covid not being much of a public concern, but after that, days quickly started to blend together. It made me realize how important a structure is. Needing to physically be somewhere at a certain time every day, or most days, is a must for me. Some of that returned during the summer and fall months, which was nice.
For me, it was quite the opposite. The second half of 2020 was pretty forgettable and started blending together, while the first half had very distinct phases - from hearing about COVID, to watching things like sports get affected by it, to events and gatherings being restricted, to wearing masks in the grocery store, and so on. March and April 2020 will probably go down as some of my
least forgettable months. On the other hand, September? October? I don't remember anything distinct about those months.
As I've mentioned before, the pandemic has certainly warped my sense of time on multiple levels. It almost feels like now that the concept of "2020!" is behind us, 2021 is just another year, and not a particularly noteworthy one at that, other than the fact that it's distinctly separated from all past years by the great gulf of 2020.
2019-2020 both have an equally high rank as my worst years. You apparently call a horrible year an annus horribilis. Lost friends, really bad relationships with people, domestic violence, having family members almost killed by COVID then by cancer, at the same time...Abuse from other people, sometimes violent and not really appropriate to describe on this forum, (but it's extremely traumatic, I am trying to get an evaluation for PTSD as of now so I can explore treatment options. The effects of it still cause issues for me with getting along with people and I have a tendency to lash out and get angry over little things other people do if it even slightly reminds me of those incidents, not to mention the severe anxiety it causes) Other ills of 2020 include getting mental and physical diagnoses for myself that I didn't want to hear about and still honestly don't want to accept, hardly any socialization, a lot of embarrassing things happened, a lot of HUGE opportunities I missed, sometimes by my own fault, the list also goes on for a ton of other tiny things.
I really regret that last bit too. Did you all know I ran to be a delegate, and won a party election for my congressional district to one of 5 delegates to the 2020 DNC from NC-09? I ended up withdrawing my name due to concerns about COVID so I was replaced with an alternate, but only after I did that, it was announced it would be virtual. I regret doing that, it probably would've been the crowning achievement of my life so far. At least I can say I've won an election before.
2016 was probably my best year. I was a really stupid and cringey middle schooler but that was probably the last year I actually had real friends, made actual memories and generally just had people IRL I could shoot the shit with. I didn't really have all the worries I do now with health, illnesses, other people, etc. I am very much looking forward to what the rest of 2021 brings me. I am starting college and moving out on my own in Western North Carolina, provided I can get a disability-based exemption from my requirement to live on campus which won't be reviewed until May, which it probably will...I have all the appropriate medical documentation and it doesn't bring an undue burden or in fact, cost anything, to the school. I have my income sorted out, my living situation entirely planned out, etc, and I'm provided with some excellent recreational opportunities up in the mountains to better what phyiscal health issues I can control, and I'm in an entirely new place so I'm not carrying around the old, bad view people have of me.
Best: 2019
Worst: 2020
(Might edit later if I feel like posting an explanation)
My worst year was 2012--my father died in January from cancer at age 66 and my sister died in December from complications from surgery at age 35.
2020 is definitely second worst. Didn't get COVID and nobody close to me died, but had a couple falls that limited my mobility and I put on a substantial amount of weight that has caused my health to deteriorate significantly and am going to need bariatric surgery.
Best years would have to be 2003 because I got married and 2008 and 2009 because my kids were born, but aside from the obvious things, I'd say 2001 as I got to see a lot of the country traveling for work and vacation. Got to 5 new states that year.
2012 when I lost my dad was a bad year for me.
2000 and 1985 were great years for me. My first Summer Vacation I had paid at a job and great music on the radio then in 85. 2000 I got to go west and see Grand Canyon, Vegas, and the I-40 corridor as well as Colorado, Kansas, Utah, and Kansas City area.