Last weekend, over two feet of snow fell in Northern NJ, blanketing the region for the first time this year. With the fresh feet of powder, possibilities of outdoor activities with the boys opened up for me. Normally in the winter, we’re cooped up inside because of the cold. This year, when it’s been below freezing and incredibly windy what feels like every day, and obviously with COVID, the only real thing we do on weekends is stay around the house.

Let’s face it, COVID sucks. It’s destroyed the health and lives of millions, and disrupted nearly everyone’s life this year. For all of the terrible parts though, there are a few things that 2020 brought us that I hope we keep beyond the pandemic. The necessity of social distancing and staying outdoor has introduced several meaningful changes to our lives that I have enjoyed and want to keep. I can’t complain entirely about 2020.

Back in October, which in the year 2020 feels like a year ago, we got a bit crazy for Prime Day. It came at the perfect time after seven months working from home with at least about the same left remaining, so we knew what our days would be like for the foreseeable future and what things would most impact our daily lives. As always, we went electronics heavy, though ended up with fewer Amazon devices than in years past.

‘Tis the season for stuff. With the holidays coming up, my kids are already asking for presents from Santa and expecting to have a ton of things to do while we are at home. While it’s easy to just load them up with tons of new stuff, we’re trying to continue our practice of teaching them to appreciate things and value experience and the things they already have rather than just grabbing for new things.

Bigger than recycling, or an electric car, or minimizing impact through reuse, reducing meat consumption is the biggest thing an individual can do to reduce their impact on the environment and aid sustainability. Meat production, specifically the agriculture needed to maintain livestock, accounts for as much greenhouse gas production as the entire transportation industry, including cars, trucks, planes, and ships. That’s why the advances in plant based food and even lab grown meat are so exciting, they may be able to remove a huge portion of the most destructive industries we rely on.

Thanks for nothing. After a spring of COVID lockdowns, closings, and distancing, we went back to doing nothing this summer, and now we are going to pay for it this winter. After hunkering down and going nowhere, doing basically nothing, and inventing countless hours of basement games, it looks like we’ll be doing it long into 2021, and even more, we will have nearly two full weeks with school closed before the end of the year.

Small business Saturday is not a new concept this year, but in a time when so many small business are either disappearing or at a huge risk due to COVID, it feels especially important to find ways to give them our help where we can. As so many larger companies continue to grow among the pandemic, it’s the smaller shops, retailers, and restaurants that are hurting the most. While it’s important to find ways to patronize these businesses more than one day a year, Small Business Saturday can be a good reminder or jumping off point to discover some of the excellent options around.

I love our kids’ school. Since the day they started as infants four years ago, we’ve loved the teachers, administrative staff, and the curriculum that has grown along with them. Even during COVID, they’ve done a good job, better than what I’ve seen elsewhere, of keeping everyone there safe and cared for. So it’s hard to say it, but we’re considering keeping our kids home from school at least for a little while after Thanksgiving.

Every year we hold Thanksgiving at our house for both my family and my wife’s. Every single year since we moved in to this house in 2010. We have an entire dining room and set of tables, chairs, and serving dishes that only come out once a year for it. Yet this year, we’re shutting the doors and shelving Thanksgiving so that everyone is actually around the table when we can hopefully do it again next year.

Coming back from parental leave and getting up to speed with a new team is harder than I expected thanks to remote work. I knew before that it couldn’t be an easy situation for people trying to learn something new and onboard while there is no one around them, but it took going through the experience myself to really understand just what a challenge it is. Without the ability to walk around and ask questions, it’s really so much harder to understand what’s going on and become productive.