It is New Year’s Eve, and as I jump off a chair and hug my loved ones, I am excited about this new year. 2020! It even sounds cool. My oh my, what a year this is going to be. From a sports perspective, there are few years like this one!! With a long-awaited Olympics poised to break many world records, and a European championship with strong rivalries set to be fought out this summer can only be good. There is this one little thing. COVID-19. But come on… It can’t be that big of a deal!?
FAST FORWARD 7 MONTHS.
Holy forking shirt balls. The world has never seen a unifying, yet divisive event like this before. Quarantine, masks, social distancing have all become commonplace. Coronavirus is terrorizing the world, infecting millions, and killing hundreds of thousands. Additionally, it has changed the way we see the world. A paradigm shift in how we interact with each other – socially and professionally.
But back to this summer. What am I going to spend my time on? No large gatherings. No sports on TV. None of the stuff that normally makes the summer great. That’s when in a moment of serendipity I stumbled upon the list “Funniest Movies Ever” on Friendspire. I had seen a few of the movies, and they were some of my absolute favorites. I rated them, and a few of my buddies chimed in with quotes from the movies. This kind of reminded me of sitting around the table eating a burger talking about these movies. But I was on my couch, in my undies, safe from the horrors of COVID-19.
Suddenly I could see a path for the summer. I could watch all of these comedies. Well, that lasted just about three days, but I was hooked. Now I had to satisfy my travel bug, and found another great list – this time with TV the best travel shows! At this point, I was having a pretty relaxing summer, and I had significantly improved from the regular mediocre stuff I would watch on Netflix, HBO, or Amazon Prime.
The best moments however came with my quarantine buddies, my family. As we found the list “Fun Picks for a Family Movie Night” and decided to get through every single one of the 25 movies! The ensuing month was one of the coziest my family has ever had! We revisited some of my old childhood classics like Jumanji and one of my parents’ childhood classics, Mary Poppins. Together, we also found new favorites none of us had seen like Spirited Away or Up.
However, I couldn’t spend all summer just watching TV – plus the weather was getting pretty nice. I headed for the balcony armed with an ambition I have and fail at every year; read 10 great books! I am an absolute sucker for True Crime, so thought that would be a great place to start. Oh man, I moved onto the balcony and was getting through a book every other day. Yeah, I feel like a smarty pants now.
I started sharing the app with friends as I only had a few on there already. It spread like wildfire, and soon most of the gang was on. And you know what? I found out they have been holding out on me! They know all these cool shows and podcasts I never knew about. One of them even recommended a True Crime book I didn’t know about. Discovering great content is great, but sharing it and getting reactions from friends makes it truly awesome!
This was definitely not the summer I expected, but it became a summer to remember. Full of great content that made me laugh, inspired me, and kept me at the edge of my seat.