Can We Maybe Chill on the Historic Events?

As an Elder Millennial, I have seen some things. Learned about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in my 11th grade U.S. history class, graduated college in a recession, been blamed for the death of pretty much everything, told to stop buying avocado toast and coffee to afford a home, you get it.

But nothing compares to 2020-present. With social media and 24/7 news consuming our lives, it’s not hard to think more bad things are happening now than ever before. But is that just because more information is available at our fingertips at any given moment or is the most overused word in the last three years — unprecedented — the best one to describe what we’ve been through?

From a global pandemic to a toilet paper shortage to experiencing my beloved grandmother’s funeral wearing a mask and asking for folks to stay home and watch on a livestream to Georgia electing two Democratic senators to a sitting U.S. president impeached to electing the first woman vice president to the same sitting president lie about his election loss being “stolen” to watching a literal insurrection unfold on live television to the same sitting president impeached a second time to CRT and “Don’t Say Gay” to Russia invading Ukraine to Iranian women standing up for their rights to exist to a record number of school shootings to the overturning of Roe v. Wade to the “Red Wave” that never was to a record number of women elected to governorships to the first Black leader of House Democrats to Elon Musk buying Twitter for “free speech” and banning people who made fun of him and journalists whose coverage he didn’t like to a former president criminally referred to the Department of Justice for an insurrection…can we not? And that barely hits the tip of the iceberg (she types on the 25th anniversary of Titanic).

Can 2023 just be a very boring year in which nothing historic or traumatic or historically traumatic happen? Except a Donald Trump indictment. That’s allowed.

Manifesting a totally chill 2023 for you all.