I thought to myself “writing a summary of my year on New Year’s Eve/early New Year’s Day has started to become an annual tradition, hasn’t it?” but taking a look, it seems I didn’t do that last year, which is odd. Either way, I’m writing one this year.

Obviously, on the world stage, this year has been pretty bad. There’s been a global pandemic which has claimed countless lives and the UK has been particularly badly hit due to our evil incompetent government. This year has been the year that I’ve stopped reading the news and I’m sure that many people have done the same. As a consequence of all that’s been going on, my life changed quite a lot. I used to be visiting friends in different places, sometimes as often as four days a week. I’d be going to different towns, different restaurants, different pubs and generally leading the life of a highly social person. This year I’ve gone out to visit friends only a very small number of times.

On top of all that, I was made redundant from the nice, well paying job which I was enjoying this time last year. Furthermore, I was more ill this year than I’ve ever been before, with various trips to the doctor and the hospital, including an emergency trip to the hospital in what I would later learn was a life-threatening condition – one which could only be treated with an extremely painful procedure and took months to full recover from.

But despite all that… it’s not really been a bad year for me, personally. My house friend Sophie and I have sat peacefully in our little bubble while not thinking too hard about the problems that we have no power to influence. In terms of the things which society at large places value on, I’ve achieved nothing – I’ve lost a lot of money and I’ve not used the lockdown to cultivate a new skill or anything like that. But I’ve enjoyed having more time to read (and I’ve done a lot of reading this year) and I’ve enjoyed having more time for video games and, also, I’ve very much enjoyed having more time to write. I don’t mind that everything went came to a standstill (or go-backwards) for me this year.

I’ve missed a lot of friends who I haven’t had a chance to see… but they’re still there. The bonds formed are strong enough that things will resume and be just as they were once it is safe for us to see one another again. Plus, I also heard from a penpal I’d not heard from in a long time (nice to know she’s alive) and I made a new friend who I was introduced to online. So there were definite positives. In some ways, I wonder how I ever had the energy to do all the things I did before the lockdown first started and I’ve appreciated the opportunity to enjoy an easier way of life. Though, I have to admit, a big part of that is down to having a very comfortable living situation at the moment. I know that it won’t have been so easy for some. Who knows what my life will be like this time next year? Not me. I have no goals or expectations, I’ll just wait and see what happens. At very least, I know I’ll be watching a new episode of Doctor Who on the first day of 2021. That’s a good start.

There’s a certain toxic behaviour that I see quite a lot of. Thankfully, this is very rare among the people in my life, but I see it a lot on television (and other fiction) and I know that my friends have trouble with people acting this way. What’s the behaviour I’m talking about? Well, it’s when somebody does something nice for somebody, but then uses that fact against the person later. Sometimes I feel like people actively do something “kind” because they want to make the person feel guilty due to whatever issues they’re failing to communicate properly (or because they do the so-called act of kindness because they want something in return).

In my opinion, if somebody does something nice for somebody and then later uses it against them, it’s no longer an act of kindness, it’s one cog in an act of manipulation. It’s the equivalent of baking somebody a cake… but it’s actually made of something they’re allergic to for a prank, or giving somebody a nice teddy bear… but it’s actually stuffed with cocaine and you’re giving it to them because you need to hide it, or buying somebody some nice clothes… but you intentionally bought them a size to small because you think the person is overweight and want them to lose weight. Yes, in isolation, the action might seem kind, but when you see the whole picture, you realise there was no kindness involved – only manipulation.

It’s always wrong to intentionally make somebody feel guilty. The only motivation you should have behind any act of kindness is to make the other person happy, because when you care about somebody, their happiness should be its own reward. I can understand doing something for someone because you hope it will improve your relationship with someone, that’s fine as far as “ulterior motives” go. It’s even fine if you’re doing something to make someone happy, but also partly thinking “wouldn’t it be nice if this encouraged them to do the same for me one day?” it’s natural to hope people will do nice things for you or that people will like you… but it becomes not okay when you start to expect people to reciprocate all of your actions of kindness.

Love and kindness are not an economy. You don’t pay someone with one act of kindness in exchange for something from them – yes, it might generally work out like that, but sometimes it won’t (which is okay) and keeping score and trying to coerce people is not “kind” by any means. If people are doing things for people and thinking about what they can get out of the person as a result of it, or hoping to make them feel guilty or anything like that, I think they seriously need to reassess the dynamics of the relationships in their life. Nobody appreciates this kind of behaviour.