My mom and sister have Covid. This brings the total number of people in my family that have/had Coronavirus to six. I am the only member of my most immediate family that has not been infected with this accursed plague. So far Maa (that’s my nickname for Mom) and Sister (that’s what I call this sister) have symptoms like that of a bad cold with a strong dose of fatigue. We are obviously very concerned. Maa moved out of her own house and in with Sister to lessen the chances of medically-fragile Maa being exposed to the virus by my little sister, the ICU nurse. For eight-and-a-half months Maa and Sister have been sharing a one-bedroom apartment. My mom has left the apartment so few times (and only for medical appointments) that you can count them on one hand and still have change leftover. And when she did, she always wore a mask. The only times my sister left the house were for work and to buy essentials. And she always wore a mask. It is mind-boggling how they ended up infected while people who are completely unsafe jagoffs continue to be perfectly fine. All of this inconvenience and sacrifice and yet we end up here, with both of them sick. It’s truly awful. As if this weren’t enough, my best friend is in the hospital with pneumonia. 2020 can go straight to the hot place.

If you are religious, please pray for my loved ones. If, like me, you are not a believer, please hold them in your thoughts. Thoughts and prayers for real, please.

I feel as though this blog should be re-entitled Jeremy’s Tales of Woe. I did not set out to make a catalog of family crises or a recording of my illnesses, mental or otherwise, but here we are.

Thank you for your words of encouragement over the past year or so; I promise that as soon as 2020 stops hurting everyone I know and love, I will stop being a total bummer whenever I sit down to write a post.

I do have some good news:

My mood continues to improve and my sleep has much improved. Other than the terrible things happening to my friends and family, I am downright upbeat about the immediate future. Especially as it relates to creative endeavors like this newsletter.

I am in the process of building a new website that is focused on completing the guitar challenge. It is called Jeremy’s Guitar Fiasco. The website is just a placeholder right now, but go check it out anyway, please. There is a link in this paragraph, as well as in the links below. It will be going live in early January. I will continue to write here weekly (probably still on Fridays), but I will also be posting at Jeremy's Guitar Fiasco on another day of the week. I have no idea which. I am open to suggestions. Except for Wednesday. Fuck Wednesday.

Just kidding, I was born on a Wednesday, I love Wednesday!

Like a true Wednesday’s Child, I am full of woe.

I take it back, fuck Wednesday.

There will be considerably more video content on the new site. I never intended for this newsletter to be my only place to talk about the challenges, nor did I intend that text and images would be my only tools of expression. My original goal was to have much more video content, but Substack’s editor is “simple” to the point of useless, and text, images, and YouTube links are the only media it handles well. I have been incredibly unhappy with this site, and have seriously thought about leaving, but it just so happens that Substack is a good place for producing a weekly newsletter. I realize that creating newsletters is Substack’s raison d’etre, so I will no longer try to make it into something that it is not.

I am incredibly excited about Jeremy’s Guitar Fiasco, and I will tell y’all all about it very soon.

Next Friday is Christmas, so I won’t be writing a post next week, but I will definitely be posting before the first of the new year to give you all a sneak peek of J.G.F. Until then, Happy Holidays and hug the ones you love (the ones you live with) tightly and tell them that you love them. Get the vaccine when you can, and practice social distancing and mask up until then.

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Thank you, as always, for reading.

Drop me a line: jeremydnichols@toolatesmart.org

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Jeremy’s Guitar Fiasco: Jeremy's Guitar Fiasco

Email for Jeremy’s Guitar Fiasco: jeremy@jeremysguitarfiasco.com