It's probably not a secret that 2020 has been a complete disaster for pretty much everyone. Like most, I'm ready to put this one in the rear view mirror. But first, I figured I'd take a moment to talk about my year.
For those who come here for my racing adventures, I'll start there. We set out last off-season to build a new Vintage Modified. After spending two full seasons on the sidelines due to the rising costs of Super Late Model racing reaching a point that was simply no longer sustainable, something had to be done. I listed my Super Late Model for sale as a roller in the hopes of finding some funds to do something different. I got basically zero interest. Nobody wants a car that came from my stables because it isn't a proven winner. Everyone views the piece of equipment based on what was done with it, and if you don't win with it then it must be subpar. I believe that my car is one of the better pieces that is out there, the list of parts I had on it, the list of things I had done to it, the list of upgrades that chassis has on it, makes it every bit as good as the brand new stuff available today. But since it wasn't built by a reputable name and it didn't win races, it must be junk. That's just how things are viewed these days. So it sits, until I figure out what I'm going to do with it.
Once we started looking around the shop we realized we could pretty much build a Vintage Modified to run at South Sound Speedway by just using leftover parts we had laying around the shop, and that's what we did. Our plan had been to have it ready for the season opener, that didn't happen. Then the whole COVID-19 thing happened and the race season took on a dramatically different appearance. There were no races for a while, then there were races with no fans in attendance. The postponement of the start of the race season caused us to rethink our efforts and we chose to just take our time, do things right, do the things we felt we didn't have time to do and build it the way we wanted. The rush was simply over, we would get there when we got there. then the budget changed dramatically as the job market took on a different appearance as well. My wife lost her job, so our household income changed dramatically. Disposable income for things like racecars was at an all-time low. As aa household, we were focused on things like maintaining our mortgage, keeping food in the house, all those things you tend to take for granted during the "good times". Time marched on and pretty soon we were rushing to just make the last couple races.
We joined the VMRA gang for their "open invitation" race at Evergreen Speedway. Being in a bit of a rush by this point, things didn't go well and in typical 2020 fashion we broke the car before it ever got off the trailer. After patching it up and trying to qualify, we took it home with a broken driveshaft, a broken transmission and our heads hung low and began to regroup for the final race of the South Sound Speedway season. It was still 2020 and that race went only slightly better. We did manage to lay down the second fastest lap during the practice session, with a brand new car that had never been on that track and a driver who hadn't been behind the wheel for almost a full three seasons by this point. In true 2020 fashion, they lined us up by points, placing me at the tail end of the field. We did manage to lay down the second fastest lap during the race as well, which is something I'm still proud of today. But, it's still 2020 and we broke with only three laps left while running 7th. Once again, we took our car home with a broken driveshaft and broken transmission. I think we proved that the car will run fast and be competitive. We just need to work out the reliability thing and maybe not be in such a rush to get to the track. We'll get it sorted out, we just need a bit of time.
Now, on the personal side of things, this past year has been a very trying time for me. I mentioned before that my wife lost her job. She had spent several years working for a large corporation and commuting to Seattle from our home in Tacoma. with the drive, she was away from the house for well over 10 hours a day, we had been looking for a way to change that and it came by moving to a new job closer to home and basically "starting over" for her. She took that job in the fall of 2019, then COVID-19 happened just a few short months later. she was immediately laid off when the Government began shutting down businesses and construction. She never would go back to work for that company as they have still not recovered to pre-pandemic staffing levels.
As for me, my job revolves around the hospitality industry, a $3.5trillion industry that came to a grinding halt on March 19th, 2020. For those who don't know, I am a foodservice design consultant at my day job. We design commercial kitchens, bars, buffets, laundry and waste management facilities. As you can imagine, that industry changed dramatically mid-March. I began working from home, opening up a whole new host of problems as we shifted from a design studio to several independent studios spread out around the state. Just learning how to communicate was a struggle. Finding a place to "do business" in my house was a struggle. I began working on a tv tray with a laptop screen as my only monitor for a long time. I am lucky that my employer weathered the bulk of the storm rather well, having never missed a day of work the entire year.
But there's this other side of this thing that really stresses me out. As you can imagine, I have a lot of friends in the restaurant industry and I have a lot of contacts in the foodservice industry as a whole. I know factory workers who lost their jobs as new orders stalled out, product reps who were indefinitely furloughed because costs had to be cut. I know restaurateurs who were forced to close up, people who I designed their restaurant, people who I got to know on a personal level, people who I care about. I know other design consultants who are drowning as their work loads dried up completely. We were lucky that we had a client base that has kept us moving forward, others aren't so lucky. It's very difficult for me to watch an entire industry that I care very deeply about being taken to task for something it literally had no control over, being absolutely prosecuted for something they didn't even do, nor had any control of. I'm watching my friends being forced out of business, one by one. And in the back of my mind I'm wondering "when will all of this really begin to affect my work?" Because, while my firm has weathered the storm so far, I don't think we've seen the real effect this will have on us just yet.
Then there's the little things that you tend to put off to the side. I don't think it's any secret that I'm somewhat of a "foodie". I watch a great deal of food related television programming. I work around food and food related "things" all day. I spend my free time researching food trends, equipment trends, restaurant trends and dining trends. I write as a Yelp Elite reviewer. I also write as a contributor to Foodservice Consultant magazine. I do the majority of the cooking in my household and I'm constantly trying new things. And then there's this other thing. For a very long time I've always thought about what it would be like to have my own restaurant, it's kind of this little dream that I have carried with me for a very, very long time. I used to talk about it with my mom before she passed away, we even talked about places we saw for lease, what our menu would look like, all that stuff. After my mom passed away that dream changed a little, but I've always carried it with me. It's one of those little things you just keep tucked away. I have a name for it, a loose concept of what the logo would look like and I keep a menu as well. But this year has been one of those things that has my wife absolutely against ever moving on this idea. That brings with it another level of stress, because now you are carrying this dream that you know will absolutely never happen. You are basically carrying a dead dream.
I'm just about at my breaking point, some might say I passed it months ago. I've watched my friends go through the absolute worst this year, I've seen them have to close their businesses, lay off their staff, lose untold dollars on product that simply rotted away because they couldn't move it. I've seen some of them spend years building a place of business, only to open mere months before being shut down due to COVID-19. The level of stress they have gone through is insane. I've watched my wife lose her job, reach her breaking point over the thought of losing our house, then take a job as a temp worker just so we had that income. She has basically lost everything she worked for over the past 15 years. That dream that I always carried with me is basically dead on the operating table. My work as a design consultant will surely be impacted in the coming months as we head into 2021, although we've been lucky so far, I don't think that we have felt the full impact just yet. I don't know how much more of this I can watch, I don't know how much more I can endure. Things are different, for better or worse. People are different. Life is different.
As I look towards 2021 and the new year I'm hesitant to hope for "better days". It's easy to say "2021 will be better!" but the reality is it's not going to look much different for quite some time. I'm concerned that the start of the 2021 racing season will be much the same as the 2020 season, no fans in attendance for a while. I know, there are plenty of you who are thinking everything will be fine. But I just don't see any fans in the stands for at least the first couple months of the racing season. Maybe I'm wrong, but maybe I'm not. As far as my job, I don't see how our work load can maintain itself through the full year. I think things will get pretty lean around the summertime as our current work load reaches the end of that schedule since the new work isn't flowing in as fast. I hope that everyone gets through the new year safely and I wish I had some way to wrap this one up on a good note, but I just don't. Hopefully I'll get to see you all at the track eventually. Your smiling faces would be a welcome sight.
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