Evan X. Merz

musician/technologist/human being

2020 Changed Me

01 January, 2021,  Evan X. Merz

I have so much to say about 2020 that I’m not quite sure how to say it. The year was simultaneously fantastic and terrible for me and my family. A lot of good things happened to me to 2020, and I was able to avoid a lot of the worst things that were happening around the country.

I’m having a hard time talking about 2020 because, among so much suffering, my family actually did pretty well. Nobody in my family died of COVID. My kids are doing well with remote learning. My wife and I have begun volunteering in our community, and really getting to know our community. I even got a promotion at work.

I want to talk about all of this, but it feels like gloating. The pandemic is not over yet. There are so many people still suffering so much due to the negligence, stupidity, and incompetence of our elected Republican leaders.

So what can I say?

I can say that 2020 changed me. It changed me in a lot of ways.

One of the odd, quirky traits that I developed during lockdown is a passionate interest in 20th century Navajo artists, especially those taught at the Santa Fe Indian School by Dorothy Dunn. This includes people like Harrison Begay, Woody Crumbo, and Allan Houser. But for me, the best among them was Quincy Tahoma.

I don’t know how this interest developed, but it’s so unusual that it’s the one thing I feel comfortable writing about at this point. Which is a long winded way of saying that, although I’m no expert, I’m going to write about some of the art that I’ve fallen in love with in the past year.

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Evan X. Merz

Evan X. Merz holds degrees in computer science and music from The University of Rochester, Northern Illinois University, and University of California at Santa Cruz. He works as a programmer at a tech company in Silicon Valley. In his free time, he is a programmer, musician, and author. He makes his online home at evanxmerz.com and he only writes about himself in third person in this stupid blurb.