Here at Superman and God, both of us have had difficult years, but have also seen opportunities to be thankful for the relative privilege and security we have enjoyed throughout this ordeal so far. We see some positive stirrings out in the world, too: vaccines have been developed, and they seem to be rolling out in the coming months. We can only hope that as doses are distributed, cautious and science-driven policies are enacted, and infection rates are reduced, we can begin to approach something resembling normal again over the coming year.

As we've wrestled with COVID-19 and everything else that 2020 has thrown at us, it has been a year of mistakes, lessons learned, and struggles to convince some among us to take our neighbors' well-being into consideration.While not everyone has taken the opportunity to look out for their loved ones and broader communities by donning masks and sacrificing travel and gatherings, we applaud those who have chosen the nobler path. To those who haven’t, don’t make us unleash the Penance Stare!!

Whether it's because of illness, isolation, financial strain, a weather catastrophe like the derecho (land hurricane) that devastated Rachel’s hometown in August, or something else that hit you out of the blue, it seems like everyone has had a horrible year for at least one reason or another. All in all, we think that a tearful Will Smith sums up how a lot of us feel about our worries going into the new year:

In the spirit of taking time during this transition into the New Year to reflect, we want to present two sides of reflection: looking back and looking forward. When we agreed to write a reflective post for this New Year's Eve, Rachel wanted to write something optimistically forward-looking, while Jon wanted to look back over the year and unearth some positivity from the rubble. For our final theme cocktails in the 5-week countdown to the new year, we had the idea of crafting cocktails that were a play on the Ghost Rider, with Jon packing some of his baggage into the Sidecar and taking a look at his own 2020, and the hope that he discovered within the chaos, and Rachel riding a Blue Motorcycle into the future with optimism.