About this time, I go back to see what New Year’s resolutions I made for the year, pull out the scorecard and see how I did. Anyone who has been around these parts for a while knows that even during the longest stretches of not posting, I always end my year by writing a look back and then a look forward.
Well, apparently I had an idea that 2020 wasn’t going to be normal because for the first time in years, I didn’t post any resolutions on January 1, 2020. I have to admit, when I realized that there were no 2020 resolutions, I wondered if this whole year was my fault. That I somehow upset the balance of the universe by not doing what I’ve always done. If that’s the case, then I’m sorry about that? *shrug* I had no idea I was all-powerful.
The upside to not setting any resolutions, of course, is that you hit all the goals you never set! For the first year EVER, I succeeded in 100% of my New Year’s resolutions. Go, me!
The downside is that hitting 100% of my goals is a little anticlimactic when there weren’t any goals to hit. **
The God of Goals giveth and then she taketh away, I suppose.
Maybe another way for me to look at it is that instead of giving myself a focus for the year, I left myself open for whatever the world wanted to throw at me. And certainly, 2020 had a lot of ammunition. So, what has 2020 taught me?
- I’ve learned that I LOVE working from home. I’m one of the handful of people who were blessed enough to not only keep my job, but upgrade the quality of it by ditching my commute. Like magic, I have another 1.5 hours in my day and it makes me so very happy. Whether my employer offers work from home once the pandemic is over unlikely, but I fervently hope for the possibility because the next step is to work from home in a place where I can go from home office to hiking in the mountains in less than two shakes of a lamb’s tail (disclaimer: I do not actually know any lambs, but I suspect that two tail shakes is pretty quick).
- I’ve learned that while I’m good at being a homebody, that I need socializing much more than I thought. Hard to believe, but that was more surprising to me than it ought to have been. I’m oftentimes struck with JOMO (the JOY of missing out), and couldn’t reconcile that I really wanted to go out to a restaurant and have a drink and just sit and talk with my friends. Even on a weeknight, possibly! I mean, I barely recognized myself.
- I’ve learned that extra time is nothing but minutes and hours passing until you start to fill it with meaningful action. When work from home first started, I did nothing but revel in the easy commute and watch more TV. Again, hard to believe, but that grew a little tiresome, so during the Spring and Summer, I got up early (but still not as early as I used to get up when I had to commute!) and went for a short walk, which turned out to be something I really looked forward to. Seeing the sun come up is one of my all-time favorite things, making it a solid start to my day.
- I’ve learned that if you set up a Garmin watch to send out an emergency signal if you fall/crash, that laying on your back for an extended period of time to take photos of the trees overhead will cause that alarm to trip. Luckily, I also learned that if your phone is in airplane mode (which it was), that said signal for help will not be sent. Whew.
- I’ve learned that the road trips that I complained about as a kid hold new interest now. I went on two covid-friendly road trips and while having the very best road trip adventure partner certainly played into it, I loved most everything about the experience. Something about the pace of it really appealed to me; flying always seems like a lot of “hurry up and wait” while driving feels like a perpetual forward motion machine (except for a bad bout of traffic … I’m looking at you, New York!). Add in rockin’ playlists and conversations about everything from relationships to potato trucks to hiking to books to favorite fast food to solving all the world problems (we’re still working on that one) and I enjoyed the journey just as much as the destination.
- But mostly, I’ve learned the same lesson that 2019 taught me: there’s no time like the present. That big leap you want to take? You’re never going to feel completely ready to jump. Trust me on that. There will always be uncertainties and blind spots and the fear of what might go wrong, but the best thing is to take action anyway. Believe in yourself and your ability to handle success, failure or anything in between. Pushing past that comfort zone is always scary, but it grows you and expands your world. And remember, we are never promised tomorrow and the “perfect moment” will never exist. So, just do it. Commit to it with everything you’ve got and see what happens.
My 2020 was a roller-coaster and a mish-mash of everything good to bad an in between: a cousin’s hiking trip, our family reunion in Vegas, my 50th birthday trip to San Diego literally days before the US started shutting down for covid, working from home, missing my friends, a road trip to hike with my sister and see friends in the much-safer outdoors, a covid-friendly work-from-home-from-Colorado road trip, managing some seasonal depression, celebrating holidays “in the bubble” and without other friends and family (though, there was more of my very favorite Trader Joe’s Egg Nog Liqueur for us! … see?…bright side to every situation), and mostly just waiting for the tide to turn with the pandemic.
And with all that said, I’m definitely one of the lucky ones. Covid-19 touched close to home, but me and my very small bubble of just my parents managed to stay safe. My job is safe and I’m enjoying it more than I ever have. I’m not worried about food insecurity or being evicted like so many people are this holiday season.
I’ll be happy to escort 2020 out the door at the stroke of midnight, er, 9pm CST (hey, I’m officially old and anyway, it’s midnight somewhere) and begin to look forward to a year where we can once again gather with friends, but also bring along the lessons we’ve learned throughout this momentous year.
** Allow me a tangent. I think it was either Michael Jordan or a famous hockey player (I can’t be bothered to look that up right now) that said something like “You miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take” But, if you didn’t take the shot, how do you know you missed it? Couldn’t you have easily have MADE the shot you didn’t take? It’s like Schrodinger’s Cat — how do you know if the cat is alive or dead when it’s in a box? You don’t and so it exists in both states. So, this is something like Schrodinger’s Goals where goals I didn’t set could exist in either a met or unmet state; I simply choose to believe that they were met.
