Well, here we are at the end of 2020. I took a peek back at my post about my 2020 goals and unsurprisingly, most of them didn't happen. I was doing pretty well for the first couple of months and then March came and my goals morphed into: stay alive, keep my family alive, and keep us all reasonably sane. Oh, and work to make sure we didn't re-elect Trump. By those revised goals, 2020 was a resounding success. It also sucked.
2020 was exhausting. It was probably the most difficult year of my professional life, as it was my job to keep projects on track while also enabling the flexibility we all needed while also supporting my kids doing school from home. It was nowhere near as hard as what health care workers, public health workers, and other essential employees faced but it was a hard year professionally.
We also had to revise all our home routines, and I realized how much I leaned on the fact that we had routines. Between the busy work schedule, the need to find new routines for the work of keeping our home running, and the extra attention my kids needed, I struggled to find time for myself. I would often find myself awake before 6 a.m. and unable to get back to sleep, and the silver lining of that was a few minutes of quiet time on the sofa, watching the colors change through the frosted glass on my front door with no one asking anything of me.
But more than all of that, I think the most exhausting thing about 2020 was watching my government and my fellow citizens make bad decisions. It was exhausting to be so continually disappointed, and to need to keep trying to explain the inexplicable to my daughters. Even now, we seem determined to screw up the vaccines, which were the one part of our pandemic response we did well.
Good riddance to all of that. I know that we are in for more difficult months in 2021, but I am hopeful that we're on the upswing now and that once the new administration is in place we'll at least have a plan for getting through to the end of this pandemic.
2020 brought some things I hope we'll carry forward with us, too. My older daughter discovered a love of long walks. My younger daughter's interest in art really blossomed. The crunch for time forced me to clarify my priorities, and while I hope I can open up more space for the lower priority things soon, I am grateful for that clarity about what really matters to me.
I haven't decided if I'll make goals for 2021 or not. On the one hand, the clarity 2020 brought could probably be channeled into some good goals. On the other hand, I am still exhausted and so perhaps my goal will simply be to make it through to my turn for the vaccine and to re-evaluate then.
Luckily, I don't have to decide right now. Right now, I need to go make some cookies with my daughter and then settle in for New Year's Eve. See you in 2021!
How nice about the long walks and art! I have been trying to think about the positive aspects of 2020. One is that I'm pretty sure we went to the beach more this year than in all the other years I've lived in CA (since 2007) put together, so I'm going to call that a win. The lack of traffic between our house (by the San Gabriel Mtns) and the coast made all the difference! But I'm wiping September from my brain entirely: conducting Zoom kindergarten while wearing an N95 against smoke and being in a fire evacuation warning zone was distinctly *not* fun. Here's to a less exhausting 2021.
ReplyDeleteDitto to so much of this. I'm really proud of how JB has thrown themselves into art this year. It's absolutely not my thing but they have so much joy in it. They've embraced reading and biking with a great deal of enthusiasm as well. So those are bright spots.
ReplyDeleteThe experience of being pregnant during all this was both freeing and terrible, much like the pandemic. We had the benefit of all being together safe at home during some really scary surges, we also had to see how selfish and frankly foolish so many of our fellow citizens are. This wasn't something I particularly wanted confirmed even if I wasn't too surprised.
I know we're in for more exasperation with the vaccine rollout but I do hope that we can look forward to a peaceful inauguration day and that the Georgia runoffs go our way. We need the Senate back.