14 thoughts for 2020:
- Accomplished all of my goals from 2019 – self-published my storybook, didn’t work for a month (not two, given that I couldn’t travel) and lived without a budget
- Decided I’m tired of living far away from family – really grateful that we did get family time, between our July in Mass. and December in Toronto. I’m looking forward to doing a lot more of this in the new year as we’ve now moved back to the east coast. The months we spent in SF almost entirely on our own really put into perspective how important family is to me
- Realized engagement and marriage are social constructs – not in a bad way, per se. By getting engaged, we really realized that so much of the rites around engagement and marriage are displays for others. How we feel about each other and how we live our lives together doesn’t change and that’s how it should be… If engagement or marriage is changing the dynamic of a relationship, then something might be off… I am trying to approach 2021 and wedding planning by balancing our own needs, visions, dreams and desires with doing things “the traditional way” (which can be pretty fun as well! I am not trying to disparage tradition – more just that I acknowledge traditional ways of getting married can be highly stressful; as you all know, I do love tradition)
- Learned that books are hard to make – self-publishing and marketing a book is almost as much work as writing and drawing the book itself
- Reduced my life to ~8 boxes of stuff (16 in total with Eric’s) and decided to dive into the deep end and live nomadically for a while; in large part, trying to further experiment with financial and other freedoms beyond 2020 (i.e., no rent…so let’s live with a topline budget and see how it goes)
- Embraced changing life plans – realized that planning can be a moot point in light of global pandemics and worked on a revised life plan that has lots of open ends. I’m emerging from 2020 a changed person
- Took a promotion at work and then decided to switch jobs (coming up in 2021!) – a big part of changing life plans. Learned to acknowledge that I’m not sure what I want from a job and the KPCs by which I judge a job will always change. Decided that it’s okay to make choices that past me would balk at and that this is the time to take risks and really mix things up
- Polished up my fancy home cooking skills (thanks to many weekends spent at home without many places to go)
- Ate at the French Laundry and decided it was maybe a tad overrated but still very glad we went (and well before all the Governor Newsom hubbub)
- Gave Eric a haircut that I actually deem good – I can only hope that it still looks good in 5 years when I look back; I will admit that there are older haircuts I’ve given him that I thought were great at the time and only later realized were kind of bad
- Learned to say no to friends, acquaintances and others – COVID has really forced me to grapple with my risk tolerance and needs for social interaction. Whether it’s in-person meetups or a million and one Zoom hangouts, I’ve really started to draw hard lines for myself and learned to vocalize them to others in a way I never had to before
- Traveled to four continents and a gajillion states somehow. I’m glad that by April, we’d done most of our major traveling for the year with Morocco, the UK and New Zealand under our belts. I’m also really grateful that I got to spend time in Taiwan with my family in late Jan/early Feb. After a very restful middle of the year, Eric and I rounded out the year with our roadtrip back east. Although a very bizarre and somewhat stressful time to travel, we made the most of it with takeout in many hotel rooms/Airbnbs or in the car and lots of DIY driving tours
- Experienced a new level of despair at the world – between politics and unrest and wildfires and COVID, really had the chance to put into perspective how lucky we are. It is truly a bizarre feeling when your options for places beyond your own home are either the smoky outdoors or limited indoor spaces with COVID risks…
- Learned to appreciate any quality time with friends – whether it was old or new friends, this year pushed me to figure out how to maintain and build relationships. I think for us, the easiest way to spend time with friends safely has been to integrate into one household for a few weeks at a time. We had the chance to do this in Boulder and LA on our trip, and will be doing more of it in the new year. I’m incredibly happy about how much more we can do with our lives while working remotely and hope to keep that as a big part of our lives next year
[Note from February 2021: I’ve realized that I got stuck at 14 items on this list at approximately 10:30pm on NYE and never hit post. It’s been long enough that I think I can safely say I’ll just have to live with my 14 thoughts on 2020 instead of the 20 thoughts I was originally aiming for]