It’s almost over. Some of us didn’t make it. But for those who did, hopefully something important has been learned.
One of the big lessons has been that no matter what our intentions are, our apple carts can be careened into and obliterated by collective insanity. I didn’t intend to take most of 2020 as a Zooming vacation. I didn’t intend to go from being active and on my feet for several hours a day seeing clients to . . . sitting in the chair. And it certainly wasn’t my intent to go months without being able to pay myself, but here we are. Thank all the gods for a wonderful life partner who actually thinks I’m saving the world one note at a time, who was more than happy to let me coast through this.
But that doesn’t mean we throw up our hands and quit trying to live our intentions anyway. It’s not pointless. In fact, it’s more important than ever. I have spent most of this time finding other things to create and do, finding other ways to be productive and useful. I’m doing more training so that when I can see clients again I will have more ways to help them. I’ve read books I have meant to get to one of these days – well, these are those days for real. I’ve done two major revisions on the novel I started writing in 2014 (yes, the Cat Story), and have been letting it simmer a bit, and just yesterday realized that I need to . . . do a whole new revision . . . which is great, because now I know how to actually get it told in the most engaging way.
None of this has made any money, but it will eventually.
But I digress. Don’t throw your hands up in the air and give up on creating the life you want, because this is not a catastrophe, it’s an opportunity. We’re going to be doing this partial hibernation thing for a few months yet, at least according to most of the experts you can actually trust, so even if you had the best intentions to rock quarantine and sculpt your body, become a master chef, learn to play the sousaphone, train for an eventual triathlon, invent something that will revolutionize some industry or another . . . and you didn’t do any of it, it’s okay.
First of all, this has been effing overwhelming and we’re all trying to cope as best we can. Depression is as much an epidemic as Corona has been, and there’s gonna be a whole new category of PTSD identified once this thing settles down. Seriously, stop being so demanding of yourself, because this whole thing has been nothing but insanity, and sometimes, you just have to binge watch Deep Space 9 for a while and not worry about accomplishing anything. (Don’t ask why I chose Deep Space 9, it’s complicated.)
Secondly, maybe the reason you didn’t do what you intended to do was because it wasn’t really it. Like with my much anticipated (yeah, right) Cat Story; I thought I knew how to tell the story, I thought I had a really good revision – and I did, but it wasn’t right, and I knew it. But I didn’t know how it wasn’t right, despite some really fantastic feedback, so it had to sit there until the right piece of information drifted through my consciousness from somewhere and planted the seed of rightness. It took a few months, and that’s okay. And who knows, maybe this revision will lead me to the next major revision that will actually get it done, or one step closer to done. My point is, let your passion be a passion, create when the fire is hot and rest when the . . . well . . . runs dry . . . or something like that. When we need to rest, we bank the fire. That’s what I meant.
Honestly, if the one big thing we learn from 2020 is to be kinder to ourselves, it will have been a year worth living through. That’s an essential life lesson, and a really hard one to wrap your head around. We actually don’t have to be productive and useful and of service every minute no matter what. Oh, that’s a hard one for me to accept. If I’m not In Service to Something, I’m not happy, so 2020 has been a massive challenge for me. I got depressed. I pulled myself out of it. I fell back down. I got back up. I made it through by the skin of my teeth.
But I have finally learned how to bank my fire.
My intentions for 2021 are to breathe; work on me; keep learning; create when I feel it; and stay as healthy as humanly possible until it’s safe to re-open my doors to clients. I’d love to hear yours. Happy New Year, and Blessed 2021 to one and all.