I just celebrated my 46th birthday. For me, my birthday that really marks the beginning of the new year and I always reflect on who I am and where I am.
I am always making lists and looking forward to things. I try to motivate myself by checking things off of my list in a pretty planner (one of many) or notebook (one of many) using one of a hundred gel or fountain pens. Leading up to New Year’s Day each year, I make a “word of the year” to try to focus on or I set my intentions for the following year. I write it out, so that it means something…so that it carries weight to me.
Inevitably I stop keeping track or lose that focus and a few months later, I pick it up again and try to reorient myself. On the morning of my birthday, I sat in bed and just thought about the shit show that was 2020. The pandemic – not seeing a lot of family and friends, working from home, virtual pre-school and then kindergarten for my daughter, less date nights than ever before – political upheaval, working in a new department at work and not seeing the people that I work with – I didn’t realize how that would affect my feelings of work-place satisfaction. I took a deep breath and just sat in gratitude for a little while.
The week before, I had started therapy again – thanks to the shit show that was 2020.
So this new year, with my same but slightly updated self, I enter the 46th chapter of my life so thankful for all of the things but also so satisfied to just be me. Happy to just sit and be myself. Alice Walker said that, “you don’t always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that’s plenty.”
Lately, I’ve been trying to write again, reading like crazy, and just being. That’s it.
2/15/21, tyd
