The year like no other: 2020.

Year-In-Review

Feb 1

I have been pondering on what to write in this post for a while. It’s February now, and the calendar says it’s 2021, but in many ways it doesn’t feel like we have left 2020 behind. I don’t want to dwell on the negativity of 2020 in this post, nor do I want to bring the heavy energy of that year into this one, but I do want to write about what the year meant for me, and what I learned from it.

There’s a lot about 2020 that goes without saying. It was a year to be reckoned with for all of us, and even now we still feel the ramifications of the global pandemic. While the virus has been mostly contained in countries like Australia & New Zealand, in most parts of the world, we are still living life in some form of lockdown, isolation and restriction.

With most of our day-to-day life completely outside of our control and with no ability to plan for the future, the pandemic is an opportunity to practice living in the now. All we have ever really had is the now—we never had the ability to control or predict the future, no matter what the highly motivated planner in me wants to believe. This pandemic just made it impossible to live under the illusion that we do.

I have had anxiety & depression for a long time. My particular flavour of anxiety is usually concerned with whether or not I’m moving forward in life, fulfilling a meaningful purpose for being here, ensuring that my loved ones are happy (specifically, happy with me) and always seeking to better improve upon anything and everything, whether that’s a more efficient way to do the dishes or a better process when it comes to managing projects at work. Yes, this particular kind of anxiety can also mean that I do not often allow myself to be excited or satisfied by anything, and/or I am preoccupied with the past (i.e., how things have “gone wrong” before) and the future (i.e., whether things will “go wrong” again). When the anxiety hits an all time high, or if I find fault with myself for not meeting any of the aforementioned points, this can lead to feeling hopeless and depressed.

So, I have “strategies” to maintain my health & wellbeing to satisfy that part of myself who is “checking” that I am doing well, on the right path, and making people happy. Many of those strategies involve sticking to a routine especially when it comes to work and physical activity; spending plenty of time outdoors; connecting with loved ones and being mindful of what I consume online. I guard my time and energy carefully.

The pandemic altered and altogether removed some or all of these options at some point in time. For the most part, I’ve felt good and able to maintain balance, but I had many weeks where I felt mentally exhausted. With social media being one of the few ways in which we could connect with others, I was on Instagram & Facebook more often, but that meant I was all the more privy to information overload, as well as the heavy news of the day. Zoom fatigue is real—after spending much of my day on video calls, it’s hard to find energy to connect with loved ones over the same medium. And when I’ve spent my entire day shooting, editing, “meeting”, cooking, eating and cleaning in the same 700 sq. ft. space, the idea of having to recreate in it (also through a screen) is less than ideal—so sticking to my pre-COVID yoga, barre and climbing routine was also thrown off-kilter.

Yet with all this, there were ways to pivot for good. I was more mindful with social media, deleting apps from my phone when I felt I needed a break. I was able to find new routines and ways of doing things.

I learnt to be comfortable spending copious amounts of time at home, alone. I never loved being alone for too long, but I have now worked from home for almost an entire year. While I often yearn for those small, social moments an office environment provides, I love the flexibility that comes with working from home, and I love the ability to keep Freya at home with me some days and spend some of my lunch breaks going for a walk with her.

I bake and cook even more than before and I thoroughly enjoy the loving, mindful act of preparing a nourishing meal for myself and my partner. There’s more effort, there’s more dishes, but there’s also more opportunities to be present. I read more, and have read a book nearly every day (I included a list at the end of this post).

I took up winter running when I found myself getting tired of doing all my fitness indoors, and I recently took up cross-country skiing. Over the last 3 months, I have found myself regularly skiing 12km with no-one but the woods and wildlife for company. Being active and outdoors for hours at a time is a salve I use often for my anxiety: it allows me to be present, providing me with a physical challenge that requires me to focus on my breath, my movement and my attitude (which means there is little room for worrying about anything trivial or irrational); and it allows me time to be with myself in comfortable solitude, something I have neglected to give myself in the past.

When we are faced with so much external change and chaos, all that remains is to turn inward. To seek refuge in the calm, aware and attentive self that is always there, our only constant, beyond the layers of what we think makes up “I” and “me”. How comforting to know that even when all external sources of happiness are stripped away, I can still be with myself—if I have the courage to sit with who I am, as I am—flaws, neuroses, fears and all.

I don’t like viewing the pandemic as having “taken” anything “away from me” (which to me implies that I was somehow entitled to something, or owed something by the universe). The coronavirus changed many parts of what we considered “normal”, but when all of this is said and done, I know which parts of this post-pandemic world I want to keep.

Other 2020 highlights include J cutting off all his hair for the first time in 18 years; going on my first roadtrip across Canada with J & Freya to visit his family on the farm in Ontario; and hiking 90+km to and from Assiniboine with our dear friends Britt & Sam.

Normally I end my year-in-review posts by writing about what I look forward to in the following year, or what I have planned, but I don’t have any of that for you this time. Honestly, these days, I’m enjoying taking it a day at a time without letting my fretty brain get way ahead of me.