Hit Reset

For many of us, 2020 was a year that saw upheaval in ways most of us never imagined possible in our modern times. I saw my job and my health threatened by the same invisible cause. I watched as my social connections frayed as video chat replaced sitting beside someone and giving them a hug. I watched in horror as our country cracked under the strains of rampant partisanship and institutionalized racism. I went into survival mode, focused on what I needed to do to get to the next week, the next month. I suspect it was the same for many of you as well, as March seemed to stretch on for the rest of the year, it felt like our lives came to an abrupt halt. Our normal patterns of being were broken and many of our goals and dreams fractured under the strain. As the clock struck midnight, most of us breathed a sigh of relief as 2020, the year without time, finally passed. While most people and celebrating the ending of the past year, I am looking forward, the end of 2020 can be the start of something new, a new year with new goals, new dreams, new ways of being.

If you follow along with this blog, you know that I did not have the best year. As I went into survival mode this blog suffered months-long outages, and for that, I apologize to you. I spent the better part of 2020 feeling sorry for not being able to spread hope or advice during a time when so many needed it. I am done with feeling sorry for myself, tired of blaming myself for failing to achieve goals tied to a normal life that was taken away from me. All of us had to drop something to get through this year, sacrifices we all had to make just to get by. Usually, I will start out each year going over the goals I failed to achieve to figure out why. This year I am giving myself permission to just hit reset, call it a wash, and move forward. I have learned new skills and have developed new ways of writing that I will take with me into the new year. This year I refuse to beat myself up for failing to lose weight or for not achieving my writing goals while the world burned all around me. I invite all of you to do the same. This year can be the start of something great, something you never thought possible. We just have to look up from our failings and see the possibility.

I know that the realities of this pandemic are still in place. The passing of one year into the next does not mean that our world, our country, and our society have magically been fixed. If anything, 2020 ripped away the rose-colored glasses that many of us chose to see our country and our world through. If anything, we learned that there is a lot of hard work to do still. For many, this year was painful in unexpected ways. Many felt the pain of watching their dreams wither in their hands or had reality come along and shatter those dreams on the rocks. I have been in your shoes. I have felt your pain. I speak from experience when I say that new dreams will fill in the void left by those that were shattered; fragments of the old can be used to make the new. That pain can become something new, something beautiful, something unexpected. We just need to be willing to pick up the pieces that were broken and dream again.

As usual, this month’s blog posts will be dedicated to setting up new goals and new dreams we can achieve this year. We can look forward to 2021 as the start of something new, something better, but we have to start working towards those goals now, not once the pandemic has passed. We will emerge from 2020 stronger, more prepared for a world resistant to change. We will carry the skills we learned last year and build upon them. We will take the dreams we had to put aside and rekindle them. A common New Years’ phrase I hear is “New Year, New You.” Screw that. Reclaim the light that was stolen in 2020. Walk into this new year not seeking to become a new person but a better, stronger, more resilient you. The darkness of the past year is passing, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We will get there. We will hug again, we will dance again, we will look to the horizon and dream again. The path to get there starts now. Won’t you join me on this journey?