The end of the year always feels like a good time for reflection, and 2020 is a year that really demanded for us to stop and take note.
Over the course of the year, I’ve tried a lot of different strategies to adapt to life under the Coronavirus. And some of them were wildly effective! Or they were all useless, further proof that I have no business writing anything that even remotely resembles advice—I believe either version with the full intensity of my being depending entirely on which day you ask. 2020 has been like that.
I consider myself to be extremely resilient. I’ve faced many forms of crisis in my life—personal, professional, existential. I’ve overcome a lot. I know how to handle stress and chaos, and more importantly, I know myself. I know my feelings and tendencies, my coping strategies, my crutches. I know which ones are healthy and which strategies should be saved for a last resort because they are effective, but costly-and-risky. In general, I relish struggle as the dramatic tension that precedes real growth and difficult change; sometimes it even feels romantic to bask in it knowing the payoff will be worth it. But 2020 has tested every outlet, every strategy I have. I am deeply extroverted, but most of my healthier coping mechanisms haven’t been available.
Yet while the pandemic has taken away most of the outlets I normally rely on for self-soothing, it has left behind the outlets I use for self-examination: writing, thinking, solitude. The result has been an arduous but fruitful year of self-examination. I have learned a lot about myself and how I relate to the world: as a creative, as a professional, and as a human—imperfect yet beautiful in my own way.
I want to share some of those learnings and what has worked for me so far. I’ll do this over the next few weeks in a series of blog posts:
- Recognizing I have ADHD and what it means for my creative work
- Leading a team in a time of crisis and modeling self-kindness
- Distilling goals and cutting out noise
- Creativity, stress, and balanced breathing
I’m still working on myself. I can somehow tell everyone else to be gentle with themselves, but I’m still learning to be gentle with myself. I’m also still learning new ways to find peace, practice gratitude, and relishing joy in the moment. Because really, we all know this isn’t magically over in 2021. I have a particularly tough couple of weeks coming up with personal difficulties still looming, and we haven’t gotten to the toughest part of the winter yet.
But there is finally a light at the end of this. Maybe that light is the pending vaccine, or the hope of looming financial security or the promise of the ability to rest and have a hobby outside of the too-many-full-time jobs to which I seem to have committed myself. Or maybe that light isn’t the end of the tunnel, but is actually a growing ember inside myself-my own resilience kicking up and reminding me that contentment is entirely a matter of perspective. But either way, there’s hope.
