What Just Happened?
2020 was a year of three years for me. It started with hope, with a new decade and a promising horizon. It transmuted into a house of terrors quickly, before working its way back to hope and cautious optimism again. Living three years in the span of one is more than a bit jarring, and I know I share that sentiment with many of you.
Each of these three years has had its own shape, color and form. The first was a stale yellow, a tinge of orange streaking through in waves in slightly more frequency than the year prior. The second year turned a violent black, blacker than black, with vibrant jagged roots of reds and purples bursting with intensity like an overworked vein. This last year, 2020: Part Three, is an Alice blue, maybe periwinkle; its pale ambiance is the stretch of a new day, the surety that whether or not I'm here or anything remains as I remembered it after it's all in the history books, the sky will be the sky, a new day will emerge, and with it any living organism courageous and lucky enough to rise with it.
Hope has returned, and yet, I still feel blue. The third part of the 2020 trilogy will continue into 2021, there's little doubt of that. It feels like the end of a long flight to a new land - magic and mysteries await, but we'd do well to not ignore the fatigue. Adrenaline has been my energy source for too long now. At the least, what I expect to be able to do in these last few reflective moments of 2020 is to figure out, for myself, what the fuck just happened in 2020, and how I can do better next year.
. . .
At some point in 2020, I realized endurance would be the name of the game here. To outlast, to show strength in perseverance.
It turns out, as natural a response as it was, endurance was a prison sentence. Every other endurance activity has its end. There's usually training, lots of training, and planning, iterative and intentional. There was no such preparation in advance of 2020. How could I attempt to endure something I'd had no previous experience in? More precarious still, there's no defined end, and throughout much of it, I felt as though an end might not exist.
To exist in its purest, strictest sense - that was 2020. To exist, to get through it, and hope that there's light at the end of the tunnel.
What a hell of a long tunnel. I can't hold my breath this long. There must be another way.
To endure is not to stand the test of all time, just a small slice of it. To endure this tricolored year was to survive, but not to thrive.
. . .
I began reviewing my year at calendar's end back in 2015. In 2015, all I did was write a list of things I wanted to remember about the year. In 2016, I added more to what I wanted to track, and so on through 2019.
I just completed the same for 2020. Now I'm capturing more details than ever about my year, such as:
My favorite books of the year
Notable events and experiences
Health metrics (mostly from Apple Watch)
Goals from the year in review, and planned goals for the year ahead
My personal Fantasy Football results
Shows, movies and podcasts I especially liked
Year-end financial picture (checking and savings accounts values, investments, etc.)
Where I lived (you might be surprised how often this changes)
Qualitative write-ups for each of the above sections
The exercise this year had a more placid feel than usual. There was little excitement, little revisiting of experiences and emotions. In a sense, I was grateful I couldn't return to the emotional states that defined my year. I was, using the technical term here, drained.
But I've been doing this for years now. I had to persevere - I owed it to my future self.
So, I continued writing, thinking, reflecting. Still nothing. I did a lot of things in 2020, and felt a lot of ways. But I don't care much about what happened (to me). I couldn't really reflect in a clear-eyed way. I was simply too tired.
Then, as I was writing this post, some serendipity, in the form of a song quote from AJR's "Come Hang Out":
Should I go for more clicks this year? Or should I follow the click in my ear?
This isn't exactly magical lyricism, nor is it even directly applicable to me as it's intended. It turns out, though, I needed an extrinsic reminder of the purpose of my year-end review. The whole point is to use the calendar year as a way to cut ties with the past, to put it behind me, accept it as it was, and learn enough from it to enable enhanced mobility (and hopefully achievement) in the next year.
2020's bleed over into 2021 is in part objective, undeniable, and serious. No matter how large a part of the new year will be filled with the same mixtures of hope and fear, desire but caution, there's always a part of it that will remain for me to decide.
So, despite the burgeoning format of my year-end reviews and the gratitude I'll feel for having done them in ten, twenty years' time, here is my personal review of 2020...
2020 Review
Maybe the point of having endured 2020 for me was to know that I can, and nothing else.
I thought about death this year more than I ever had before. I thought about legacy, about accomplishment, about family, about friendship. At times, I hated myself on a fundamental level, and other times I was able to appreciate myself equally as deeply.
In three parts
In 2020.1, I panicked, and hardened into a near-catatonic state of paralysis.
2020.2, I slumped. Inspiration was so limited during this time that maybe one or two days per month I'd wake up refreshed, engaged, and excited to take on my dreams.
2020.3 was a cocktail of the three, with a bit of hope sprinkled in. I could dream about the future again, so I did. I could take action, but burned out if I took on too much (which was much less that what 2019 Matt could take on).
My 2020, all three acts of it, was peaks and valleys, oceans and puddles, with little in between. Gratitude filled in when fear left for a moment, and fear consumed me otherwise.
What I did
So, I did what I had to. I stared down the barrel of the gun, reflecting on who I am, who I've been, and who I want to be.
I accepted the nuance of my self-worth. In life, I've been a good and a bad friend, a smart and an uninformed citizen, a caring and callous family member. These paradoxes line my personality up and down, and luckily I'd already begun seeking reconciliation prior to 2020.
The only way to make sense of it all, I decided, was to write it down.
So in 2020, I started this newsletter. I stuck to it, until I didn't. I burnt out, toward the end of the year, 2020 adrenaline leaking out of me like an old battery.
I wanted to write, needed to write, just in case. To translate to my more emotionally stable counterparts, "just in case" here means assuming I won't make it through the year.
As though I had something so important to say, I needed to let it out. I needed to feel better. I needed to explain myself, and along the way maybe I'd figure out why it feels like I'm an enigma even to myself.
Then, as often happens with any long distance race I've ever run, I felt the end nearing, and fatigue set in. The adrenaline waned, and an avalanche of relief swelled in waves, crushing me into the couch and wrapped blankets around me before I could make conscious decisions on behalf of my better self.
. . .
I've heard it referred to as "astronaut syndrome". The idea is that if you've seen our pale blue dot from outer space, it's difficult to acclimate to the social quandaries surrounding our little ant colony waddling around down here on the surface.
It takes considerable effort to go through something so huge, so mind altering, then simply return back to what we like to call "normal life".
Astronauts know a lot about isolation, too. As far as I'm concerned, we're all honorary monkeys in spacesuits after 2020.
Cheers to learning more about what makes us human in 2021.
I love you all. See you on the other side.
Thanks for reading!
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