What I’ve Learnt From 2020

2020… where do I begin?

If you’d told me this time last year that we would have had one of the craziest years in my 30 years on this earth, and it seems far from being over, I would have never believed you in a million years, but alas, here we are… month 9 of a global pandemic, the day after a very subdued Christmas and still in a yoyo tiering system thanks to our dear friends, the Tories.

I had so many plans for 2020, and I mean too many in fact. Like the Gemini I am, I had almost every other weekend at least filled with plans or ideas of what to do, to make sure that the next 12 months of the year would be some of our most memorable, but hey, the universe and rest of the world had something else in store.

Every month that went past this year brought with it a sense of ‘well this has got to be near the end of it, let’s plan something for a couple of months time to look forward to’, but here I am, sat on my laptop on Boxing Day wondering where the last year of my life has gone to.

The lack of plans meant that I had to scale back my usual ‘get the most out of my annual leave, spend every weekend doing something, eat out at a different restaurant monthly’ and evaluate what we could actually do while not being able to go abroad… oh and not break the law in the process.

So a few months ago, I stopped. I didn’t have anything booked (except one press trip in November which I wasn’t sure would go ahead or not) and I stopped looking for the next adventure. I stopped constantly loading up the EasyJet and Ryanair websites at every possibility and I stopped browsing the web for new hotels, experiences and anything else I used to spend my time doing.

And by doing that, I was able to really assess why I really do have an obsession with going away so much. Was it that I love to explore new places, immerse myself in new cultures and discover the hidden gems from around the world – well of course that played a massive part, but in all honesty, I think I have a fear of not making the most of the times where I’m not working.

We spend so much of our week sat at our desks, that when the evenings and weekends come, of course, we want to do something out of the ordinary that we can’t do in a working day to make up for the fact that for 40 hours of our week, we’re chained to our desks to make a living (slightly dramatic, but I think you get the picture…)

So when all we could do was stay indoors, I was worried that I would feel claustrophobic, anxious and have itchy feet to get out of my house when in reality, that was the one thing that I couldn’t do – but if anything it had the opposite effect.

Without coming across all ‘woe is us up in the north’ I do believe that Manchester (my hometown) has been one of the worst affected cities in terms of the usual ways of life not being open. In some way or another, we’ve been in a lockdown since the end of July, with bars and restaurants opening up briefly before having to close once again – so my usual way of life was impacted to quite a huge extent by not being able to go out and about when I so pleased.

But with the slower pace of life came with it a huge shift in my mindset. When things started to shut down, we were limited with what we could do when the weekend did come around, so we not only had to be creative, but we also had to find comfort and pleasure with doing nothing at all.

At first, I found it hard, and there were definitely times when I thought that I wouldn’t be able to get through much more of it, but by being in the same situation as everyone else in the country (and sometimes the world) I found solace in the sense of community of everyone being in the same boat and it brought me an awareness of true belonging.

When I started to slow down, not be so desperate to get out of the house and always be doing stuff to fill my time when I’m not in work, I was able to find a sense of calm that I haven’t ever really experienced. I met friends for walks, I went for takeaway coffees with my family and I spent time with my husband and pets at home doing nothing at all – and it’s really opened my eyes to this different way of living. I fell back in love with reading, I holidayed in the UK and we tried recipe boxes, new workouts and TV shows, all of which I always thought I never had the time to do. I found a sense of joy that I’ve never really had before coming from things that would have been so mundane to me if we were living in ‘normal’ times.

I’m not saying I could go on like this forever, but it’s brought out a side of me which I’ve lost over the years and one that I will definitely be taking into the new year.

Time this year has been one of the strangest concepts to grasp. On one hand, the last 12 months have gone by in a flash, and I find myself wondering how we can already be coming to the end of the year, but on the other, it feels like this situation has been going on for years.

I wanted to write this blog today to be able to look back on when things do start to go back to normal. Although we still don’t know when that might be, there is a real sense of hope coming with a brand new year, and I just hope that some of the things that I do miss, we are able to do.

There are definitely areas of my semi-new life that I want to continue – the proper lunchtimes, finishing work at a normal time, my love of discovering nature and what’s around me – but I would also love to be able to pop out for dinner with my husband, meet friends for a drink in the pub, and take the odd trip abroad. It will definitely feel like a bit of a balancing act when more and more versions of our old lives become much less in distance, and I know I’m not the only one that wants to emulate the slower pace of life while weaving in some of the normal parts that we’ve been missing.

But for now, I’m going to try and live in the moment as much as possible, explore what’s around me, and take comfort in the little things in life that I’ve taken for granted over the past few years.

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