Yesterday I only managed to write my annual end-of-year blog by sheer stubbornness. Happily, today I approach the writing of my beginning-of-year blog with more enthusiasm than that. Could be that I just worked the rust out of the gears by doing the thing, or it could be an infusion of positive energy I got yesterday from working on a project for work that, as Marie Kondo likes to say, “sparked joy” in me – something creative, something positive, something that wasn’t about telling bad news or setting unwelcome boundaries. Either way, I’ll take it!
To be honest, I approach the notion of trying to forecast ANYTHING for 2021 with no small amount of trepidation. Part of me is the kid under her blanket, eyes scrunched shut, whispering the desperate prayer please no more, please no more, please no more. But I’m a midwesterner, and so one thing I understand is seasons. I’m looking toward the next season, insisting that IT WILL COME.
So here’s what I’ve got in mind.
52 Snow Days, Redux
Last year I announced my intention to aim at “52 snow days” for the year, a phrase taken from a wonderful book that helped me get a vision for the gift of Sabbath. After a lifetime of utter disinterest in Sabbath rest, I found myself wildly excited about the concept after considering it from the perspective of delight that comes with a snow day.
It was very, very hard at first. I’ve become so oriented to productivity that it was almost painful to not just do a few little chores on my resting day. I had to talk myself down off the wall over and over.
Once the pandemic kicked in, I understood how perfect the timing had been in my learning the discipline of Sabbath. My workdays got very long and more stressful than they’d ever been. I counted on my Sabbath to be the one day I could lay it all down and just rest with a clear conscience. I was so wound up and so stressed during the week that I couldn’t sleep much at night, so my day off was the day to finally let it all down enough for deep sleep.
Before COVID, I had developed all kind of tricks and hacks to get my housekeeping and shopping stuff done ahead of the Sabbath, so I could rest in a tidy home. Once I transitioned to working most of my waking hours a whole lot of the time, that was not the case. My amazing husband really carried the workload at home six days a week this year, and one day a week I could do all my “fussy lady” stuff that is more on my radar than his. What this meant was I had to learn to just rest in the mess sometimes, and while I had mad skillz for that when I was raising kids at home, it was just…really HARD. But cranky perfectionism is a character flaw, not a strength, so I pushed into it and I’m glad I did.
Later in the pandemic, when testing got really cranked up and running hard, taking a day entirely of became impossible. With weekly and then semi-weekly testing happening, a report-results-within-24-hours demand meant stopping to do the reporting when it came, even on my Sabbath. What I did on those days was just try really hard to do only the minimum required, and then put it back down until another day.
When I started out aiming at 52 “snow days,” I thought it to be utterly unrealistic, but worth aiming at so that I could get the most possible Sabbaths squeezed in. I am pleasantly surprised to have come closer than I dreamed I might. I recommend the practice, and I intend to go for it again – 52 “snow days” in 2021!!
Writing for Joy
I love writing. If you had told me before 2020 that my job would transition to a huge part of it being writing something on most days of the week that I would then go on to record what I’d written and share it with hundreds of people…well, I’d have said that sounds like so much fun! That’s some of what I did this year, but it turns out when much of what you’re sharing is hard news, even adding everything helpful, educational or inspirational that I could think of didn’t really turn it into a *fun* exercise. I did come to see it as ministry, as every week people stopped me in the halls or called me on the phone or zipped an email over to me to thank me for how I’d done it, and I could hear in their words that it was helping them. But…fun? Not so much.
I’d really like to get back to writing for joy this year and not just for utility. My life is so results-driven right now that I’m not going hang that weight on this one by saying, “I will write x number of times per week.” Where’s the joy in that anyway? But I’m pointing my intention toward that goal.
Strengthening My Body
Doing physical therapy for my knee has reminded me how beautifully the human body responds to a little consistent effort. When use of my knee without wanting to scream returned to me, it got me so excited that I purchased a dipping station and am having a ball discovering all the ways I can use it with my elastic bands and balance ball and the new set of leg weights I also picked up to work on strengthening my body. I’m still weak and awkward in my efforts, but I don’t mind looking like an idiot in the privacy of my own home. I think I’ve latched onto this so much because it’s a thing I can control in a time when so much is beyond my control, but it’s good, so I don’t care. I’m excited to see what I can accomplish in the coming year with it.
Yard & Garden Goodness
The tree in our front yard has to come down – if we wait, it’s likely to fall on someone/something. We got the finances in order on it and in theory we have someone hired, though this year’s derecho set them back hard on their schedule and my biweekly pesty texts didn’t move us up on their priority list. I am hopeful that they’ll get it down by early spring. Then: OH BOY DO I HAVE PLANS. The front yard will be a whole lot of edible landscaping, once that shade-maker and all its unruly roots get out of my way. Every year I also make advances on my long-term plan to turn the back yard into an overcrowded wonderland of vegetation with a winding walking patch, and good golly I hope to take another big chunk out of those plans, come spring (it’s on the reasons I need to strengthen this body – there’s a lot of shovel time in my future!) And I’ve been scheming to put a lean-to shelter kind of thing on the side of our garage for us to sit under and do really ambitious things like watch the plants grow and the squirrels play, or maybe read books. I took pictures and mental notes this year when my parents built a structure like what I want beside their RV at the campground, and I suspect this might be the year that structure moves from fantasy to reality in our yard.
Bawk, Bawk, Baaawwwk!
Chickens. Our city does allow us to raise up to 6 laying hens (no roosters) if we meet some requirements. I have been reluctant to get chickens, because I know what raccoons and coyotes like to do to them, and I can’t countenance to idea of my husband’s broken heart if that would happen. But some friends of ours have a FANTASTIC chicken structure that looks pretty secure from predators, so I think we can maybe build a sufficient fortress. So if we can get our neighbors to okay us for it, we are getting chickens this spring so we can have our own home-grown eggs. THIS will be an adventure and I might have giggled while I typed it.
Hopes, Not Goals
The other things on my list are things I want to happen in 2021, but they are utterly dependent on how the pandemic plays out. We purchased flight tickets last spring for that summer course I ended up doing remotely; Southwest is holding my funds to be used later. I hope and pray that the situation will evolve enough that I’ll feel comfortable with flying somewhere before the deadline runs out on that. Maybe it will be for another training, or maybe it will be to visit my brother and his kids out in Arizona, or maybe we’ll do some other unexpected thing. I just hope we get there before the funds run out.
And I want to get back to in-person time with my loved ones. Sitting at a table with my parents, my kids, and others who don’t live in my house. REAL HUGS. Snuggles with the grandkids. Attending church in person, even. Honestly I feel very skeptical about the timeline on this, since so much depends on the willingness of all of us to do all the things we have to do to get there – the track record is pretty dismal thus far. Some folks I trust think it will start improving in the spring…I think we’ll be lucky if we get there by year’s end. I hope I’m just being a pessimist and can say this time next year how wrong I was about it.
Word for the Year: WAIT
Some years I struggle about what my word for the year will be, but 2021 is an easy one: WAIT. The aim is to wait with patience, joy, and hope for things to unfold and bring us up out of the morass of the coronavirus and the political nightmare scene that has been the last 4 years. There’s action and purpose in the waiting – it’s not just a passive stillness with expectation for magic to fall upon us. WAIT. It’s the theme for me, for sure.