2022 - Just do it.
I have to admit that it took me a while to get settled into the new year. To get comfortable; you know set the mood, center myself for what looks like another year of (slight) uncertainty. Have my pillows ready so that I can land softly just in case there are any hard blows.
So here we are at the end of February, and I’m slowly arriving into 2022.
It feels surreal to say the year out loud, because sometimes in my mind it is still 2019 and the new decade and all its surprises is still ahead of us, life is just as we know it: The word pandemic is something that we hear in movies or read in books - distant. Social distancing is not a common word unless we want space from certain people and have willingly decided to undergo a social detox. Clubs, concerts and city centers are packed and standing side by side like a pack of sardines is nothing to be afraid of. A sneeze is responded by a “Bless you” or a “Gesundheit” and a smile and not with a frown and a slight look of disgust. You leave the house with your bag, your keys and your phone and are all set, there is no rushing back home heart racing, due to the anxiety that sets in because you have forgotten your mask. Good times. Cherish the good times.
I have been thinking about New Years resolutions, and how for the longest time I thought that the clock striking midnight into the 1st of January meant a magical new start. * Poof * and everything is brand new, fairy dust gets sprinkled on our head as fireworks light up the sky and the magic of the new year with all its changes is among us. Old habits? Dead. Destructive behavior. Gone. Debt? What is that?! Problems? I got 99 problems but the new year ain’t one. Well the new year may not be one of the problems but the problems are still there love. When the magic of the countdown has faded away and you’ve had a good night sleep, morning awaits and everything feels the same except the date on the calendar. A sobering thought, which in my case brought in New Years anxiety. If the past two years have taught me anything it is that I know nothing. But instead of letting the new year run over me like a truck, offloading anxiety and fear and awake paralysis: (because sleep paralysis while you’re awake can be a thing) you see things happening, time moving but you can’t move - you’ve turned into a shell of yourself, a robot moving from one day to the next barely existing. I don’t want that, you don’t want that for yourself ; hell nobody wants that.
“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.”
Barack Obama
I reflected on what 2021 looked like with 2020 in mind and thought of one thing: How I held myself back in many ways. Maybe it was doubt, uncertainty which I can’t blame myself for because what is certain in the times we are in? And I have decided to just do it. A no pressure but intentional mood board for the year with pictures that give me hope and motivate me to not drift into robot mode. Saying out loud what I want, writing down what I want one day at a time, not pressuring myself into the lions den of fear and letting it eat me alive but instead taking it slowly at my own pace, resting if need be, taking a break to drink some water, reminding myself that this is not a sprint it’s a marathon (TMC!). However long it may be. 2022 doesn’t have to be 2020, too or 2020 times two.
I do hope you have made yourself comfortable and have allowed yourself to enter the year at your own pace, it’s okay if you needed or need time, I know I did.
Once settled in, don’t forget to just do it, do it, do it now do it good (if you don’t know which song I’m referring to you’re either too young or very much sanctified). Let me get back to sleep, it’s currently 3am while I am writing this, I have no business being up this late especially considering that there is a one year old who will be up in a few hours and likes to wake up with her energy levels on a thousand.
Love,
Maame.