Renewal…

Its about this time every year that my attention turns to renewal. It seems like Christmas is a real marker in the ground for me. As soon as Christmas is over, my attention turns to the new year and new opportunities to do things better. And after this year? Well, let’s just say I need to do things better.

Now, 2020 was – as one of my clients keeps saying – an anomalous year. That’s very true. It was a year that candidly doesn’t compare to other years. After the pandemic raged through in spring, summer got a lot easier, although epidemiologists kept warning us about fall. By October, the pandemic had pretty much taken over daily life. Thanksgiving was not the usual affair and Christmas was, well, outdoors and via Facetime. Enough said. (I’m very aware that for me and mine, the pandemic has not been nearly as difficult as its been for others. I’ve had three friends lose their mothers, two to COVID. I’ve had friends get sick with COVID. I’ve had friends and their spouses lose jobs. Still, others have been unemployed for months or have lost their small business. So, as much as I’ve felt the impact, I realize that once again, I’ve been sheltered from any real storm.)

But, it was not like the pandemic did not impact me at all. My own business productivity suffered and as much as one year doesn’t put my job in jeopardy, a series of bad years certainly could. Additionally, because I stressed about the lack of work, I didn’t necessarily make the healthiest of choices. Instead of taking that free time to go for a walk and clear my head; do a little yoga and settle my soul; take the time to explore and learn a new skill; or simply relax, I worried. I’m really good at worry. As a result, that worry led me to sit in front of my computer and attempt to find solutions and opportunities that didn’t quite exist. The result? I wasted hours and hours, got frustrated and burned out and it didn’t make much impact anyway.

In the end, the last six months of the year became fruitful and I hit my target for those months. Hitting my target met that I didn’t feel unsuccessful anymore. And not feeling unsuccessful meant that I could look back at all of that time I wasted and once again acknowledge that I could have done better. If I just hadn’t given in to fear, I could have achieved so much more this past year and enjoyed life as well. Instead of working part-time, I had been working more than full-time without much success. Now that I’m at that marker in the ground where I sit and plan for next year, I’m also cognizant that I can change things for the better and that’s what I intend to do.

So, how, pray tell, do I plan on accomplishing this renewal? In one small phrase: restoring balance. One of the things that drove me nuts last year was the feeling that I had no control over the balance in my life. I couldn’t set working hours because if work became available at 7 p.m., I needed to grab it. If a client wanted a call at 7 a.m., I was in. If I had a break in my schedule, I was afraid to leave my computer in case work came in. So, I ended up working some days from early morning through early evening with just a few hours of billing to show for it. On top of that, the house had become chaotic with our renovation project so cleaning wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it usually is. If I cleaned, it still looked messy with tools stacked in a corner. So, I would clean, be frustrated things didn’t look better and then go back to an unsatisfying work environment. Very slowly, I got burned out and frustrated.

This year? There are going to be some parameters around work. If it’s there or there to get, I’m working. If it’s not there, I’m not working. I don’t want to totally wipe out my flexibility to work longer and shorter days, I just don’t want to work long days on end with nothing to show for it. Most days? I plan to turn off the computer by 5 p.m. When I can, the computer will go off at four. That will give me the time I need to get exercise, do some creative writing, make good meals, and spend undistracted time with my husband and cats. My Fridays are about to get more protected. As I was short on hours, my Fridays were left vulnerable to any odd meeting anyone wanted to schedule, whether or not there was any sense of urgency or immediacy to those meetings. In 2021, Fridays will be a little more reserved. I still don’t mind working on a Friday, if necessary. But I want to make sure it’s necessary and not just convenient. Instead, I like my Fridays to clean my house, get laundry done, go to the grocery, and generally take care of life’s small details.

That leaves my weekends open for things like hikes with my husband, family dinners with my sisters, trips to the lake, experimental canning (my husband got me four new canning books for Christmas) and seeing friends and other leisurely past times.

In 2020, I allowed work and anxiety to take over my life. It’s hard not to do in a pandemic when the initial health fears become compounded by livelihood fears. I also allowed the ensuing political discord to increase my anxiety and keep me in a somewhat perpetual state of fear. With the hindsight of 2020, I realize that all of those things were out of my control and my attempts to control them only fueled my worry. In 2021, I need to get back to the simple lifestyle I quit my job three years ago to pursue.

So, here’s my plan and my new year’s resolutions all boiled in together:

• I plan to get organized (using one of my infamous spreadsheets) so I have a better handle on what work is slated per day and per week to mete out my workdays and keep an eye on my productivity while also ensuring work does not take over my life.
• I plan to purchase a treadmill with my husband and make space for it in our overly large house so it’s easy to get some exercise, even in a short timeframe or on wintery days
• I plan to get some control over how often I check my email. I tend to leave my email open and up while I’m working and then check it obsessively at least every half-hour while I’m not. Starting today, I plan to control that by physically stopping myself from checking it more often than once every two hours and just once a day on weekends. I will do the same with the various news feeds in my life. The evening news was good enough for generations before me and those 24-hour news feeds are really just marketing schemes to convince me to be a frequent flyer and increase advertising dollars. I’m opting out.
• I will restart the guided meditation that focuses me on my priorities in life rather than my anxieties.
• I will plan for life post-COVID when I can celebrate those things I used to take for granted and I will not lose sight again of how precious they are, like freely seeing family and friends and hugging someone in need.
• And finally, I will seek simple peace. That’s it. Just simple peace. It needs no other explanation.

For you, whether or not you do New Year’s Resolutions or have a new year renewal like I do, I also wish you simple peace. But most of all, I wish us all the realization and will power to unyieldingly pursue simple peace. There are too many distractions and potential pitfalls to dissuade us from pursuing simple peace. But in the end, it’s the thing that most significantly guides me to whatever my best life is supposed to be.