Year of Isolation

This year started out in a sort of stressful blur. I was at a job in finance because I had run out of ideas of who I wanted to be when I grow up, and trying to find some financial stability while I decided where to go and what to do next. Because it was 2020, I was thrown a curveball when I was let go from that job. (It’s kind of a humorous story about a manager who just wanted a paycheck and spent more time trying to bullshit their way into making it look like they knew what they were doing and were working hard, than actually, you know, learning and doing the job. An errant email by me caused the loss of my job. It is what it is. I took full accountability for my actions, the manager drama queened about how they couldn’t deal with me. So it goes.)

That was March, at the start of the lockdowns and closures. I decided to rethink my situation and focus on what it really was that I wanted to do while working on some long forgotten projects. My house also had some ideas of how it had some needs, so that added to the stresses of finances, but in the end, solutions were found, stress was repressed and ignored, and some of those waiting projects got completed.

But I still had no idea what I wanted to be in my next incarnation of my life, or if I even wanted to have, yet another, rebirth. Rebirthing is exhausting work and while the end results can be amazing and spectacular, they can also lead you to your limits and weaknesses. Life is all about learning.

I did some study work, got my certification as a life coach and took intuitive training, realizing part way through, I had already done the work in my much younger life, but it was good to have a refresher. Picked up my intuitive tools again and decided to let life blow me where it felt I should go. With the world so uncertain and looking like it was headed to an apocalyptic stage faster than anticipated, it seemed like the better choice. A person with more hand skills, such as welding, crocheting, growing, cooking, sewing…well, that’s an end of times wheelhouse a woman can stake a livelihood on!

I did eventually get a part time job at the local craft store, which fits like a glove even though I hate the uber conservative idiocy of the people in town, their absolute unwillingness to do anything if it doesn’t directly benefit them, and the wide range of insane conspiracy theorists that exist here. Small town living sounds quaint and charming on the Hallmark movies, but the reality is, you find yourself living amongst, and surrounded by some of the worst of the American education system that proves daily it fails on every level of existence. I’m not a bleeding liberal, though I strongly support democratic socialism and the removal of money from the world, however, I can’t even imagine the horrible, tortured life some of these people live. Given their ideas that everyone should be forced to struggle and/or die if they aren’t already struggling and dying simply because they are is…well…shocking, to say the least. Compassion and sympathy are free, until you meet these people. They make you pay in blood, sweat and tears for even a fleeting kind thought, and still hate you.

I’ll end my mini rant here because it will eventually become its own post sometime, I’m sure.

The one thing that everyone seems to say is that 2020 is “the absolute worst”. Yeah, okay…it hasn’t been roses and diamonds, but, it hasn’t been overflowing septic tanks and mosquito infested swamps either.

2020 sucked in various ways, but honestly, not too much worse than any other year. To be truthful, 2020 for me, was a sort of reset button. It gave me an opportunity to put my focus back on myself and not my struggles. It allowed me to put my life back in order, remind me of the things that I have enjoyed that life took me away from, and remind myself that at the very core of my existence, I am the most important person in my life. That sounds so self serving, I know. It also sounds selfish and narcissistic and it is an uncomfortable thing to say, but the truth is often uncomfortable.

In the end, the one truth remained: if you aren’t going to be invested in your own life, you better believe, no one else will be either. Things will just happen to you. You will experience whatever you allow in. If you let others manage those experiences, you know what is going to happen? Not much.

2020 was a year of isolation, but that isolation wasn’t wasted on me. I thrive when I’m allowed to do self work. When I have the freedom to just be who I am. 2020 has taught me that I still have the desire to grow and thrive, which is the very essence of the human existence.

What did 2020 bring to you?