So, it took me about 3 years to restart the document that will be home to my thoughts and ramblings before they get the honour of being published on the blog. In the ultimate demise of all my hard work in late 2017 when the damn external hard drive fell off the table and onto the floor multiple times resulting in its certain and final irretrievable death, I froze and mostly stopped writing. I’d just published my book in July 2017, so that was done. But the original and revised copies of it, along with all published and non-published blog posts and articles, pictures, and more were all lost. Gone for good. That ultimately gutted me. Utterly Devastated is to gentle a phrase to describe what that felt like.
So now, in 2021. I’m finally going to pick up the ‘pen’ again. My first post of any year is the traditional new years post. So, here we go.
In years past, by this time on the calendar, I would have a clear outline of goals (whether or not I finished them is another story), some semblance of a plan and I would be keen to get the ball rolling on them. Well, I’m no anomaly, and like most people on the entire planet, my 2020 plans were unceremoniously torn out from under me. I do not deal with a small change in plans well. Cancelled coffee date? ‘Um.. What am I now supposed to do with my 3 hours?’ I’d spend it floating around the house doing all of nothing. The resulting months and months and months of lockdown and restrictions due to the pandemic was too big a shift of plans for me to deal with at all, and my entire year became 1 day at a time. Which meant a ridiculously lot of floating around the house doing all of nothing. I shall spare you the horrid details of keeping it together and fully breaking down in equal measure. Use your imagination, it was probably like that, and likely not all that far off of your own moments. I’m still very much stuck in one day at a time, although my all of nothing has become small bits of something. So, yay for progress!
It has taken me the first full 17 days of 2021 to come up with my word of the year. There are many words I could choose. Pivot – the one everyone is using to describe their path, however I’m returning to what was. Preserver- which undoubtedly works, as that’s all we can all do right now. Resilience – of which I’ve developed more than I ever thought possible. And then there’s the word Hope – full of promise, an inspiring word no doubt.
The idea of banking on hope seems like a necessary but perilous endeavor right now. Our province is apparently teetering on the edge of a full shut down again. My kids can be sent home at any minute because of a sniffle or sneeze. Every plan I make can be changed at the blink of an eye. And yet, I cling to hope. I cling to the plans that I and others are making, thinking they cannot possibly be pulled from under meow while also knowing it is entirely possible that they will be. I do know that some plans are near guaranteed, since they are writing or online. But none the less, I cling to the hope that Fibre Week 2021 will be a go, that borders will re-open and I will be able to see even a few of my States side friends in June. I cling to the idea that by fall and winter my favourite in person markets to attend both as a vendor and as a patron will resume and it will be more joyous and much more wonderful than every year in the past. I cling to the hope that in my personal life my children will flourish and not wilt, despite or in spite of the restrictions placed on them. I cling to the hope that the transition to not having to wear face masks isn’t as hard as the transition to having to wear them was.
Without hope, I feel I have nothing at all. The opposite of hope is despair, and that emotion is to heavy for me to carry. So Hope it is. Hope is the word I carry through 2021.
May you have hope this year as well, may everything "come up Milhouse" for you, and if it happens to not, that you to have developed ample reserves of resilience from everything 2020 has thrown our way. To quote Moira Rose "Good is coming. It has to."