It has taken me months to get around to writing this post, simply because 2020 was so overwhelming that it's hard to know where to start. However, it would plague me until the end of time if I didn't write a complete series of blog reflections about one of the most historic years of my life. I want this for myself, even if almost no one else reads it, and I've tried to mostly emphasize positive things. We all had a hard year, and even though I learned life lessons from suffering, here I've tried to share unique and interesting reflections from the year without focusing on angst. Also, since I have no relevant photos to share for the Facebook link, here's one of my stuffed pandas looking cool.
1. I listened to the Frozen II track "Some Things Never Change" as my first song of 2020. A few months later, I learned what a surreal choice this had been, particularly with Elsa's lyrics in mind:
"The winds are restless
Could that be why I'm hearing this call?
Is something coming?
I'm not sure I want things to change at all
These days are precious
Can't let them slip away
I can't freeze this moment
But I can still go out and seize this day!"
2. I realized that horrible friendship advice from self-empowerment memes had a positive impact on my life. When I was in high school, one significant reason why I was able to persevere through friendship challenges is because I was determined not to act in the self-focused, petty ways that life advice memes recommended. They inoculated me against terrible attitudes before those feelings rose up within me, and I was able to fight back.
3. Psychologists actually recommend talking to yourself in the third person, so I'm not completely deranged. I picked up this insight from the book Permission to Feel by psychologist Marc Brackett. He also talked about emotional language learning, which leads to my next observation.
4. In middle school, when I spent time looking up synonyms for hatred, anger, and disgust, I wasn't just being awful. I was expanding my vocabulary to better deal with my emotions. Ideally, I wouldn't have been in this
situation at all, but if I was going to feel so angry,
at least I turned to the thesaurus to better understand and name my feelings.
5. Like everyone else, I learned how important it is to seize the moment! When everything shut down, I became even more grateful for the time and money that I had spent on special experiences in 2019. I could still have meaningful social times virtually, but I couldn't travel, go to a concert, or attend plays, so I felt even greater joy over the special activities I had invested in before.
6. In April, I started learning German through Duolingo. I was partly inspired by friends who had moved to Germany, and my long-term goal is to be able to read World War II sources that haven't been translated into English.
7. I am WAY more invested in following new movie releases than I realized.
After theaters shut down in 2020, I still had the impulse to look at
movie review sites, and I had to keep reminding myself that there was
nothing new. I realized that even though I usually only watch two or
three new movies every year, my interest in following pop-culture is a
much more significant hobby than I had thought. I also realized that I
had been following weekly movie reviews for ten years.
8. Even though I really enjoy my job at the library, I don't idolize work or my social connections there. It was interesting to see how easily I adjusted to life without my job for six months, and I am grateful that I don't put my identity in my work.
9. I learned that most people don't even know what a pandemic is, since they keep specifying that it is global. I thought that this was hilarious at first, but now the redundancy just gets on my nerves.
10. I deeply identify with Troy Bolton from High School Musical. This is the most unexpected discovery that 2020 held for me, but it's true. Part of this identification is due to my Enneagram type, and part of it is life experience that I didn't have when I first watched the movie, but I really connected with him, and I even bought the song "Scream" on iTunes. If you had told me this in 2009, I would have laughed in your face.
11. I enjoyed contact-tracing of a different and happier kind, since many of my favorite experiences from the summer connect back to a particular conversation that I had with myself one night. I was reminiscing to myself about a rather terrible movie that I watched in 2010, and that train of thought sent me on a wonderful journey of remembering and re-watching better movies and sharing them with Lydia. We watched classics like Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which I had watched at her age, and I had so many funny conversations and great experiences that all stemmed from my reminisces on that one particular night. The ripple effects lasted for months, and there were so many great ones.
12. As part of this whole experience, I re-watched Enchanted, and I learned that it is somehow even better than I remembered. It is a phenomenal story. It is so creative, original, well-acted, and funny that it blows my mind. I also really enjoyed watching it again from a writer's perspective, instead of just assuming that the narrative was destined to be the way that it is. I had to stop to wonder how many rewrites it took for the screenwriters to come up with something so perfect as Robert being a divorce lawyer. His profession highlighted the movie's conflicts and themes in an amazing way — how much work did it take for the writers to figure that out?
I also got to share the whole movie-watching experience with Mom, Dad, and Lydia, who had never seen this film before. They loved it too, and we had SO MUCH FUN. We also shared the joy with our next-door neighbors, since Lydia invited her friend from next door over to watch the movie with her, and we then loaned our new DVD to her so that she could watch it again with her mom, who had read lots of enticing reviews and was jealous that she hadn't gotten to see it too!
13. Lydia told me that there is a sequel for Enchanted in the making! I'm concerned that it will be awful, as so many sequels are, but I'm intrigued to see what they'll do. It was surreal to come across this news so soon after watching the movie for the first time in about a decade.
14. I learned more about what a truly hateful person I am, and I came to a new understanding of social media's toxicity. For the most part, I use social media wisely and enjoy it, but coping with people's constant rants and virtue signaling was very difficult for me, since I wasn't having face-to-face interactions to balance out the craziness. This hugely diminished my sense of well-being and ability to feel loving towards others.
15. I realized how essential it was that I read Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from a Culture of Contempt in 2019. Even though this didn't make the cut for my year-end books list, I DESPERATELY needed the message in 2020, and I kept quoting to myself, “The important thing about contempt is that
it is bad for you.” The author presented this takeaway line in the style of Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book, and I have quoted it to myself hundreds of times. Over the course of the year, I went from applying these messages 89% of the time to maybe 8%, but I would have declined much faster without this book's call to conscience and memorable catchphrase.
16. While reading the Eric Larson book The Splendid and the Vile, I learned that Britain suffered a toilet paper shortage during the Blitz, and that this even affected the Palace. Best of all, this book came out in February 2020, so the author had no idea how relevant this colorful detail would be to contemporary experience.
17. As I reread the American Girl books, I discovered that I desperately wanted a Kit doll. Kit is one of my all-time favorite fictional characters, and she was one of my biggest childhood inspirations for writing. I ended up shopping on Ebay on Mom's behalf for future birthday and Christmas gifts for me, and I knew that I had found the right listing when I came across one that included not only extra outfits, but also Kit's desk and typewriter! They are so cute.
19. I learned what it's like to not attend church in person for a year. I rate this experience 0 out of 10 stars, and do not recommend it.
18. However, I also gained a new appreciation for the power of technology. I tend to be a cynic about technology, but I enjoyed lots of virtual events in 2020, including church gatherings, a livestreamed wedding, and a Google Meet version of my friend Emily's annual Christmas mug exchange party. Even though I missed out on lots of special events because of the pandemic, it was special to see what people could still recreate through screens, and video calls were a great way to keep in touch with friends.
20. I learned a lot about online commerce while selling stuff on Ebay. I also realized partway through this venture that because of my old-fashioned name, buyers probably think that I am an old lady who is downsizing before moving into a nursing home.
And now, at last, I am finished! I am so grateful that I finally sat down and made myself work on this, and I ended up enjoying the process. I hope that if you made it to the end, you also enjoyed this and gained some insight or had a laugh.
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