As the clock struck at Midnight on New Year’s Eve a few weeks ago I feel it is safe to say that there was a collective sense of relief, a feeling of hope that arrived with the new year as we left 2020 behind. And I believe we all truly knew that a change in the calendar would not also mean a change in our lives - that when the new year arrived it would not (could not) clear the deck on what has and is happening in the world - but we celebrated anyway. But no matter how well we celebrate or make declarations of leaving the past behind, our lives do not reset at the new year, except for maybe symbolically. And this symbolic action is an important one. This symbol of a new year allows us to feel, for a moment, a sense of significance and it brings with it an opportunity for change. Because while life continues on as it always has when the clock turns over we are none the less handed a fresh year to begin again. A year seemingly untainted by our choices, or lack thereof, - a clean slate. So we carry on with life, but for a moment that life has a renewed sense of hope in the potential of a new year.

It has taken me several weeks to write down my reflections and thoughts and hopes for this new year. When I started to write this in December I found that each time I sat down to reflect, I ended up regurgitating onto the page a year’s worth of unprocessed emotions and anxieties that I hadn’t realized were coiled up inside me until I gave them the space they needed to spring into release: my presence and stillness. For my part, while 2020 certainly had its shimmers of light, 2020 was the year I spent in one of the worst depressions I’ve yet experienced in my life.

I believe that 2020, more than most years, truly held the human experience - in all its rawness. Because while the joys and tragedies of life continued on, we were forced to experience them in isolation - secluded in our homes, with our thoughts, and forced to reckon with our relationships (to ourselves, our colleagues, our loved ones, our politics) in ways we hadn’t before.

As I contemplated all of this I realized I could never write well enough or even just ‘enough’ to truly capture all that happened last year in any significant or meaningful way via a simple blog post. So, instead, I asked myself a question: What can I bring from 2020 into 2021 that might allow me to feel and be more joyful? What lessons can I take with me?

This felt significant because, as we all know by now, 2021 has merely been an extension of 2020 with a new ID. So if I am able to learn from last year, perhaps I can make this one feel better - even if just a little.

So here they are, the 7 lessons I learned in 2020. Lessons I am still learning. Lessons I’m hoping will keep me sane and which might even help me thrive as move forward into 2021.

Lesson 1: To run from Melancholy

All the other lessons I learned last year stem from this. In fact the rest of the lessons are ways in which I have learned to ‘run’ from melancholy, and not let it consume me.

Over the course of last year I read a lot of poetry. I started in January, with a book I had been gifted at an estate sale, and continued forward reading as much poetry as I could get my hands on. Poetry from the new and the old poets. Rumi, Whitman, Oliver, Kaur… The words of these and other poets became my landing place when it felt like everything around me was spiraling. And it was in the Spring, as I was reading a collection of poems from Mary Oliver that a particular verse from her poem Hum Hum stood out to me:

Yet Little by little

I learned to love my life.

Though sometimes I had to run hard -

especially from melancholy-

not to be held back

I had always believed that I it was required to face melancholy, to face my demons, straight on. That to live a life worthy of anything I must attempt to wrestle my melancholy into the ground, conquer it, obliterate it out of existence. I believed I had to win the fight to live my life, thus trapping me in a constant state of exhaustion and fighting. It had never occurred to me that I might simply, run. That I could run and just leave it behind, alive but unattached. This epiphany during the spring acted as salve to my wounds while providing me with a course of action.

So I set about the business of learning what it means to run from melancholy. What I did not realize when I began is that as with most endeavors, I had to practice and train if I were to ever build enough stamina to maintain pace, and keep out of reach of my melancholy.

Being uncertain exactly how a person runs from melancholy I decided to, well, start actually running. And I was terrible at it. At 3/4 of a mile I was out of breath and unable to go on. But I kept running anyway, each day extending my route by another .1 or .2 miles. Hating every second of it until the moment I finished when the pride of having made an effort to move my body through time and space washed over me. By summer a 3 or 4 mile run became less effort and more ease. And my moods, on days I had run, were noticeably lighter.

With this success I then started to explore other things that might bring me joy: reading a book in the heat of the afternoon sunshine, listening to the birds sing each morning, launching my paddle board into the lake from one of the pocket parks near my home, wandering my neighborhood looking for the free little libraries for new books to read, watercolors. I was learning how to run from melancholy by paying attention to all the moments, big and small, in which I caught or created joy.

Of course, melancholy still caught me. More often than I liked and for varying periods of time. But I was still learning, still wobbly. During one such period when I found myself trapped in bed with the weight of what I can only describe as a deep sense of unending emptiness (dramatic, I know, but true), I found solace in the words of another poet - Dickinson: “Hope is a thing with feathers / that perches in the soul / and sings the tune without the words / and never stops at all…” Her words helped me find my feet again, giving shape to the most shapeless of things - hope.

Lesson 2: To do things I enjoy, even if I do them (very) badly

I am not good at being bad at things. I often do not have the patience for mastery, but as it happens I am also a perfectionist. A deadly and terrible combination. This has meant that across my life I have rarely felt the need to try things I do not believe I will win or succeed at, the result of which has meant that a lot of my life has potentially gone un-lived.

As I experimented with ways in which I might find or create joy in my life, in an effort to run from melancholy, I made a rule that I must pursue all endeavors which peaked my curiosity or sparked a sense of joy - no matter what.

So over the summer I purchased a set of watercolors and discovered I could spend hours happily painting, simply moving the brush across the page. I painted landscapes - badly. I painted sunsets - badly. I would sometimes just splash color across the page. My effort was akin to a toddler being gifted paints and a page. But what I discovered was that by allowing myself to do a thing badly I actually, accidentally, got better at it. I can now paint a leaf or a flower with great detail to the point that I feel proud of my water color foliage, no longer toddler-esque. The same became true with running (see above), guitar, yoga… I was enjoying these activities, despite how bad I was at them, and letting my joy - not the pressure of betterment - lead me through them.

Lesson 3: To get outside, every single day.

This is by far the easiest lesson to follow, with the greatest return on investment. This is also the easiest lesson to let slip and forget, especially under lockdown.

I’ve discovered that when I am in a fog, unfocused, irritable or stressed, a walk outside is a cure all. And yet still I find I can get to the end of the day having not left the house (in winter, sometimes for several days straight). When we don’t go outside I think there is a stagnancy which builds up inside of us - for me it feel as if I am going stale alongside the air trapped at home around me. This is a truth I will stand by: bodies and brains must be aired out. Get outside.

But the truth is getting outside goes beyond the circulation of fresh air and hits - if you let it - even deeper, but only if you take the time to pay attention and actually notice your surroundings. Each flower, brick and human is a tiny miracle. I’ve seen the most astonishing things while on my walks, the littlest, tiniest things that became sparks of light and joy I could hold onto: The sparkle of moonlight on the water, a puppy learning to swim, the smell of freesia on a warm summer day, a couple drinking wine on their patio talking with friends, snow falling… It’s easy to find joy, and miracles surround us every moment of every day, you only need to pay attention to it. Getting outside helps.

Lesson 4: To ask for help

I think this is a hard thing to do for a lot of people.

This year I realized that the reason I don’t ask for help is usually one of two things:

I don’t want to be seen as incompetent or naive
I fear I don’t posses anything sufficient or of enough value to give back in return for their help or kindness.

So I don’t ask.

But this year, by accident and in a few big ways, I asked for help. And to my surprise help was given, without expectation or need of reciprocity. All I had to offer in return for this help was my ongoing friendship or, occasionally, beers and pizza.

And because I asked for help I now have a better understanding and more control over my personal finances. I feel more confident with the language of 401ks and IRAs and ETFs. Something I would have been too afraid of to ever approach on my own.

When my anxiety left my in a crumpled tangled mess of tears and fears on the floor of my closet I was offered help. I was also encouraged, gently, to seek help. Assured I did not need to feel these feelings in isolation that I might be loved and lovable anyway. That I had people who wanted to help. But I had to ask for it, and I had to allow it.

What I’ve learned is that asking for help is not a form of incompetence, that it is actually a power move. This is hard to let sink in, and if I’m hones a lesson I still struggle with and am working on. But the help I’ve been given this year has empowered me and shown me that I do not need to knuckle down and do things on my own. Asking for help has got me places faster and easier than if I’d tried to get through alone.

Lesson 5: Get rid of To-Do lists

I have decided to give up on to do lists.

This has been nothing short of absolutely fucking transformative.

I am a list-er. Compulsively so. I will even add my leisure time to do lists: “to do - sleep”. Meaning that every moment of every day begins to feel like a chore. These lists, without fail, always become too long, bleeding into things that could not possibly happen in a single day and ultimately leave me so overwhelmed that I either panic and do nothing at all, OR, my day becomes so tightly scheduled that there is no room for joy or imagination. All of which inevitably leads to disappointment in myself and a Costco sized pack of anxiety left on my doorstep.

So during the week between Christmas and New Year, possessed of a rare sense of self awareness, I decided to give up on lists all together. More as an act of desperation than as any type of New Year resolution.

I vowed to myself to only do each day what I either wanted to do or those things which absolutely had to be done that day. No more life dictating lists telling me what could or should be done.

As a result a magical thing happened: my days started to flow. They felt natural and unforced. With no agenda I was free to imagine what my day might look like, what I might choose to do with it. I started writing again, I did dishes and chores without the begrudging hate I usually felt at having to do them. Life felt smooth. And at the end of each day, I felt accomplished.

The last several weeks of this experiment has yielded a much less anxious person. And also, ironically, a more productive one. Whereas living by the list left me leaving each day feeling angry at myself for not accomplishing it all, not having a list has actually meant that the priority things - the true priority things - actually get done, and I leave each day (well, most days) with a sense of satisfaction for having lived it.

In lieu of lists I have developed weekly goals - never more than three. They are not on my daily agenda, they are simply three things I want to be sure to do. Perhaps I’ll write more about these at another point, but I’ll be damned if I ever make another to do list again.

Lesson 6: To just DO something. anything.

This one is simple, but can be incredibly challenging, and sometimes takes incredible courage.

In my darkest moments, when melancholy catches me and I am completely engulfed by fear and the dark emptiness, doing anything - getting out of bed, sending an email - can feel like moving a mountain. As if you are running straight up a hill with a boulder on your back. This immobility is a spell which can only be broken by doing something, anything. Throwing off the covers, sitting up in bed, doing a single dish, brushing your teeth, watering a plant… by doing something momentum builds and you are able to do more. And doing more may only mean that you were not in bed all day, but it is a start. It grows from there.

Lesson 7: To Write

There are two things in my life that are air for my being (my soul, if you like) and these are; exploring new places and writing. Without them I suffocate, shrivel, become less me.

Since we move to Seattle in January of 2019 I have not written (and finished) a single piece of writing outside of my journal. This piece here will be my very first. And it was not until I read “If you want to write” by Brenda Ueland this summer that connected the downward spiral my mental health has been on since we left New York to my lack of writing. In her book Brenda says that writing is a healing of the body and soul - that when you are sick you should write and watch the illness leave you. I think, on a very profound and real level, that Brenda is right. And not just about writing, but about whatever creative pursuit drives you.

In November I began writing again. And what I have noticed (so far) is that even after a bad day of writing or a day where very little is written at all, I still feel as if I have been injected with happy drugs. I feel lighter - physically, mentally. I breathe easier. Writing is my oxygen. Without writing the thoughts swirling around my brain become tumorous, a cancer of thought, making me sick. As I write it is as if this tumor untangles itself. It is a medicine for the soul, a detox for the mind, a breath for my lungs.

A note on Courage:

I do not think I have fully understood what it means to like a life with courage until this year. And that is not to say that I have been living courageously - the opposite, actually. I have been living in fear, but I would like to spend more of my time in courage.

Yes, I have read all of the Brene Brown’s books about courage and vulnerability. But I realized this year that I have never actually - fully - understood them. However after this year I know that I no longer want to be afraid of my own life - I want to choose my life, not let it simply happen. So maybe that is what courage is: choosing.

And the reason I bring up courage is because I think the 7 lessons above can be wrapped up into this single word. That I must run from melancholy and to do so requires courage. Courage to do a thing badly, courage to get outside, courage to ask for help, courage to get rid of to do lists, courage to do - anything so as to keep moving forward, and courage to write.

These lessons have empowered me, they have become tools to help me live well. I feel I have more agency over my life (and a better sense of my own anxiety) and I hope this continues, and I also hope that maybe - if you need them - these lessons might help you too.