I don’t know if what I’m looking forward to in 2020 has been created yet. Maybe it’s in the process of being created and I just haven’t found out about it yet. So, I’m gonna go a different way and say that I’m looking forward to a fresh start. Yes, around the first of the year everyone gets that feeling. Along with the feeling to exercise, but that’s a discussion for another time. So yeah, everyone (including me) always seems to say “THIS is the year!!” and I know everyone has the best of intentions, but most of us are eating whole fruit pies by January 21st. I don’t really think any of us start out to fail, but I think over time that “fresh start” feeling seems to wear off or we get busy or we just give up and go back to our old ways. There’s nothing wrong with that. Willpower is a muscle, and like any muscle it can get overworked, spasm or sprained. Just like building a muscle, we have to work it in slow, small actions. Baby-steps, if you will. I’m sure you know that lifting weights isn’t how a muscle gets bigger, lifting weights actually tears the muscle, it’s the rest that lets the muscle repair and rebuild itself. As the old saying goes, you can’t make an omelet….
I think my biggest example is that I want to learn how to do the stuff that every guy should know how to do that I never learned. Like change a car’s oil or repair a hole in a wall by another method than hanging a picture over it. Take it from me, somebody always find out that you were playing ball in the house! Learning how to paint a room correctly, instead of painting a room and then finding out later that your friend hired someone else to come over and redo all the work that you did. (Yeah, some of my friends are dicks). So this year, I’m going to try and do a lot of learning. I’ve got somethings in mind and with the help of Dr. Google and Mr. YouTube I hope to at least get a basic understanding things before I go out and tackle something or ask somebody to teach me something.
I also am really looking forward to getting my drivers license again. In August of 2017, I broke my leg. When I say broke, I mean BAH-ROKE. Like, the shin bone popped through the skin. Thanks to that, and diabetic neuropathy, I don’t have that much feeling in my foot which makes things like feeling how hard you push a gas or brake pedal. All the doctors, nurses and specialist say that you can’t reverse diabetic neuropathy. My only response to them is : Watch me.
Also, Shamrock Shakes. I always look forward to Shamrock Shakes,
Her Take:
Ok, confession time first. Normally I have a strict rule NOT to read my co-blogger’s piece before I’m done writing so it doesn’t change what I’m doing. We really want this to always be a pure practice of writing what were called to write in that moment… that sounds a little weird and new agey but, you know, there it is. That’s a tough practice because he almost always (like, SO CLOSE TO ALWAYS) is done first and his writing sits in my inbox, mocking me, begging me to peek.
I don’t know why, it was a moment of weakness I guess, but this time I peeked before I had even put pen to paper… er… fingertip to keyboard(?) and this is what’s happening right now. I’m going to break my cardinal rule and change my plan just a little because I like his idea better.
So, we’re talking about what we’re looking forward to this year, right? And here’s a funny thing about me: I’m a ‘Looking Forward’ kind of person. Always have been. SO much so that sometimes I struggle to see what’s in front of me, but that’s a theme for another day.
For today, here’s what I’m really looking forward to, in no particular order:
Being able to breath the air and walk outside again. If you’re not from the cold part of the Midwest you don’t know the kind of shallow breathing, short-shuffly-stepping we have to do here for about 6 months of the year. This is how you survive an environment where a deep breath is so cold it will (ironically) make your lungs burn and a landscape that’s covered with snice (snow + ice: this is what most of our snow becomes within a day after it hits the ground. It’s hard and unforgiving, like that one teacher you had in grade school.).
The first time I can take a deep breath and a full stride in the spring feels magical.
A selection of nerdy stuff. The second season of The Umbrella Academy, The third season of American Gods, Doctor Who coming back with Jody Whittaker (who is a GD delight) and, the BIG ONE Ghostbusters Afterlife.
There are definitely things I’m missing in this list because there is almost always something new and nerdy to get excited about, but just know that this kind of pop-culture fandom is very much what gets me through the year.
Working on myself. UGH. There, I said it. We all need to do this, right? Sometimes it feels like a bummer because sometimes it means dragging out the treadmill instead of crashing on the couch or stopping and reconsidering your behavior when you fly off the handle (not that I do that.. I’m just sayin’ SOME PEOPLE do ;) ) and it can seem like a punishment for being a sucky human. But it’s not. That time to do some work on you is a gift that I want to give me. I might even wrap it and then act surprised when I open it.
‘Oh, SELF, you’re so thoughtful.. You shouldn’t have!!’.
Working on work-work. It’s been a minute since I mentioned how much love my job here. Part of that is me trying to be conscious of not being completely annoying. Like that girl with a cool boyfriend who’s always like ‘My boyfriend bought me flowers… then he made me dinner… then he said the sweetest things… then he bought me more stuff… then he totally didn’t cheat on me..’ That’s the kind of annoying I’m talking about. (Can we also agree that he did cheat on her, too? I mean, otherwise why mention it?)
ANYWAY, the other reason is that some time in August of 2019 it was like someone slammed on the cosmic WTF??? button and work went insane. In a good way, like, more creative work, more challenges, less time to fall into an existential abyss (Anyone? Just me?), and the noise of what we have to do is too loud to think. We just have to DO.
You might be thinking that I’m looking forward to it calming down, right? Because that’s probably a normal, human response. But I think I’m getting in the groove now and, in fact, I’m looking forward to 2020 being the year of riding the WTF?? wave right to the finish line.
People learning to be nice again. Sure, this one is aspirational you guys, but it HAS to happen sometime. Why not 2020?
Here’s what I believe: This whole phase of people deciding they get to be nasty (you know, racist, misogynist, homophobic, islamophobic.. Basically all of that junk) and get to be loud about it, is on its way out.
It’s ending, so it’s fighting as hard as it can to stick around.
One day though, hopefully not far in the future, that era will come to a close. Maybe politics will change, or maybe it has so little to do with politics that the change will sneak up on us from where we least expect it. I’m not sure, but it will get better, and people will be good to each other, and that’s something worth looking forward to.
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