Happy 2022, everybody!
Well, here’s hoping, anyway. I can’t shake the feeling that there will be more drastic changes this year, globally, politically, environmentally, and pandemically. I suspect yours truly will be hard-pressed to keep up with those changes in this forum, but I promise to do my best to shower you with my usual quirky and unsolicited opinions.
I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions. I haven’t in decades. My failure rate is too high, and there’s no sense setting myself up for said failure right out of the calendrical gate. And this year will be unpredictable, so it’s a lot harder to make any sort of a plan to reach any sort of a goal.
Frankly, most of the time these days I’m just sitting around feeling nostalgic about those kinder, gentler times when I could give out free hugs to strangers. Those days are gone. So maybe my goal should be to see everyone as germ vectors, yes, but choose to like them anyway. I think that may still be achievable.
On the day I post this, Dear Husband and I should have been driving home from a romantic mini-break in Victoria, Canada. But we decided to cancel, because there’s no predicting if the borders will remain open, there’s no predicting how bad this Omicron variant will get, and one of our dogs is displaying some worrisome but vague health changes. None of us are getting any younger. So we chose to do the responsible thing and mini-break in place. We weren’t expecting that. But, you know, change happens.
I think many of us have a gut instinct to fear change. That stands to reason. Knowing what the heck was going on was critical for the survival of our cavewomen ancestors. Their ability to predict is what has allowed us all to be here. I’m sure that instinct to desire predictability was passed right along to us. Now we’re having to squelch that fear of change in exchange for a heaping helping of flexibility, and some of us are better at that than others.
But I’m feeling optimistic today, and looking back on the past couple of years it’s very evident that we’ve all been through a lot. Change has come at us at a furious rate. And yet, here we are. We’ve made it this far. It may not have been pretty, but we did it. And I suspect that will be the case this year, too, as long as this pandemic is taken seriously.
I suspect that there will be many times this year when I’m tempted to post just one sentence: “I’ve got nothing.” Coming up with topics for this blog is a constant challenge, especially when all travel plans and new experiences seem to teeter on the edge of cancellation. But as I said up above, I’ll do my best.
When all is said and done, that’s really the most any of us can do, isn’t it? I believe that the majority of us are really doing the best that we can under these difficult circumstances, and because of that, I choose to continue to have faith in us. We’ve got this. Just you wait and see.
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The View from a Drawbridge 
Maybe we can find a little breathing room, once in awhile, to refresh, rewind and rejuvenate. Sometimes I feel like I’m circling the drain. A brief respite, would help a lot in the long haul.
Definitely. It’s important to be gentle with ourselves.
Someone whose name I forgot tweeted, “No resolutions for me–it’s the world’s turn to get better.” Or maybe it was circumstances, but anyway. I’m with you.
I heartily agree. Happy new year, dear Angi!
Struggling with ideas? Call me, I guarantee you will come away with one or two. Just ask a question and my unorthodoxed response always makes people think. OK, usually they’re thinking what’s wrong with me, but you have a way of turning that into great blogging material. I resolve to continue to be my usual flexible evolving self as we navigate the chaos. Only resolution I’m confident I’ll keep. Maybe you can write about all the ways people across the world are adapting to the changes that the chaos is creating. Hope we all stay flexible in the new year together.
I discovered a video about resolutions when I was in the depths of my 2020 lockdown despair, and I think you’d like it – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVGuFdX5guE&ab_channel=CGPGrey My theme this year will be travel and health (really need to be more mindful of my mental and physical health)
Wow. That’s inspiring! I’m definitely going to have to think and blog about this one! Thanks!