Thank You 2020

I am incredibly grateful and feel very blessed and fortunate for the year we just had.  It was definitely a year like no other filled with new experiences, concerns, fears and even some of the same old ones too.  2020 taught me a lot.  It challenged me in ways I did not expect.  Although it started out on a familiar note I can definitely say 2020 was not the year I had expected it to be.  And all I can say about that is - Thank you.

 

I began the year hoping to get on top of some lingering debt and entertaining the possibility of paying off my car even though I had a 0% interest rate on the loan.  At the very least, my goal was to have it all paid off by the time my youngest daughter graduated from high school in the spring of 2023.  A reasonable goal to be sure and quite manageable as long as nothing else cropped up in the meantime.  I had already been derailed twice before by unforeseen medical bills, but nonetheless I was hopeful.  Then the pandemic hit.

 

The rat race that was our life and had been for the past ten years game to a grinding halt.  As a mom with two very active and busy children August through June represented me orchestrating and coordinating more schedules, homework, tests, drop offs, pick ups, payments, fundraising, concerts, events, competitions, conferences, festivals, practices, games, tryouts, sports physicals, dentist and orthodontist appointments, uniform fittings, etc. than seemed humanly possible for one person to do.  But I did it.  Religiously and without fail my girls made it to every appointment and obligation they had and somehow we managed the expenses to go along with all of it.  All while I worked a full time job and managed our house and a boatload of home improvement projects.

 

On Friday March 13, 2020, yes that was a Friday the 13^th, our lives changes in a VERY BIG way and I am so glad that they did.  We moved my oldest out of her college dorm and back home and both girls waited while their respective schools scrambled to get online schooling up and running.  While they waited both got jobs at our neighborhood supermarket which was also scrambling due to all the recent panic shopping and sudden shortages.  I immediately stopped running around like a chicken with my head cut off, stood back and just breathed.  Things were happening all around me with a lot of chaos and uncertainty.  The news was going crazy with all kinds of misinformation and contradiction.  It was enough to make ones head spin.

 

It took a couple of weeks for the dust to begin to settle although there was still no toilet paper on the shelves to speak of, but in that time as we headed into lockdown I realized just how uncertain life could be.  On a very grand scale.  Because I work in the medical field as a patient care coordinator I wasn’t concerned about losing my job, but I was very much aware that it could happen.  No guarantees.  And that knowledge spurned me into action.  I had to be prepared to take care of myself and my family because at the time things were a little bit out of hand.  The vast majority of people, or so it seemed, were out of control, driven by fear of the unknown and a strange virus they had never heard of before. Our government was at odds with each other over exactly what we should be doing, the media was sensationalizing everything, virus related deaths were beginning to grow and people were losing their jobs at a rapid fire rate.  It was pretty scary.

 

I could have bought into all the panic and fear mongering.  I could have joined those people glued to their TVs, laptops and cellphones freaking out over everything they were hearing and seeing.  I could have watched the rioting and protesting that started up and been overly affected by the hostility and negativity plaguing our large cities.  I could have joined in on the deplorably bad behavior that was being demonstrated and gotten really, really angry.  I could have become selfish and rude and mean and thoughtless and careless.  I could have felt sorry for myself or become depressed.  But I didn’t.  I didn’t do any of those things.

 

Instead, I turned to a higher power and I asked for His guidance to help me navigate the days ahead.  Because this thing was far bigger than what I could manage on my own.  And I thanked Him every day, multiple times a day in fact, for all that I had and all that I was given as each day unfolded.  And I seriously got my shit together!  I didn’t sit back and wait for something to happen.  Or for someone to do something.  I was that someone and I did something.  I acted.  And we made it!   We made it through 2020.  And because of everything I did and everything I learned about myself in the process I know what is truly important and how I want to live my life moving forward and what I need to do to make it happen.  So I say a big resounding THANK YOU to 2020.  I couldn’t have done it without you.