2020 and 2021: Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Ever since March, 2020 has been a year of unique challenges: a year of health fears, cancelled plans, and severe restrictions on what people can do, where they can go and who they can see. And while there is hope on the horizon, the problem of the coronavirus pandemic and all its consequences are still ongoing as we enter a new year, and the lives we knew at the beginning of 2020 will take a long time to be fully restored, if they are at all.

I’m grateful for the fact that I’ve been relatively lucky: I have a job which allows me to work from home, and I have a support bubble which allows me to talk to people. The first weeks of lockdown were certainly hard, and made me realise how important the opportunity to socialise at work really is; but I’m pleased that I was able to adjust to the new routine, and find solutions to the challenges that the situation presented. There have been other positives to this year, too.

• I completed my resolution to run a half-marathon for the first time.

• I completed some personal development exercises which have greatly improved my self-awareness of what motivates me and how to develop in the future.

• With my planned holiday abroad having been put back, I was able to take a staycation to see some sights in Britain that had been on my list.

• I actually got into good writing habits outside of National Novel Writing Month, and feel like I’m really getting somewhere with the second draft of my work in progress.

• I completed National Novel Writing Month despite having a lot going on in November which made writing more difficult.

A lot of my resolutions for 2021 involve developing what I currently have on the table, rather than doing something new. Some things I want to do – namely, things which involve physically going out into the world – are obviously dependent on the Covid situation. But I’ve got plenty of other goals that I should be able to work on regardless of that. Having been struggling to find motivation for running since the half-marathon, I signed up for Race At Your Pace in January to give myself a target – and once I’ve done that and I’m hopefully back in my flow, I want to try running the half-marathon distance again, even if it’s not for a particular event. My confidence in my writing is growing, and I find myself properly believing – when perhaps I haven’t before – that I can finish a draft and produce something that I can share with other people.

Whatever your situation is right now, I hope that 2021 brings positive developments at the very least. It doesn’t feel quite right to say ‘Happy New Year’, but it might still be a better one.