Q1 2021 Review
Well the first quarter of 2021 is over and I can’t decide whether it feels like a click of the fingers or the longest drag of time I’ve ever experienced. Everybody I’ve spoken to in recent weeks has said the same thing – “it’s been the longest winter” – and yet I also wonder what I actually got done this quarter, what I did with each week. No sooner had I got my head around the week than a new one was already beginning.
And maybe that’s the point. What “I did with each week” was survive the longest winter - what we all did was survive it. And I am very ok with that being enough, with calling it a job well done. But as my friend said to me just this morning“from here I don’t see a person doing nothing”, so perhaps it is worth all our time to look back at what we managed to do on top of surviving the longest winter.
In January I moved out of my house and into an Airbnb for what I hoped would be a couple of weeks and ended up being a couple of months. There was a definite novelty about it in January; I was high on how I’d stood up for myself and a boundary I’d set with my ex and feeling like I was on a nice little solo holiday after months of living with my mother. I threw myself into finding little ways to thrive and choose myself – I started book after book with reckless abandon, I attended Zoom poetry readings, I wrote a little every day, I went for daily walks that got gradually higher and longer.
What I struggled with was impatience. Specifically, impatience to have everything sorted. I wanted to feel clear and aligned in my work, I wanted to know exactly what I wanted to write a book about, I wanted to know if and when I would meet someone, I wanted to know exactly what my future life was going to look like and how long it would take me to get there. I had a hard time relinquishing old hopes, relinquishing control, relinquishing certainty.
Eventually I had no choice but to sit in the discomfort of not knowing. As I wrote on Instagram, it is more convenient to have a plan than not have one, but that can often lead you to a place where you’re pursuing the wrong plan. I knew that was what I had done countless times before: known I needed a change but not what it exactly should be, but rushed into pursuing the first idea I thought of because it was more comfortable. I ended January with the intention to embrace openness, and the acceptance that this was going to be a process to buckle in for.
February was, without question, the hardest month of the pandemic so far for me. The novelty from January wore off as the isolation of lockdown settled on top of me. I became increasingly aware of how long it had been since I’d had contact with another human being; I tried hugging a tree while out on a walk but it just made me more grumpy as it was very much not the same. With so much time alone with my thoughts and emotions I got into an overthinking spiral about what I wanted – at times I was belligerent about being single forever, at others I was tearful about the prospect of never knowing real love.
I think part of the reason why I struggled with emotions so much in February was because I was doing my 40,000 word writing project, so everything was very raw and at the surface most of the time. While my memory of February is of me sitting in the middle of a blazing bonfire, rather a lot actually got done and rather a lot of breakthroughs happened. First of all, I wrote those 40,000 words that when in a few months I feel brave enough to revisit might form something, but if not it still feels like an achievement in commitment to creativity. After being chuffed to bits with climbing a 76m hillock (Dinas Emrys) at the beginning of January, I closed February summitting the 783m mountain MoelHebog – a measure of how far my confidence in my body, belief in my capabilities and willingness to challenge what is possible for me had come in two months.
I was reminded of a Glennon Doyle quote during the month: “there is a time for becoming and a time for writing about it”. This was a reluctant breakthrough for me. I’d set myself goals and timelines for the book I wanted to write, but I had to accept that the timeline for this wasn’t really up to me – I needed, need, to focus on becoming before I can force myself to write about it. So I let go of those expectations, and let go of most other expectations going into March. I realised that five of the main cornerstones of being ok as a human – finances, work, relationship, health, home – had all been uncertain question marks for me for months. I was holding them all up in the air and could feel the creeping fingers of burn out – not from work, but from life. So for March, the focus was to just put some things down.
At the beginning of March I moved back home and breathed deeply. I didn’t think that being back in my own space had affected me much, but when I look back on March I see my confidence piling back in. In January and February I had been clinging on the side of a freezing pool, but in March I was able to lean back and relax into it, finding that rather than consume me, the water would support me. I accepted that in order for my work to be in alignment I would have to make some more drastic changes and create a Simple & Season 2.0, and I committed to a longer, more thoughtful process to make that happen. I saw just how unhealthy a relationship I’d been clinging onto was and stood up for myself by removing it from my life.
Mostly I began to see how I’d created these rules for myself, around future dating and also around The Person I Was and what was possible for me. I had been so focused on making sure the next person was The Person, making sure that everything I did was exactly, perfectly what I wanted for the rest of my life. In March I found the space to look at these rules and wonder what the hell I was thinking. Q1 was so angsty, and much of that was angst of my own doing. I decided, instead, to “do some shit”. That is my new mantra. No expectation of being the best at something, or at something being forever – just do some shit. Try things, have a go, talk to people, have a crack at that mountain, get in the water even though it’s cold. More fun, more stories, more fullness.
And that’s where we are going into Q2. My intention for this new quarter is “get into it”. Get interested
in life and work again, do some shit, make some starts, get my fingers under the surface. I needed some space and openness in Q1 but did find that leaving the door wide open let in a lot of doubt and angst. So I’m experimenting with what it might be like to have fuller, more structured days going forward – what might be possible, what might be different, adding even just 5% more. I am starting to rearrange my motivations and am aiming to approach all of life with curiosity to see what sticks – because this is it. Our lives are not the big montages or points in the future, they are happening every day – and every day I want to live.
