When 2021 began, I told myself I will kind of turn things around. Turn things around from what exactly, you might ask. The answer is “I don’t know.” It’s been a while since I’ve known anything other than the fact that I need to turn things around. 

When the world went into lockdown in March/April, I got anxious not because I was worried about the world or worried about my future or my job. I got anxious because everyone was going to live a life I’d lived for a couple of years prior, ie, stay at home, sleep, and read books. I don’t exactly know why but I got worried that people would be better than me doing things I was doing. It’s actually stupid, now that I think about it because what this pandemic has taught all of us, is that we all deserve a break. 

I have been hearing a lot of growth, and contemplation stories coming out of the pandemic and it brings me absolute joy, to see people have been positively impacted by the lockdown as well. At least those like me who can afford to stay home and not worry about meals for the day. That they have started reading more, meditating, doing yoga, and all the things they’d put off doing before.

I had a list as well— to sleep mostly but a bit of reading, writing, and definitely continuing my blog actively. But I failed miserably like always. During the first two months of lockdown, April-May, I started actively taking part in various online workshops because 1) since they were online, I could stay in bed and do them and 2) I was afraid when things go back onsite, I would be missing them because of other works. I definitely had this fear of missing out on workshops and talks that I signed up for everything and sat through. As May ended, I joined a new workplace all confused because I had no idea what I was to do. The domain was completely new from what I’d been working on and I didn’t know if I should’ve taken the job or not. But because I was jobless and also because I knew if I wasn’t busy with something, I would have gone haywire by being stuck at home, I took the offer. Since then, I’ve gotten pretty busy, drowning myself in work rather than sleep. 

For I kept putting off sleep as this lockdown will last forever. For someone who thinks rest is more important than work, I kept putting off everything I wanted to do, sleep, create, and write for myself because I thought this lockdown would last forever. But like everything else, it ended and life has gone back to almost normal, and here I am feeling sad that I didn’t get to sleep (and write maybe but sleep mostly). 

So I start 2021 with one thing. To turn things around. And by turning things around, I probably mean hopefully a more systemized workflow so that I get to sleep and write and just stare at the wall till I feel guilty. Yeah, that’s all I want in life. Sleep and stare at the wall so much that I become sad for wasting my time instead of being sad that I didn’t. What are you thinking of?