Lockdown Diary: New Year’s Eve. Farewell to 2020.

Oh, I was going to write you such an end-of-the-year post. It was going to be magnificent. It would have everything in it and it would send you into 2021 with a smile on your face and a dance in your step.

But my work ran away with me and now it’s 6.45pm and I have no words left in me. 

So all I can do is wish you a happy New Year. I wish you hope and love and laughter. I wish that your – our – broken hearts will mend. I wish that all of us will find consolation in each other, in the kindness of strangers and the comfort of old friends. I wish for everyone a renewed resilience, a springing dauntlessness, a sense of purpose. 

If I have learned one thing this year, it is the power of choice. That doesn’t sound very romantic or stirring or poetic, but I think it is elemental. I have found that I can choose: whether to allow myself to get mired in the depths or to move upwards towards the light. I can choose to admit vulnerability, to ask for help, to embrace my flaws. I can choose authenticity, and forgiveness, and compassion. I can choose to laugh instead of cry. (Although I remain convinced of the wonderful release of a damn good cry.) I can choose a bit of stoicism and some carrying on and often a bit of swearing and maybe a little stamping and stomping to get the gremlins out. I choose honesty and good manners and kindness.

Most of all, I choose hope. 

It’s a deliberate choice. I think it’s a good one. I wish that for you, for all of us: a hope for a brighter day, literally and metaphorically.

Thank you for coming on this funny little journey with me. 2020 has been so strange and baffling and difficult, and the only thing I know to do with difficult things is write them down. I find solace, as always, in words. And I love the fact that you, Dear Readers, were kind enough to read them.