The good, the bad and the ugly of 2020

As this year draws to a close, I have been reflecting on the good, the bad and the ugly of 2020 from my personal perspective. I think it is fair to say it has been a bizarre year but one that (for me) went very quickly. I thought I’d start with the bad part first so here it goes:

• I terribly missed being able to travel freely. I had plans to go to Lanzarote, Italy x3, California and Dubai this year (I have family in Italy and Dubai so some of those were my usual annual visits which I missed, bar a long stay in Italy in the summer).
• I missed not being able to go out for meals/drinks with friends.
• I missed not being able to teach yoga face-to-face. When you teach online, it is much harder to focus on your students and offer personalised advice as it’s hard to see them properly, so you end up pretty much practising with them (which is not a bad thing, just different!)

The list of what has been good was much longer, but I tried to keep it short for the purpose of this, so my top 3 or 4 are:

• I enjoyed not having to commute, thus having more time to take care of myself. I decided I’d walk at least 8,000 steps a day no matter what when the pandemic started, because I was worried that without a clear target, I’d end up sitting at my computer all day, and managed to keep that up.
• I loved having time to practise more yoga, bake my own sourdough bread almost every week, and cook a lot of new recipes. On the food front, although I missed meals out, it’s been quite delicious (and healthy).
• I read a lot of books, watched a lot of webinars and listened to a lot of podcasts. For someone who loves learning, having the time and the mental space to absorb new information has been a massive bonus.
• I had the opportunity to think about what is really important to me at this stage of my life and started to make some big decisions as a result. Whilst this is very much an ongoing process, I’m glad external changes triggered some important internal ones too.

I thought a lot about what to put in the ‘ugly’ list, and frankly the only thing I could think of that might turn ugly is Brexit, but I thought I’d leave it here for now…

What about you, have you had a chance to reflect on the last 12 months yet? I found the process quite therapeutic and would highly recommend it 😊

Have a restful Christmas, and may the New Year bring you everything you wish for (and more!)

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash