Re-emergence
I’ve been contemplating a return to blogging for a couple of months and finally I’m here! with lots to say on various topics; I have a Hundred Helpful Thoughts project I’m working on, and various thoughts about lockdown life which we’re still one-foot-in here. Like most people, it’s been a year since I was office-bound, socialising and travelling as a norm and I am trying to separate the ways that year has shaped me for the future into distinct threads - which I think writing will help with.
I live alone and lockdown has been a combination of getting insanely comfortable within my four-wall-fortress, and confronting the internal landscape of my mind. This mental world expanded to fill the space left by events, socialising, roaming, exploring, commuting, and all the outside-home things we’ve no longer been able to do - even when I’ve been outside walking I’ve been further into my head having conversations about what’s happening (or not). There has been nowhere to hide from parts of my own persona that I’d previously tried to muffle with my busy life, and like it or not I have had to face down discomforting trains of thought and self-conceptualisation that have dogged me most of my life. Regardless of how lonely and unforgiving that’s felt at times, I feel much stronger in terms of not hiding from myself (and no longer needing to), having a good think about how I want to combine what I’ve got inside and honour what I am with the life that I’m living, and settling on some pretty big changes in what I’m actually doing with my time. I would sum this up as a massive formative process and a shift in fundamental values and it turns out that what’s important to me is different from what was important when I was engaged in this cover-up web of a lifestyle. Many things have become vastly clearer.
My biggest takeaways have been:
Values-wise, my priority is freedom, especially the freedom to live each day as it comes, let it unfold as it will and embrace the unexpected.
Ironically, social distancing has given me back the power to determine how I choose to interact with the world and those around me.
I have to take responsibility for myself, and I’ve learnt that I can trust myself to do the things that matter - this is a huge relief. Independence and freedom go hand in hand and I’m less anxious the less reliant I need to be on others.
Overall I see this as a tale of empowerment.
Things I’m still working on:
Courage
Self-expression
Contributing, sense of purpose
Balance
If my driving force is no longer (or decreasingly) fear and anxiety, what is my life built on now?