Month-in-Review Highlights: December 2020

Hot chocolate (with whipped cream and sprinkles, naturally) at home watching the New Year’s Eve celebration on France 2. Lausanne, Switzerland. December 31, 2020.

I postmortem each month shortly after it ends, reflecting on what happened in general and, more specifically, in the context of my goals. Though I don’t share all my insights here, I have made it a practice to share at least one key highlight or insight. (To read previous months’ reviews, click here.)

Reviewing my progress against the year’s goals in December feels like a wayback-machine voyage to November of the year before.

After all, by the beginning of January, I’ve already got my sights on what I’ve mapped for the year ahead—not on how well I did or did not achieve what I’d set out to do fourteen months ago.

Reviewing my 2020 goals progress in December had the same flavor this year as it has had in previous years, though with the now-familiar 2020 kick of watching the gods laugh at my best-laid plans.

By April 2020, assessing my progress each month against what I’d planned for the year in November 2019 felt like a farce. To ameliorate the damage, I’d attempted to review my goals pragmatically, shifting the action steps or the specifics of an objective to suit the intent of the goal in alignment with what the COVID-19 crisis, the haywire economy, and the attendant social and cultural changes had in order for us all. Where I could, I continued to move along my intended trajectory.

Not that I always could.

Something you may have intuited about me: I don’t tend to cut myself much slack. Typically, if I don’t achieve something, I blame myself for the miss. I didn’t work hard enough. I just don’t have enough intelligence or grit or savvy or guts or whatever-it-takes.

Yet when it came to 2020’s goals and plans, I conceded after considerable struggle that I did, in fact, need to cut myself some slack. That—really and truly and not just excuses-making—I could not blame or chastise myself for everything, and that certain influencing factors hover outside my realm of control, no matter how hard I may try to force them otherwise.

The joke that the only things certain in life are death and taxes is an old one for a reason. Uncertainty is the only certainty. Though I cognitively knew this, I didn’t internalize it until this past year. Giving myself the grace of a little slack, a little consideration, brought a lot of relief.

How did I do, then, in 2020?

If the question refers to how many objectives I could check off my list, I didn’t do well. Blame COVID-19 for some of them. For others, I can’t blame the coronavirus—not honestly.

However, if the question refers to overall personal growth, I believe that I did relatively well. In the relentless, exhausting, and wrenching struggle of 2020 across so many aspects of my life, I learned a lot. Though none of us could say that we loved the year, 2020 forced me to confront myself more fully and with new insights, to reassess what I actually want and how to achieve it, and to take account of what I can and cannot control.

What I’ve planned for the year ahead didn’t shrink or change simply because I didn’t get what I wanted from 2020; rather, my 2021 objectives stem from a shifted perspective. I’m thankful for that.

And so, while we still have plenty of uncertainty—and always will—I’ve added one more certainty to death and taxes:

While we live, we can grow.

P.S.—You need to see the New Year’s Eve fireworks show at the Château de Versailles, televised on France 2. I’ve never seen fireworks as magnificent.