Bye, Felicia

It's new year's eve and I'm pretty grateful for 2020, wierd, I know...but I'll let you know why here in a minute.

So, I found a half written blog post about how I discovered that I like to write....interesting. It is true, as long I as I get to write about things I care about and experiences that will help others. In 2020, I discovered many things:

1. I'm damn good at writing a Google review and I should be getting some free meals in 2021...or else.
2. I love the beach and sand isn't that bad after all.
3. Quit worrying so much, the cosmetics to correct the wrinkles cost too damn much.
4. Embrace the suck. Brene Brown is my hero for 2020, her books have made me a better person with the help of a whole host of other people in my life, some new additions and some who have been around for years.

This morning I was reading The New York Times, I feel super adult to say that, and an article about lessons we learned from the pandemic caught my attention. I've included the link below if you would like to read it; however, I'm going to take the questions they asked others and provide my responses, it is almost therapeutic to go through this exercise.

What vice have you turned to, to get through the days during the pandemic?

I do love a good dirty martini and an ambien before bed, so this is a tough question. Online shopping is a huge vice of mine, I love it, loved it before the pandemic. I order everything online; however, I do love a good trip to the store for some retail therapy.

What is a new skill you’ve learned this year?

Well.......I'm not sure if I learned a new skill, but I'm learning to be a better husband, everyday. When you are single for most of your adult life, and then you get married at the beginning of a pandemic....well, you learn a lot about each other because you are together constantly. The married people reading this, you feel me.

What is the best purchase you’ve made during the pandemic?

We bought a condo in October in Fort Lauderdale, FL. It was the right time to make that jump. I'm glad we did it. It's small and just an escape from the cold in the winter and a place to relax.

If you could go back to last March, what is one tip you would tell yourself about surviving the rest of the year?

Patience and self-care will be a must! In a job where others are in your care it is critical that you have some down time to re-charge, think about what's happening, and understand what you do and do not have control over. It can be so frustrating that everything takes twice as long, or that Trader Joe's is limiting capacity in their stores and the soccer mom's who don't work insist on shopping on Saturday morning when you are just needing to restock on short bread and dark chocolate peanut butter cups!!

Is there something in your life that you used to do before the pandemic but won’t do again in the future?

Binge watch the Crown, it makes me sad when I watch them all in two days and now I have to wait two years for the next season. UGH.

What is one thing you don’t want to forget from this year?

So I'm going to change this question:

What are the top three important things in life that you learned from the pandemic?

1. Embrace the suck.
2. Surround yourself with those who are in the arena with you.
3. Be brave

I'll close with this. If you are #teambrene you know it well, if you haven't read Dare to Lead, I would challenge you do to so in January of 2021. 

On April 23, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt gave what would become one of the most widely quoted speeches of his career. The former president—who left office in 1909—had spent a year hunting in Central Africa before embarking on a tour of Northern Africa and Europe in 1910, attending events and giving speeches in places like Cairo, Berlin, Naples, and Oxford. He stopped in Paris on April 23, and, at 3 p.m. at the Sorbonne, before a crowd that included, according to the Edmund Morris biography Colonel Roosevelt, “ministers in court dress, army and navy officers in full uniform, nine hundred students, and an audience of two thousand ticket holders,” Roosevelt delivered a speech called “Citizenship in a Republic,” which, among some, would come to be known as “The Man in the Arena.”

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Bye 2020, we won't miss you.

How We Got Through and What We Missed Most: Lessons From a Pandemic Year https://nyti.ms/3o1saKM