I have finally sat down to complete my first post, after creating my site a month ago. Why the delay? I have thus-far delayed creating a blog for many years, in spite of wanting to many times. I told myself I didn’t have enough time, I didn’t have a cohesive narrative that I wanted to convey to the world. I don’t have enough recipes to create a food blog, or lifestyle tips, or political views, or something I want to teach the world. I also have a fear of my personal information being widely visible on the internet. I am an extremely private individual, and prior negative experiences with Facebook and other forms of social media have made me extremely apprehensive about posting my life on the internet for all to see. So what changed? This year changed everything for me, as it did for a majority of Americans. I have found myself cycling through a myriad of emotions this year, from anger to frustration, to boredom, loneliness, sadness, fear, worry, doubt, emptiness, uncertainty, physical and mental exhaustion, with the occasional feeling of happiness and relief sprinkled in there. My entire life and worldview has changed this year, which has brought up this blogging concept for me. Not only do I have more free time, but I have a need to get my thoughts out. I hope to be able to look back on this in the months and years that follow and be grateful for the life that I live then, and to have learned from the experiences I have had in this dreadful year.
Most Americans have had to drastically change their entire lifestyle due to the coronavirus. I am extremely lucky in the fact that I:
- Still have my job, and will reap decent financial benefits from it at the beginning of next year due to an annual bonus that is based on sales. While some people are struggling or have been laid off, I am still able to pay my bills.
- I don’t have children, so I don’t have to worry about their schooling, or them catching the virus, or providing for them. I live alone currently, so I only have to provide for myself.
- I am in good physical health and have actually utilized this time to improve upon myself, which is a positive thing.
While I am grateful that my lifestyle has not been drastically altered by 2020, I have still had a very damaging and trying year. First of all, I ended a 4-year relationship with someone who I thought for sure was “the one”, if there is even such a thing. While I’m not going to elaborate on this right now in this post, this has been a battle I have been fighting simultaneously while keeping my head above water at work. My job has been a place I have gone to in order to seek respite from a trying home situation, and this year everything has changed on my job front as well. I was up for a promotion, which has been drastically put on hold until the world settles down. This, in turn, has held up the rest of my life, as I would presumably be moving to achieve this promotion. I have been faced with the choices of renewing my lease or not, applying for other positions, or sitting around and waiting it out. Like most people, my life is stuck in suspended animation right now, which is extremely frustrating. On top of this, I have had the fortune of replacing all 4 tires on my vehicle, and more recently at the end of July, replacing my entire transmission, which was obviously costly. Most troubling of all of this is that my father is in poor health due to a heart condition, which is further exacerbated by my mother’s drinking and quarantine from work. All of this combined has given me a new outlook on life, and I am determined to remain positive in the face of trying circumstances. With this blog, I hope to get out some of my pent-up frustration, while having a record of what this time in my life has been like.