Pass Me A Tissue, Please!
2023 started with a...
Virus. The virus.
Yep. I saw in the New Year with the ‘Rona, Covid, It That Shall Not Be Named. We cancelled the four events we had planned (more than I’ve had for months…perhaps even years!), spending the week leading up to the New Year on the couch with a non-stop supply of tissues, water, and Netflix.
It wasn’t how I’d wanted the transition to 2023 to transpire. But we all know that even the intention of best-laid plans can be wiped from our minds and calendars thanks to invisible germs (looking at you, 2020-2021). It wasn't a bad few days despite using about 300 tissues, rubbing my nose raw, and waking myself up snoring #midlifedreams
I don’t mind being inside in the deepest darkest winter months. The Winter Wonderland that lasted about a day (Christmas Day!) has melted away in the zero-to-plus-two-degrees to a sloppy sludge that’s now a mud strip outside our apartment building (normally called an Esplanade but looks more like a mud run). It’s times like these I miss the sunburnt/burning/storm-filled/flood-ravaged country I come from. Things might be calmer here but I didn’t know I was signing up for months of slush, drippy clouds, or worse still, ice that will snap your bones if you happen to take a wrong step.
Yet here I am. Bones in one piece. Nose, no longer running. Even feeling positive about the year ahead!
Maybe living in the Happiest Country in The World is rubbing off?!
Or maybe I’ve assimilated. The bar is now so low that waking myself up snoring means I haven’t died, so I should celebrate instead! With a little shot of Jaloviina for breakfast. (In case you haven’t heard my theory as to why the Finns are so happy, it’s exactly this: low or no expectations. That bar is so low even Gumby couldn’t limbo under it!)
Seriously though, 2023 is looking to be a good one. Because I’ve decided it will be. And that’s key. The intention. I turn fifty at the end of the year so this year I’m saying goodbye to my forties and embracing a new decade (and yes, mum, I know I’m already in my 50th year!) It’s symbolic. A time where I can take time to reflect on what has come before and what might be. This brings me to the present.
Right now: I am sitting at the dining table, laptop in front of me, adjusting my posture so I don’t develop a hump, feeling my muscles (a little sore from the 30-day yoga challenge I’m doing with Yoga with Adriene - it’s free and amazing and it’s the fourth year I’m doing it!), there’s a strange noise that sounds like a high-pressure hose on the outside of the building but I can’t see anything and I don’t know who in their right mind would be doing that mid-winter so I just have to accept I may not find out what it is, and I’m writing.
Being present and sitting with my feelings (emotions and sensations) is one of the very wonderful things I am taking with me into 2023. I have slowly learned to listen to my body, to feel it, feel the sensations, and with that has come acceptance, an acceptance of how I’m feeling, perhaps even curiosity as to why I’m feeling it. I’m learning to be gentle with myself, lovingkindness. I’m my own friend. My inner critic has quietened down; I have become so much kinder, more loving, more accepting of myself. I am no longer a vessel that carries my head/intellect/brain around, but a more integrated being. It’s taken a while to get here, but I’m so very glad I’m here!
Perhaps it’s this new way of being that helped me see light in the runny-nosed, sneeze-filled transition from 2022 to 2023. Cancelled plans were let go of, with a brief moment of sadness, accepting the fact that staying at home was better for all of us.
Here’s to a wonderful, joy-filled 2023!
Lisa x
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Happy New Year, a little late. As I cruise through my seventies (an age I could never imagine before), invented learned to appreciate each day, including the unexpected upsets of life and my sometimes uncooperative body. Yoga with Adrienne keeps me flexible and balanced in mind and body. We don’t get much snow here in my part of Texas, but I love looking at the snowy scenes you and others post. Thanks!
Glad you are in the mend! Happy New Year, Lisa!