My 2020 in review

I meant to write a summary of my 2020 for New Year but didn’t reserve the time to sit down and turn my notes into sentences. Then I thought I could finish it for my birthday in February – but that still didn’t happen. So the anniversary of lockdown will have to do instead, before the whole thing is out of date.

This probably won’t be what you expect to hear, but I actually had a really good year, one of my best years in a long time. It had its fair share of stress but in general the pandemic didn’t cause me any noticeable upheaval, if anything it was good for me. So why was that? I’ve thought about it and identified four reasons. Firstly – the areas where other people struggled, aside from financial impacts, seemed to be mainly because they couldn’t see their friends and if they could they weren’t allowed to go anywhere with them. This is my life on a normal day, pandemic or not! I don’t have friends that I meet up with, and I rarely go out socially. So my life was poo anyway in that sense! This causes me anxiety and stress and unhappiness and has done for about 10 years, so the pandemic didn’t introduce anything new there, it’s tough but it’s also what I’m used to, and for once everyone else was in the same boat so my issues seemed less dramatic and I was less isolated. The second reason, is that I applied the same approach to the pandemic that I apply to when things are poo anyway, and that is to try and live the best life I can. I consciously decided to live out my life in spite of the changes, rather than to wait until things were back to ‘normal’, because I had heard knowledgeable talk early on that we were in this for the long haul. Thirdly, I never expect things to be a certain way (or perhaps the only way that I expect never happens so I'm used to expecting the unexpected), so even if something really unusual happens I tend to just accept that and get on with it. Finally the fact that our lives suddenly shrunk, was actually beneficial to me. I finally realised that the on-edge feeling that I’ve been experiencing for many years was anxiety, and it came from not having an anchor (for me that would be a family or a best friend or some close friends) and without this I didn’t know how to focus my time, and I would spend all my time searching for that missing link, and my search would take me further and longer and wider each time to maximise every opportunity available. When the pandemic hit, you may think that my anxiety would increase as I could no longer go in search of this missing link, but actually the fact that all options were entirely taken away meant that I was forced to relax and slow down. To simplify my life. To sit in the garden. To run the same running route as yesterday. To meet the neighbours and talk to passers by in the park, and develop friendships from this. To get fish and chips from the van every Friday. To do all the normal, local, sedentary things that I once did but had become so detached from when instead I started responding to each and every stimulus the world offered me. I wouldn’t have been able to make a conscious decision to stop, but when the world’s stimuluses were taken away, that decision was made for me. And my anxiety completely went away.

It sounds fairly blissful and in terms of a reassuring and limited routine and lack of anxiety it was, but there were still large periods of extreme unhappiness. I started a career change on the 30th March, one week into lockdown, and I was really out of my depth. And there were personal difficulties too, so it wasn’t all rosy. But actually, these also taught me more about myself as a person, I learnt a lot there.

But back to the good stuff. What did I do that made it such a great year, what was it that I did regardless of the restrictions? Exercise was a large part of it. I started training again in March after a break over the winter, and set myself a challenge to run at least 100 miles a month which I met (at least until I borked my ankle on 24th January 2021), totalling 1190 miles over the year. I took on some big personal challenges too - a multi-day self-supported trip on the north Cornish coast in September totalling 100 miles in a week when I slept half of the nights in B&Bs and half in a bivvy bag on the trail. In October I also ran 35 miles coast to coast across Cornwall to get an FKT (‘Fastest Known Time’ – all the rage for runners with events being cancelled, and good for me as I prefer challenges to races anyway). I gave myself full potential to enjoy the value of the outdoors by cutting out digital time sinks – I gave up Hollyoaks and Pokemon Go for lent and didn’t take them up again, and in June when I moved houses to rent a little space mostly to myself, I stopped watching TV for the rest of the summer.

As well as the running there was much swimming too, 54.4 miles swum in total over the year, up 12 miles on 2019, and every stroke of it was in open water. The mileage was less of note than the swims themselves – I thankfully realised quite early on that swimming was something that could still be done inside the restrictions, and I could enact my mental wishlist of particular swims that I wanted to do. I did a linear 4km swim from Paignton to Torbay, swum through the arch of London Bridge, circumnavigated Burgh Island, and much more. A lot of that was with a wonderful, fun, friendly group of 4 other swimmers, who are my mermaid pod and became good friends. It has been 10 years since I had a regular group of people that I met up with for activities. From 2004 to 2009 I went rock climbing every weekend, met hundreds of climbers many of whom knew each other in overlapping circles, and ended up part of a close knit group of like-minded friends. When I stopped climbing I lost that feeling of belonging and nothing has ever filled its place – until now, and I am very thankful for the development.

There were a few notable other things that passed the time. One was bird watching, and thanks to living in a new part of the country I ticked off some more firsts there, with my first sightings of Dartford warblers, avocets, cirl buntings, lesser spotted woodpeckers and crossbills. There was also Topsham folk club, I participated in this before lockdown but sometimes I found it hard to leave the house and go there – with it moving online it was much easier to engage reliably, and my guitar playing has improved when I was forced to accompany myself rather than co-opting others in. I also got to try new things such as sailing, and paddleboarding on the sea.

All of these achievements alone don’t account for my happiness, I know that in the past when I have posted about my runs and swims on facebook people believe that I am happy and fulfilled but that’s far from the truth, filling my time with achievements is something I do as focus to keep my head straight, and a distraction from not having what I really want. So the big thing that made 2020 special was having a companion. In addition to my new found mermaid swim pod, I gained a valuable friend - for 4 months of the summer as a boyfriend, but when that wasn’t quite the right option I gained a best friend instead. Someone who understood the value of a shared experience and how it surpasses two individual ones. We ran various stretches of coast path in Cornwall, slept out in the car, had parties in the garden, went on various wildlife trips, some more successful than others, cut each other’s hair, had a tomato growing competition, made wine and cider, and I even got to try my hand at giving swimming lessons. We even established ourselves as locals at the nearby woodland cafe, it's decades since I was a regular at a pub, and is quite a special pub in the woods, with with an outdoor kitchen and seating and half price cocktails. This companionship has brought me a contentedness that I have been lost without, and helped prevent my anxiety from coming back as the restrictions eased in the summer and our worlds expanded.

There was an element of luck too. I got to celebrate my 40th birthday with a group of friends in February, I was lucky to see my parents in March just before lockdown started, and in June before further restrictions. The timing of my September running trip was also spot on, thanks to a prudent punt by my aunt which I would have missed otherwise.

I was conscious of this luck, and also that I was in a great position with a good job and good health, and I tried my best to not take anything for granted, and to be aware of the situations of others. It was important to make the most of things for my own health and wellbeing, but this didn’t mean I couldn’t think of others so I tried to help wherever I could. I started donating regularly to a charity in Laos, as well one-off donations to local charities and I started putting an item into the food bank every time I went to the supermarket. I made an effort to support local shops and quiet pubs. I bought things for friends where I could, and put out intermittent offers to help in any way feasible, whether that be a phone-call or a purchase or support of a business. I hope my friends know that this offer of help still stands, any time. And I hope my story of having a good year doesn’t make anybody feel sad that they didn’t, we all have different stories to tell and they're all valid.