If there’s anything to describe 2020, it’d be this phrase nicked from one of the readings on “The Daily Stoic Journal”. (It’s also one of the reasons why I managed to finish the journal in the first place. I started it in 2019, but only completed only around 5% by the end of that year. Oops.)
With everything going on, there was a lot of waiting. And putting plans on hold, if not cancelling them entirely. While there were milestones, there were no big celebrations. It just felt like a quiet, subdued year. Plodding along slowly, steadily.
This year, I learned how to do things little by little. An hour of exercise a day, and I’ve now done heaps more exercise than the previous year. Fifteen minutes of Español each morning and I’ve completed several online courses (and feeling a lot more fluent than when I stopped studying years ago). Thirty minutes of sewing and I’ve made around a dozen items of clothing in 2020, more than I made from the past years put together (and that’s not even counting masks). This year had more baking, more cooking, more piano playing, more meditation.
I always thought that I never had as much time as I wanted for my hobbies. I used to want to wait for long stretches of time to do things and complain that I never got to complete the projects I wanted to. But now I know, this small, steady bit of effort, no matter how unexciting it feels, all adds up sooner or later. Brick by boring brick.