How 2020 was about mining light.

This piece started out as 5 things I’m leaving behind in 2020. It has morphed into 1- I suspect the one everything boils down to. 

As 2020 comes to a close – it’s become crystal clear the single most important thing I’ll need to leave behind is – Other People’s Lives. 

On the other side of this same coin…this year has been a full-on exercise in minding your lane, minding your circle, minding the business that pays you and minding your creative life.

Minding your lane: This one seems obviously but for the most part we are intrinsically entangled in the lives of others, our friends, co-workers, associates, lovers, partners – you name it. So much so that sometimes we are so vested in their decisions that we begin to take their decisions as personal triumphs or dismay (depending on the outcomes). This year has been an exercise in recognizing that other’s people’s lives (and subsequent decisions) are just that…their own. And yes, as friends, family and communal members of society we are all connected but the duality is although we are connected, we don’t own the decisions of others. And visa-versa. I used to get so vested in relationship discussions with my friends, and subsequently the decisions they made about their partners. Until a few years ago it dawned on me those aren’t my decisions to own, my role is to give support, give love and not be attached to their decisions. Admittedly, this can be hard, because ownership of our friends and their choices can feel deeply personal, almost obligatory. It can feel as if our ownership of their decision is directly correlated to how much we love/care about that person. This is absolutely not true. The best thing we can do for ourselves, and others, is allow the freedom of not holding them to task about their decisions; this is not the same as holding others accountable. And this freedom goes both ways. The unavoidable solace of this year really solidified this stance for me. I saw the people I love most, less frequently, it made this reflection a bit easier as there was space for this type of assessment. 

What I also discovered this year is the need to practice reinforcing aggressive boundaries with others about your life. Just as we must give others freedom to their choices, we must be vigilant this is reciprocated. Nowhere provides a clearer example of this than observing a discussion between a single female with no children over 33 and any of her counterparts – particularly those with children. If you are a single female and over 33 years old, the questions go something like this – When are you gonna have kids? What’s wrong with you, why you not married? Are you gay? You must be too focused on your career, that’s why you’re single. The list goes on and on but I think these are the core questions/statement. Let me know if I missed any. With the advent of home school and remote work, this year I discovered the beauty that is a child free life. And in full transparency, I loved every minute of it. Period. While I’m still on the fence about whether I’ll have children, I think children are a true blessing and maybe one day I’ll transition to the role of parent. For now, my decision to have a child free life is as valid as any other choice. This year has been a practice in reinforcing boundaries with friends and others (who are often partnered and parenting) about fully respecting my decisions about family planning. This can admittedly be a hard conversation to have with friends, since I’m often met with some version of the assumption- “your life can’t be that busy/worthwhile in the absence of children and/or partner.” The 20-year-old me wants to say – “You might see me in these streets…but chu don’t KNOW ME!” *insert clapping hands* But I digress. Part of minding my own life this year involved setting boundaries with others about their level of respect for my life choices, making clear their permission was not needed for me to live a full life, and that the respect I give to their life choices is a reflection of what I anticipate in return. 

Minding your circle: I have a handful of critical friends; the people I know will pick up whenever I call. The people who will post bail money without asking what happened. I’ve memorized only one of their numbers, and she knows all the others. Minding this circle of critical friends has been in the process of maturation over the years, with lots of pruning, watering, dry spells and tilling of soil. This year the cycle in this process was maturation, seeds flowering during what – at least on the outside – appeared to be a drought. My friends and family bloomed in all their glory this year.  It reminded me of the time I bought buds from Home Depot…in one of those Spring frenzies when everyone’s planting something so I bought a bud and planted it in a huge pot. It took forever to bloom, though I watered it and kept it in the sun. It took so long to bloom that summer came and went and it began to get cold. Finally, out came one of the most beautiful flowers ever. Like the ones you draw on notebooks in high-school…yes the one with all the layers…it’s like that came to life. I had no clue what the flower was because the packaging was long gone, but it was beautiful. That was my circle this year, a beautiful maturation of seeds long planted. 

Minding your paper! If nothing became more apparent in 2020, it’s the need to mind yo’ paper! Minding the business that pays you. For the first time, in a long time, I heard more and more friends and colleagues talk about pursuing entrepreneurial goals. More and more conversations about transforming ones’ talent into making a living. I’ve always had a subset of friends who are purely business people, but this year felt as though more and more people were interested in taking the risk that is self-employment. Being raised by a businesswoman, I’ve always known two things about entrepreneur life – 1. It is a pathway to certain freedoms and 2. It ain’t for everybody. Certainly not for the faint of heart. It was delightful to hear more conversations with my girlfriends shift from “how’s that guy you were dating?” to “watch your stocks…I hear this is a good buy.” It’s a shift I waited a long time for. Talking about dating can be fun though I often feel too much time is spend talking about dating patterns and not enough on wealthy building and financial health. In this instance, I’m referencing informal discussions, not seminars/webinars/etc. – but brunch! I’ve always enjoyed talking about men…and money too! With so many of us losing employment, losing income and its subsequent effects on critical parts of our life – it’s in this space that many have taken side hustles more seriously, or added new side hustles where there was none. It calls to mind a note I made to self a few years back while listening to a Tim Ferris podcast – many think the triumph is in victory, when the triumph is actually in the struggle, it’s in the grit, when we are working hard…that’s where the triumph happens. It’s also an important reminder that the fruits of our labor don’t always bear, some seedlings don’t make it to maturity. The balance in life is to be as equally accepting of the flowering as we are with the pruning. I imagine, many people will gain great financially from the actions they pursue, or didn’t pursue, this year. Not everyone will. Both positions are valid.

Minding your creative life: Once in college, I read a piece at Open Mic night. It’s one of those nights you remember in great detail decades later, for so many reasons. For one, it was the first time a man described me as the “quintessential around the way girl” *; to say was I was flattered is an understatement. Anyway…outside of flirting… I remember being scared out of my mind; hearing my heart pounding in my ears didn’t make it any better. In that moment, on Douglas Campus, in the small, cramped and dimly lit Student Center conference room, I thought – what am I doing here impersonating someone creative? I thought I was wasting the time of real creatives, people who did poetry slams (when that was a thing) and wrote songs and played instruments. What was I doing here? I still got on stage though. It would be the first and last (at the writing of this) time in my adult life that I read prose out loud publicly. Although I wrote many pieces over the years, those notebooks and scrap papers may never see the light of day. I was 19 then. For another 17 years, I wouldn’t consider myself a writer. I wouldn’t utter the words in reference to myself, out of fear of offending real writers. Published writers. Paid writers. And all the other criteria generally ascribed to “real” writers. Now, admittedly, writing has always been a hobby and not representative of my sole livelihood. In many ways writing has kept me alive, kept me connected to my intuition, kept me linked to a purpose higher than myself, it has tethered me to creation itself. There is something unexplainably magical, other worldly, about creating something where nothing previously existing. It’s a birth every time. It’s manifesting a piece of yourself in the physical world, holding it up to the light and making a gift of it. This year in particular, creating felt more crucial than any other time in my life. It’s why I’ve publicly shared more bodies of work than ever before. In this space that can feel dismal, where it feels like death and mayhem is always afoot, creating was a reminder that life is on the other side of that same token. A reminder that individually (and collectively) we have the power to manifest in the world something that only we can. It was a practice in accepting the duality of life and exercising the power we have to give a piece of ourselves in all we create back to the universe that has given (and taken from ) so much to us. 

**For the first time in 2020, during a group discussion, a friend introduced me as a writer (among other descriptors) and for the first I didn’t question the validity of that assertion.**

This discussion started with leaving behind the lives of other people and transitioned to a focus on the thing we have the most apparent opportunity to impact – ourselves. This year brought with it sadness, pain, anarchy, hopelessness and suffering. If I’m being honest, that sentence should read – This year highlighted sadness, pain, anarchy, hopelessness and suffering. They’ve always been here; 2020 brought them squarely to our attention in an acute way on a global scale. Baldwin said it best, “…suffering doesn’t isolate you. Suffering is your bridge. Many people have suffered before you. Many people are suffering around you. And always will. And all you can do is bring a little light into that suffering.” 

2020 has been about mining life, more specifically your own; foraging for light in dark spaces. Light that is always present – it manifests itself as joy, love, happiness and peace. 

I hope this piece brings a bit of light for your journey. Until 2021, walk gud. 

*See LL Cool J – Around the Way Girl, circa 1990, eternal classic