Its 20 days into the new year 2016 and I still haven't had a chance to write about the year that went past. 2015 has been eventful to say the least. A lot has happened in this year and if you knew me in my previous avatar then you do know the intense internal pressure I feel to document atleast the highlights.... Here is where the most significant shift has happened.
2015 was a year where I was addicted to the internet for reasons I know, but don't want to acknowledge. It was the year that I spent more time online, via my phone, telling myself it was solitude. I lied to myself repeatedly that it was down time and yet deep in my heart I called that bullshit. Not out of my own genius, but because I was so fatigued by the end of August of all the information I was consuming but was unable to process. FB, Instagram and twitter, three parts of my poison, of which FB was the most cluttered. Combine inane updates from more than 650 "friends", auto play videos and articles, likes and shares. Soon FB became the only bit of internet real estate I was consuming on an hourly basis. There was so much information - good, bad and insignificant and I had nowhere to process or use it. For all those wise people who were naturally able to see this and call off this before it became bullshit, I commend you. For mortals like me, it took so much more time. Till I began getting so annoyed with the people populating my TL and myself for mindlessly consuming it. It was like sitting on a couch in front of brain dead TV and eating through a 5 kilo bag of chips and wondering why you felt like you sucked on an oil slick. Yes I pare my friends list each month, I change and alter my privacy settings to filter my TL, but that is just a small step. Then there is instagram and twitter (which I still don't get, but I am hanging onto).
Add to this a growing personal fatigue, in part because we hadn't taken a vacation in 20 months and forced financial goals that put a considerable amount of pressure on us.
We took a vacation in october finally after a week when I snapped in my head, had a mini meltdown which as always ends in a puddle of tears and snot. It was one of the best vacations we've had. I felt calm and relaxed and most of our time was just spent reading and sleeping. For the first two days, K and I were so exhausted, we slept more than Sage who usually clocks about 16 hours a day! I felt no compulsion to photograph or document digitally our time and I have such few pictures from the vacation, it is shocking to me. I documented it old style.... with a notebook and I loved that experience. The shift was very refreshing and it reinforced the fact that everything that was actually important to me was with me in that moment.
Blogging suffered as a result and my cooking blog saw such few recipe posts that it was something I was not happy about, but not enough to do something about. This space has always been my personal diary and except for a few instances this past week, it has remained just intensely personal where I write without grammar, syntax and coherence even. I use Social Media for work, but I am less inclined for now, to share too much personal stuff. There was an intense marriage of chaos and calm in my head and the clarity was a bulb aglow in the dark! hahaha
However in total contrast to the above passage, I need to tell you that one of the greatest and most intensely joyous things we did in 2015 was to purchase a farm, I haven't been able to write about it at all for all things silly and insane (ahem like the evil eye!). It has been a dream for K and me to have a space which is a green lung and offers refuge for us, the family and Sage to forget all our city worries and walk on wet loose earth. We began this journey in April 2015, scouting for something nice and I had the most beautiful advance birthday gift given to me in June with a sealed and signed deed. Cutting a long story short, we have built a really tiny and rustic cottage and rang in new years in a circle of love and a giant bonfire! I am excited to be growing vegetables and fruit and my heart can explode when I think of this gift. Also it usually ends in a pool of tears.
I know that my documentation of the year and its events is my way of reassuring myself that I did good, that I did something significant in the year. In which case, the good and happy far outweighs the sad and annoying parts of 2015.
In 2016, I want the shift to be from from counting my accomplishments to being able to feel gratitude for everything even if I failed, made an ass of myself and looked silly. At the end of this year, I want to look back with gratitude and grace. I wrote on instagram (I think) that 2015 was equal parts painful and fabulous and that I am carrying forward the fabulous. I hope I remember this when I am not feeling that courageous.
Grace is not something I offer easily to myself and therein lies the real struggle for me. A recurring theme this week in my life has been grace. I want to be able to give to myself what I so easily give to everyone and everything else in my life.
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