Making Better Decisions

Was 2020 the most stressful and worst year of your life? For me, 2020 was a welcome change of pace – the first time in 14 years that I was spending time at on weekdays at home. Prior to that, I was away in the UK for university and then I was in the office and travelling every week to a different city. My husband was always in his own parallel travels and we met over the weekends and made the best of what we could with our makeshift family structure. After having a newborn, it was the first time the three of us were under the roof for more than 3 nights in a row. It only took us 11 months of being parents to achieve that and yet – if not for COVID, we may have never achieved that. So the year of 2020 for us masked the small cracks and aggressions that COVID was chipping into my life, mind and thoughts and I didn’t really notice it until this year when I realised how anxious I still was, not just from the pandemic but also from having to constantly make decisions that didn’t exist before. In the past – all I really had to do was work in the office (while missing my son) and then play with my son in my exhausted sleep deprived stage. Now we had to make plans about toddler developments, monitoring milestones, figuring out which classes, meal plans, getting everyone to eat the meals cooked, the post meal clean ups and the shopping to and grocery planning. A break was going was somewhere where I didn’t have to make conversation with anyone or plan how to entertain anyone. At work, the loneliness was kicking in and along with that – the self doubt of how much better everyone else was doing, how in control and organized everyone was and chiding myself for the opposite. Last year, an accomplishment was being able to score hand sanitizer at peak COVID. This year, I was catching up to all the health goals, cooking goals, work goals everyone had achieved last year and I was nowhere near close. 2021 has been a year of so much joy interacting with a toddler but also a lot of guilt and anxiety and bad decision made from a constant fight/flight mode. At times, 32 years of age feels like it’s too late to fix anything and sometimes it feels like 32 years is the time to really take charge and change the direction of one’s life. As I waver between one thought of despair and one of extreme pressure – I’m going to take a deep breath in, count to four, and tell myself that as long as I can make good decisions that are well thought out – that will be the biggest accomplishment and skill of 2021. On that note, I’m going to try out Headspace for a year to rewire and hopefully rearrange the triggers in my mind to make more calm and positive links rather than extreme outcomes. I’ll try it out for a few months and do a monthly update on any changes I notice.