What I learned from 2020

So it's that time of year again, when we reflect on the previous year and set goals for ourselves for the upcoming one. Let's just say I had a lot to think about with this. First off my 2020 was actually pretty good all things considered, I know a lot of people had to face many hardships last year, and I had my own that I had to endure, but on a scale of 1 to 10, it was a solid 9, maybe even better than that. Now I don't say this to brag or to denote all the people that had suffered during the pandemic. I just say it to help tell this story and because it was my experience. In 2020 not only did I start talking to and dating the love of my life, but we got to spend a lot of precious time together. Time I don't know that I would've had if I had been working all these months during covid. And that being said comes goal #1: To simply be better. Let me explain, in all the time I have spent with this amazing man I have learned a lot about myself, just from being stuck inside for almost a full year, but we also got to talk, a lot, and it was really eyeopening. And one humongous thing I learned, even though I pride myself on being a good person, he's an even better one, and it just reminds me that no matter what, I can still work to be even better of a person than I am now. Thanks, babe!

Now being that my 2020 felt like a 9 out of 10 does not at all mean that I didn't have my struggles too. Now I'm an introvert too, but being cooped up in basically just a bedroom for almost a whole year is a lot for anyone to handle. Especially when you're doing it while unemployed, with new roommates you've now realized you're not that fond of, on top of being in a new relationship. Trust me it's been a bit hectic. Now with the roommates, it's a long story but I'll tell you the short version. I was desperate for an apartment and couldn't afford one on my own, covid just started, and my previous roommate went back home to his family. I couldn't start living with my boyfriend for obvious reasons, we just started dating, and even though I knew of my roommates I didn't really know them. From the moment we even tried applying for the apartment to when the lease started things quickly started going downhill and even now when I will only be there for a month and a half more, I still hate going over there. And once again my now fiance was always my hero, I can't tell you how many times I complained to him about it, and yet he was always right there to listen. That was another big part of this next goal I'm getting too, here's this guy I just started dating and even though he has always been more than willing to listen, I still think I complained to him way too much about my roommate problems. So this brings me to goal #2: Stop stressing/Don't sweat the small stuff. Because the reality here is your boyfriend should never be acting as your therapist and even though I'm not a huge fan of my roommates, I won't have to live with them forever, so for me to put so much time and effort into worrying about living with them for just a few more months is just a waste of time. So in 2021, I want to try to meditate every day, to keep focused on the important things, and clear my mind of all the things I shouldn't even be worrying about.

Now this time I'm going to work backwards and tell you my goal first, then explain it. Goal #3: Eat better & Exercise more. This is a big one. So I have always been a sweet tooth pretty much since I was born, but it didn't really start bothering me until the middle of 2020. You see I really don't eat the best, like at all, and some of the things I was eating were starting to make me feel more sluggish and sick than anything else. On top of that, I started getting pains in my body I had never had before along with my heart randomly speeding up, usually after I had something with a lot of sugar. And if that wasn't bad enough I started having my usual sleep problems again. Although I had never been diagnosed, I sort of decided I most likely suffer from insomnia because since I was young, I don't remember too many nights where I actually slept all night. However on the occasions when I would stay over at my boyfriend's place he would say I would instantly fall asleep once we said goodnight and I would always sleep GREAT. We had this joke for a while that I would sleep so well at his place because I was just so comfortable around him because I never slept that good anywhere else. Thing is in the past few months my sleepless nights have returned even when I stay over, where for a few nights in a row I would wake up, fail to fall back asleep, get on my phone to pass the time, and not fall back asleep until about 3 hours later. It's awful, but it's also probably my fault because of the way that I eat and not really exercising that much. So I really need to get on that, my plan is to work out about 3 days a week for no more than 1 hour. All the other days my fiance and I have decided to take short morning walks and for me to do some situps to help strengthen my core for my singing. As of right now, we're off to a good start.

Okay, for this fourth one, this is another mental-emotional thing, but one I have dealt with pretty much all my life. So I'm the type of person where teachers of mine had once put it, "You like to suffer in silence" and "You're not very nice to yourself". There is no denying either of those, but that being said I honestly believe in 2020, the time I have spent with my incredible partner has actually helped me get better with that. We both had many hours of talking about problems we've had with family and in life and how we've learned from them and what we want to do better. It might be safe to say that he agrees with me when saying it helped us create a great foundation for us and our relationship in the future, otherwise I'm not sure why he proposed. Or maybe it's just a part of it. My point is that some of these things were things I was never able to talk about with anyone before and even when I did things would either stay the same or sometimes even get worse. And again just because we both loved that we got to spend so much time together during quarantine doesn't mean things were all peaches and cream. We had some squabbles too, although rare, that fact that regardless of what happened that I knew we could talk about it made all the difference. Because we never got to a point where we had an all-out screaming match that ended with no resolution and our relationship possibly being in jeopardy. We took a breath, talked about it, and then things would be right as rain again, and I think that's so important especially because I have never truly had that with anyone. So with that comes goal #4: Be more open/Let go of the past. At the end of the day, we are what we experience, but we can't hold onto those things if they could possibly affect your future in a negative way with the most important people in your life. And even though this will be the hardest goal to work on this year I know I can do it because he's worth it, and I think anyone in a serious committed relationship deserves that.

Of course, my last goal has to do with money, but I feel like everyone always has a money goal so I guess that just makes me part of the group. Although this year it's more important than ever for me to save money because now I have my wedding to save for. Even though my future husband and I agreed that we don't want to go overboard on the budget for it, you only get married once, (that's the plan and we're sticking to it!) so we still want to make it really special. Or as he says, he wants it to be big. But even with that, I have student loan bills to pay. Thankfully from unemployment payments I was able to make a small dent in them but I still have a long way to go and I would like to have half of it paid off by the wedding, but we'll see what happens. Then there is the fact that we both love to travel and have always said we wanted to go to Europe together, obviously when it's safe to do so. Plus he's already been, so I'm a little jealous. And we want to have a family one day and he has this disillusion that we are going to have like 7 kids. I refuse to have more than 3, my body can only take so much. It may seem like I'm a million steps ahead, but if you don't enjoy and prepare while you can life will pass you by. It feels like I just had my 22nd birthday and now I have already turned 23 less than a week ago. I just feel like when you save in advance, it gives you less worry and more time to enjoy later on. So again goal #5: Save more money, because it can only benefit you. Both my fiance and I are big believers in that, yet another reason why we're great together.

So even though 2020 had its moments of being a roller coaster for everyone, I really don't have much to complain about. I learned a lot and am now engaged to the most amazing person in the world because of it. But now it's a new year and I couldn't be more excited, and I really think if I stick to my new year's goals, it might be the best year of my life yet!