I can’t believe we have hit December.
DECEMBER!
More than that, I can’t believe we’ve hit December and I’m still in lockdown … albeit in a totally different country to the one I was in last year.
Madness.
Given the last 365 days have basically been Groundhog Day, I’m amazed how quick this year has gone.
You’d expect it to have felt slow … but far from it.
For us, it’s been a huge year filled with huge changes – and I’ll be writing a huge post all about it in the next few weeks [don’t roll your eyes, ha] – but before that, we have Otis’ 7th birthday to celebrate and we need to find a way where he can feel the love and attention of his friends and family, as this will be the second year he’ll be experiencing it on his own.
I remember when birthdays were such a big thing.
A sign of growth … independence … power.
Of course, when you’re my age, you tend to look at them as indicators of getting old, irrelevance and impending death [hahahaha!] which leads me to something I read recently from Tom Goodwin.
It was this:
I have to say, it stopped me in my tracks.
Yes, it’s obvious, but when you see it written like that, you tend to re-evaluate what you’ve done and what you still want to do.
I am increasingly becoming aware of my mortality.
I’ve written about it before … but while I am not in a depth of depression, there is a part of me that acknowledges I am approaching the final 1/3rd of my race, despite having the hunger, energy and ambition to go a lot further.
It’s quite unnerving.
You look at everything with fresh eyes.
You ask yourself if you’ve done enough or are doing enough.
I don’t mean in terms of career – though there is a bit of that – I mean in life in general.
I look back on what I’ve done – and I acknowledge, I’ve done a bunch – and sometimes wonder if it was all a dream.
So much of it seems like it belongs to another person’s life.
Or another version of mine.
China. America. Singapore. Australia. Japan. Hong Kong. London.
So many places over such a long period of time.
Each one filled with experiences, stories and memories that defined who I am.
You’d be amazed how often I have to remind myself these happened to me. Seriously.,
The life I’ve lived is beyond anything I could ever have wished for … and while I appreciate my privilege, seeing that quote from Tom made me think about what I’m going to do with what I have left. What I want to do with what I have left.
On one hand I don’t want to sit back … I want to chase after the things that intrigue me with even greater speed and determination. But on the other, I want to make sure I am making time to enjoy and embrace all that’s going on. I don’t know if I’ve been as good at that second bit as I should have.
The problem is, the more you do, the more things you discover you want to do and – as has been the case with me – you find yourself on a track, travelling 100mph without having the ability to really enjoy the journey and the experiences you’ve had because you’ve seen something else you want to investigate.
I guess I’m living proof it’s not just millennials with short attention spans, ha.
That said, I’ve got a lot of expectations for 2022.
I did for 2021, but apart from NZ, that did not work out that way at all.
But now – with vaccinations and a world opening up – there’s a chance things could really change. A chance to embrace and explore what the world has to offer.
And I must admit I can’t wait.
Having been on only one plane in the last 18 months – to get us to NZ – has been very strange. I love travelling and exploring and have spent the last 25 years doing a ton of it. Hell, I did 100 flights in 2019 alone.
So as we enter the last month of 2021, I can look at next year with a different sense of optimism than I’ve had in a long time. A year where I want to learn how to balance ambition with enjoyment … because nothing makes you value the possibilities of the future like the acknowledgement you don’t have as much of it left as you probably would like.