It's Never Too Late to Start Over Even in 2020

Remember when there were goals for 2020? Remember #2020vision ? I know. I'm laughing too.  But I'm also realizing a lot of the goals I had were...off. A topic for another post. Today let's tackle today. Only today. Wondering how to get back on track as we near 2021? How to have hope for the future? How to go back out in the world and be around people? How to get back in shape? How to start writing again after taking 8 months off like me? This was the year I was going to write a book. 

If you've been winning 2020 this post is not for you, it's for those who are struggling. 

I've been reading my own blog posts about getting things done. I've written a lot about it. I started the year with 31 Simple Steps and they're pretty helpful if you need to begin at the beginning. 

For many of us the main problem of the past few months has been that every day has mostly been the same and there is little to look forward to. Motivation to get anything done is lacking, there's no sense of urgency. Tomorrow will be like today. It can be overwhelming and depressing. There's little to do and yet somehow it all seems like too much. How to move forward? If you are struggling with finding any enthusiasm for the day in our isolated, and anxious world right now, I feel you. But enough is enough. I'm starting to feel like I've been too kind to myself the past few months and that we've come to the time for some tough love. I'm starting slow. 

One must begin. So let's do that. 

1. Get up. Done.

2. Vitamins and water. Done. 

3. Stretching. Done. 

After that, it's painfully obvious that I'm out of shape. That perhaps should be the thing and maybe the only thing that I focus on for the foreseeable future. Without mental and physical health nothing else much matters. Climbing the stairs should not make my heart race and this morning it did. 

4. Writing. Okay, we're in the process, so that's something. 

5. What next? Often when we don't know what to do or don't feel inspired or motivated by anything the thing to do is to put something in order. Hang up some clothes piled in a chair. Load the dishwasher. Sort the mail. Empty the trash. 

6. Eat the most nutritious thing that can be found in the house. There's something about knowing your body, at least temporarily has the things it needs to function on a cellular level that causes you to lurch forward a bit and gain momentum. Drink some more water. 

7. Sit in the sun. No need to do anything but just sit there except perhaps think about soaking up Vitamin C and D and acknowledge the release of serotonin in the brain which makes everything better. 

8. Read some inspiring non-fiction. Something by someone who is either further along the journey or has accomplished something worthwhile, or a biography of someone who lived an admirable life. 

9. Don't think about the big goals. Think about putting a system in place for today that can be replicated tomorrow and the next day and so on. 

10. Go to bed at a reasonable hour. Haven't we all watched enough Netflix already? 

Our lives have been disrupted in big and small ways we couldn't have imagined one short year ago. You may have to string a few of these days together to be in a place to demand more of yourself. That's okay. I'm amused that at the beginning of 2020 when I wrote about a Gentle January I had no idea how much more useful the concept would be a year later. 

But here we are.