2021

And just like that, another year is done and dusted. Another year that was a lot like the one before it: no trips, no seeing friends, just staying home every day. 

It makes sense, now that I think about it, that my biggest accomplishment for 2021 was being able to put down roots.

My default has always been in motion. Going places, changing jobs, just doing, doing, doing. Always wanting to move forward. Life on a moving train. 

The pandemic became this station where the train of my life stopped, and where it’s still parked. And when you keep something in the same place for a long enough time, it slowly becomes part of that scenery. If it’s not alive, it becomes a ruin, gets taken over by what lives around it, like temples overrun by the jungle or sunken ships taken over by coral. If it’s alive, it grows roots, settles in, takes the nourishment it needs from where it sits. I’d like to think my life in 2021 was the latter. 

I don’t know how I would’ve survived the last two years if I hadn’t moved back home. I’m so thankful it was a choice I could make, an option available to me. Being forced to leave the city and move back with my parents and brother was the emergency brake that put a stop to my train that kept going, but was going nowhere. Who knows how much longer I would’ve taken to make a change?

This year, I failed to publish a new book or make progress on my author career. I didn’t go on any trips. I still have the same job and I’m still in the same company I’ve been part of now for four years. On the rubric I always used to measure my year against, it would be mostly red instead of green.

I was saying as much to my friends over our year-end call just a few days ago. I just didn’t feel like I had accomplished anything great this year. 

But actually, I did two things I had never done before: I built the writing cottage of my dreams, and I now have a piece of land to call my own, to hopefully build another cottage of my dreams in the future. 

Somehow, it didn’t immediately come to me that putting down roots was an accomplishment, and now I think I know why: because while on my ever-moving train, being stationery wasn’t yet part of my vocabulary. Staying still was something I avoided, or something I told myself I couldn’t do just yet.

But maybe I was just never in a place long enough to allow myself to put down roots. But now, I think I am.

So yes, I love my little cottage amongst trees. I can’t wait to watch sunsets in my little piece of the world. I’m grateful for what I’ve done and what I’ve been given this year. 

Of course, it’ll only be a matter of time before I’m pushed into motion again. That’s just the way it is. But for now, I will relish in being rooted, I will be grateful for being grounded. Let’s see what happens next year.