I’m going to pick up the end-of-year theme again this week, even though I’m already well into my own new year, because my dear friend Mike Blissett* made me think. He shared this exercise, which he in turn had from his colleague Sharon Lawton.** I borrow from Mike all the time, so I’m hoping he won’t mind me doing so again. I don't know Sharon, so I'm just trusting the process on that bit. (Links to both are below).
~ ~ ~
The year-end exercise is a simple invitation to consider three questions.
1. How would you sum up your year in one word?
2. Who are you grateful to or for this year?
3. Which skill(s) have you developed or improved in the last twelve months?
~ ~ ~
The year in one word: Friendship
If you’ve read any of my recent posts, you will already know that my retrospective word for 2024 is friendship.
It has been a year of deepening friendships, kindling new ones, re-affirming old ones. It has been a year of thinking about what friendship really means.
For years before Clive died, we’d have conversations about what I would do, how I would manage after he had gone. That’s a thing you do ~ or should do ~ when there is a serious age-gap. He always had one simple answer: you will be fine; you have your friends.
At the time, I didn’t think I did. We were so insular as a couple that there were very few people that I thought I could count on as actual friends and it turned out that I was wrong about some of those I would have included on that short list. In the event, however, I was also wrong about some other folk who not only unexpectedly showed up for me then, but still do so now.
As it turned out that there were enough in the immediate aftermath, and they were (and are) brilliant. Eventually I started to realise that what Clive might have meant was you will be fine, you will always have your friends… as in there will be more of them and/or different ones.
There was also a point somewhere along the way where I ‘heard’ the words I am sending you the people you need, in the order that you need them. How surprisingly true that has turned out to be.
There are a few people who have been around for a long time: I hope they know how much I treasure them.
There were others who came to hold me, in the moment, and then left. Some came for their own reasons, and some that I chose to leave. Some waited. Some just wandered off.
One group has completely changed my life. Another is intent on rebalancing it in a different way. One person has slowly edged me into more of their own life, introducing me to the people who are special to them, which is another kind of joy. Another was once described having just flowed into the spaces” in my life, which I love because it is so accurate. Not only did they do that but they continue to flow in and around everything else. Of course, with flow there also comes ebb, which I have had to learn to live with, but even so...it is a weird and wonderful relationship that I would not want to have missed out, and hope can be sustained. Ebbs, notwithstanding.
This year has been a year when I realised how many friends I have. I have enough. I have friends enough. It isn’t a matter of numbers. It is a matter of sufficiency. It is a matter of having the someone(s) who flow into all of our spaces. The people we need in the order that we need them.
I’ve learned the fallacy of the idea that we bring our “whole selves” to all of our relationships. We don’t. We don’t need to. Maybe we need one or two relationships where we can be our total in-the-moment-this-is-my-shit-storm/shame-storm-self – but we need more than that. Other than that. We also need the friendship groups where we can focus on single aspects of who we are, groups where we can leave some of the other stuff at the door.
I reckon our friendship groups interlink. Some are sub-sets of others. Some are disconnected from all the rest.
We don’t need a circle; we need a Venn Diagram.
This was the year when I started to see my clusters and their overlaps and separations and began to appreciate how affirming that is - to not have to be my 'whole' self with everyone. To be able to be this bit of me with these people and more of that bit of me with these others.
You know what? Being your whole you all of the time can be pretty exhausting.
To be clear this has nothing to do with “fitting in” and everything to do with “belonging” – it is about how & why we belong in more than one place.
It is not about being one person here and a different person there, but about shifting focus or emphasis – allowing your big-picture self its space, and your close-up self, your shimmering surface, your deep dark self, each of them to emerge most clearly in the spaces, in the groups, with the individuals, where those aspects are most appreciated and can be most fostered.
It is not about denying any of the other aspects, merely soft-focussing them at times, backgrounding them, until they have a role to play in that space too – because our whole self never goes away, even when bits of it are resting, they are still paying attention, other aspects will step up if needed.
Sometimes the group that is mostly light and ‘shimmering surface’ is the one where my most heartfelt input has most impact, because it’s not so expected there. And the reverse can be true as well. My most serious interactions benefit from the occasional jolt of silly.
I think we need different people for different aspects of who we are, to draw out of us more of that side of ourselves, especially when it is an aspect that we might otherwise neglect.
This was the year when my writer friends called upon my project management tenacity to get stuff done. It was also the year when they supported and encouraged my word-smithing. And also a year in which they made me laugh, made me cry, made me be honest in my work. A year in which we walked together, learned together, ate together, wrote together. Whatever the foundation of the group, it does become deeper and wider than that.
“My writer friends.” I say that as if it is one group of people. It is not. It is two distinct groups, and a few individuals outside of both of them. Intersections and overlaps and subsets.
This was the year when my swim-buddy pulled me into a Zumba-group, that has morphed into a Hot Gossiping, nights out, Christmas quizzing, supportive sisterhood. It is a group founded on dance and laughter and a lot of silliness. It is also a group that allows the thread of also-here-for-the-serious-stuff to bind it together. A more disparate bunch of women you could not imagine in such a small group… It is a deep well of joy to be part of it.
This was the year when someone told me that having someone who will actually listen long enough to hear what you are trying to say is something special.
This was the year I, once more, got to share Springsteen with someone who gets him as much as I do. This same someone told me on another occasion that I looked fabulous, when in fact I was in emotional melt-down about someone else’s loving kindness, that (in a good way) overwhelmed me.
I didn’t look remotely fabulous, by the way, I looked the way we all do in a full, snotty, I-don’t-know-where-that-came-from weeping session. A mess in other words. That’s a friend. The one who can smile and laught while you’re in tears and somehow you know that’s actually a good thing.
This was the year when a cousin became a friend again. And a recent-years friend decided to call me cousin.
This was also the year when I realised how much more I love doing my solitary things, when I know that it is an actual choice. Having friends is about being there for them and them being there for you…but sometimes it is also about knowing they won’t mind if you wander off on your own for a bit. Friends will know why you need to do that.
People I’m grateful to or for this year - not naming names
Writing this in my journal would be one thing, writing it knowing I am going to post it on-line is something else. Which of these people would want to be named-&-famed? Which would rather I left them in the shadows? I don’t know the answers to those questions…but I hope the people I am grateful to and for know who they are. I hope I remembered to tell them.
That’s the bit that matters. Not that we tell the world who we’re grateful for, but that we tell them. That we continue to tell them, just in case they forget – or don’t believe us the first time.
If we don’t know them personally, and I am grateful to and for so many people I will never meet – poets, authors, scientists, musicians, farmers, chefs, engineers, truckers, nature-volunteers, positive-posters-on-the-web, teachers, wildlife rangers, lifeboat crews, artists, the list goes on – we can still send out thanks out into the ether. Who knows, maybe they will land.
If the people we are grateful for are long gone from our current life – parents, grandparents, all the ancestors all the way back, lovers, partners, school-teachers, old-and-lost friends, colleagues, all the people who brought us to where we are now – just because they are gone, maybe long since, does not mean we are not still grateful in this moment. We can still send our thanks out to wherever they might be now…or if that doesn’t work for us, we can hold that gratitude in our mind and heart.
I love this question because gratitude is my heart-stone value. The one I hold to when everything else breaks around me. In my worst moments, my re-anchoring question is: who & what can I be grateful for today?
It is a learned skill. Don’t think that I was born as a deeply thankful human being. I was not. There is still a wide streak of selfishness in me. I wasn’t a natural sharer as a child. I was taught / required to write thank you letters after Christmas. Grace before meals at school was just a form of words, though looking back now I think that if that form had been different, I might have come to understand it sooner. “May the Lord make us truly grateful.” Yeah. Good luck with that one. But perhaps “May I learn to be truly thankful” might have made me think: is it something I can learn?
What does it mean to be ‘truly’ thankful.
I might have learned sooner.
Eventually I did learn, as I’m sure I’ll have said elsewhere, through the wise words of Susan Jeffers (speaking of people I’m still grateful for!) who led me out of a period of depression with the concept of the gratitude journal.
I play around with the concept these days, do it in different ways…but I still do it, the (almost) daily writing down of the small and huge things that I am genuinely grateful, truly thankful, for.
I recognise it as a discipline as much as it is a core value. It takes practice. And the point of any practice is to deepen the meaning of the expression.
So to all of those folk out there – and I hope you all know who you are – when I say thank you, however I say it, with some heartfelt blessing, a crafted card, or just in the brevity of the word “thanks” – please know that it is never just a form of the thing. It is heartfelt. I mean it.
My life is what it is, because of the impact of everyone who has walked through it, even those who did so less kindly. I am who I am because of everyone who has touched my path, even those who did so thoughtlessly. I am where I am, because of everyone who has found it within them to forgive me for my unkindness and thoughtlessness.
I am grateful to you all because I like who, what and where I am right now, and without you, whether you know me or not, whether you are still here or not, whether you were good to me or not, without you, I would not be, or have, this, here, now.
Which skill(s) have you developed or improved in the last twelve months?
I’m going to shy away from the output nature of that question. I’m not sure I am the best person to decide where I have objectively improved or developed. That’s for others to judge. Also, I’m trying to wean myself off my “achievement” addiction.
Instead, let me take a look at where I’ve done some work, where I’ve put in the reps, made the effort. In theory that should mean I have improved or developed – but there are places where I know it doesn’t. I know there are things I’m working on, where I am still stalling, which is more than a tad frustrating.
But that frustration is precisely why I’m choosing to focus on the input rather than the outcome.
Perhaps I should claim that one as my first development: being better at focussing on what I can control, rather than what I can’t.
Then I pause and reconsider the question. It doesn’t ask about the progress that we wanted to make and how far we have come – but merely to reflect upon where we have improved. It may be in areas we weren’t focussing on at all.
I have got better at saying YES and at saying NO.
I am finding it easier to accept invitations to things that I want to do, but which challenge my introverted nature, that take me out of my comfort zone.
I am also finding it easier to say no to things I don’t want to do, without the need to make any kind of excuse.
The dichotomy of being open to opportunity and setting one’s own boundaries…now there’s a lifetime skill in the making.
As writing is my primary passion, I hope that it improves with every tweak I make, with every reading of how other people do it, with every submission, with every failure, with every criticism, with every re-work, with every send-it-out-anyway… I have had more tangible success this year, so I’ll take that in evidence of improvement, in confidence in the work at least, if not necessarily in the quality of it. It means that at the very least I am submitting more of it.
Baby-step improvement in the understanding of Tai Chi has been hampered by a lack of consistency and discipline in practice – but the question wasn’t about where we have failed – we answer that one for ourselves every day. The question is an invitation to look at where we have succeeded, and to celebrate that.
So let me celebrate a few very small wins in other areas…
I am a more conscious cook. I think more closely about what I am putting into my body. I think more closely about reducing food waste and energy use. I batch-cook more. I am eating more healthily more of the time.
I have embraced Zumba – and am not quite as lost and uncoordinated in class as I was nine months ago. Still not the person you’d want to be following, but I’m having fun, which has to be the main thing.
My swim speed has fractionally increased; my technique equally fractionally; my enjoyment of being in the pool massively so.
I am happier. Because, yes, happiness is a skill as well. To think it is something we ‘feel’ in response to what is happening out there is to deny ourselves a huge dose of joy. Happiness is something we create; it is something we can work on.
The work itself might be hard, but the methodology is simple: notice what makes you feel better, do more of that and notice what makes you feel worse, do less of that.
For me that means: more writing, more time in nature and/or in the water, more time in movement (be that walking, tai chi, dancing, swimming, ropeflow), time-with-friends and time-alone being in balance, tending my physical space so I’m not overwhelmed or cluttered.
And sleep. I have got better at prioritising sleep. For many years, I would explain away my stress and anger and all the shit with the words “I’m just tired.” Now that I’ve learned to banish that pernicious little word ‘just’ – I recognise the truth of what I thought was a lie. I was TIRED! I was exhausted. For years. Addressing that has probably been my most important step forward this year. I do still get tired, and ratty as a result, but nowhere near as often - and when I feel like that I don't fight it. I go to bed.
So there it is: my random look back at my 2024. Another chapter closed, and the new one well under way already. I hope you take time out to look at your own last year and that whatever word you attach to it, that you find people to be grateful to & for, and can identify the areas in which you've grown, even if they are different from the ones you wanted or expected.
I wish you a happy new year: Let’s make it a good one…as the song says.
~ / ~
