20 Pieces of Advice from 2020

Well. This has felt less like a year in measurable increments and more like a series of grim revelations, folding endlessly into each other like a giant, ominous wave. 2020 is technically over, but it feels like we’re still waiting for the wave to break. Waiting for closure, or something.

This is my fourth January making and sharing a list of what I learned in the previous year. Over the years, I’ve learned something about this process: The stories we tell ourselves about our past experiences, determine the way we move forward. And we can change those stories by writing wiser, more helpful narratives. In other words, I can take the last year and make it make sense.

So, I decided to carry on with my tradition and turn 2020 into a list of stories I can carry with me into 2021.

I acknowledge that this is nowhere near a complete or authoritative summary of the year. We don’t need that — we lived it. So, here’s what I learned.

1

Tragedy does not give us silver linings. It gives us humility; an opportunity to reflect on what we’ve lost, what we still have, where we stand, and how we can do better. If you are fortunate enough to witness tragedy instead of experiencing it first hand, don’t turn away the opportunity for humility.

2

You are not too good for self-help podcasts!

3

Your mother (or at least mine), the doctors, the bloggers — they are all correct that you should stop drinking caffeine around 2pm.

4

The internet is not a moral system. Other people’s typed out certainty feels like a lifeboat when you are drowning in uncertainty. But, it turns out, binge-reading the sans serif screeds of 330 million twitter users is…not a sustainable replacement for coming to your own moral judgements. It is more cumbersome and vulnerable to form your own moral system but, unlike twitter, you can always edit.

5

Making new friends is kind of like an algorithm. If you can identify just one person in a new group, or neighborhood, or office that you might click with, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’ll also click with some of their friends. And then when you meet their friends, you replicate the same process, always looking for just one good connection to guide your path. H/T Jessica Tapfar, a new friend.

6

The grocery list will not help you if you don’t look at it while you’re inside the grocery store.

7

It is fine that your towels don’t match, or that your bedding doesn’t match, or that your couch is obviously ready to move on to the afterlife. Homes come together over a lifetime, just like people.

8

There will always be arrogant, unkind, or selfish people — this we know. What’s important is knowing a helpless case when you see one. And once you do, don’t waste energy psychoanalyzing. Don’t toy with your sanity by offering endless chances. Just create space and make your exit when you can.

9

Most of us are looking to be loved in the ways we like to give love. But you will have much more love in your life if you learn to see all the other unique ways people are trying to offer it to you.

10

Indulge yourself in whatever passing hobby tickles your curiosity, even if it results in lumpy candles, bread that won’t rise, or bad paintings. This is a good exercise in divorcing enjoyable activity from successful output.

11

It’s true that you get more confident as you get older, praise be. I think part of it is learning to identify people who make you feel like a sweaty sack of nonsense and then choosing people who make you feel great instead. So when you feel insecure, try not to take that as truth. That feeling has just as much to do with the people on the other side of the table (zoom, whatever).

12

Absolutely no one who is not on TikTok wants to listen to you describe a TikTok.

13

I wish there was another way, but the truth is: you have to talk about the thing you don’t want to talk about if you want to move on. You can live for months or years or the better part of three decades convincing yourself that you’re perfectly fine, orrrr that you’re actually exaggerating for attention, or that you don’t even deserve help, because you are the only one in the world as messy and fucked up as you and if you told anyone what was going on inside your head, you would be banished to the tundra planet from Star Trek. Or, you can talk about it. It won’t fix everything immediately, but if you don’t talk about it, if you haven’t started to talk about it, then you don’t yet know what world of well-adjusted joy and strength is on the other side. I’m on that journey, if you’d like to join me.

14

The bold haircut you’ve been considering? You should absolutely go for it. ASAP. Hair cuts don’t last and neither does dopamine. Let it rip.

15

It is better to be an infinitesimally small part of the solution, than another spectator of the problem.

16

Stop judging your actions through the imagined eyes of someone who doesn’t like you. It is still self-sabotage if you use someone else to do it.

17

Your loved ones’ suffering is not a personal failing of yours. Loving someone doesn’t mean you have to take on their problems or take away their hurts. We want so badly to protect each other from the world, but that’s not our job and it’s also impossible. Many of this world’s hurts have no solution and the best thing we can offer is the salve of our witness; kind words, warm hugs, tulips. H/T: Danny Marsh, the best warm hug I know.

18

Call your grandma, or grandpa, or anyone in your family that you love and ask them questions about their life until they’re tired of talking to you.

19

Sometimes it feels tone-deaf to practice gratitude or insensitive to find moments of joy. It is crucial that we do it anyway! There will always be people who are so insulated with ignorance or privilege that they cannot read the room, but that messy behavior doesn’t invalidate the necessity of daily gratitude and joy.

20

I am someone who struggles greatly, even clinically, with uncertainty. We all do, which is part of why “this time” is so terrifying. If this year has taught me anything, it is that there are no guarantees, life is full of risks — known and unknown — and there is only so much any of us can do to mitigate these risks. In my experience, the frantic, fruitless search for certainty is nowhere near as helpful as closing my eyes, taking some deep breaths, and then saying, “I don’t know what will come next, but I believe I’m strong enough to handle it.”

xx