Lessons from 2020

Oh my, it’s been a minute!  2020 has been both good and bad to me.  How about you?  On the good side, my entire family has been able to remain COVID free.  On the bad side, I have been unemployed for over a year at this point.  I am working for a big box retailer doing online order fulfillment making like 20% of what I did make.  Ouch!  I don’t really have enough to spread around, but I am trying.  Another plus that is also a minus is my holiday 6 days a week and can you always stay much later than scheduled schedule.  I like what I am doing in that the hours fly by because I am so busy, but my body is taking a beating.  Being on my feet and walking and stooping and lifting and all for 8+ hours a day is absolutely brutal.  I had just started a workout and eating program to try and loose the weight I have gained too!  I can only try to eat right at this point because my body can’t do much beyond stretching and resting.  And so this extra weight isn’t going anywhere just like my debt.  I’m trying not to let my circumstances get to me, but it is difficult.  I am beyond scared for myself and my future and my ability to take care of future me, which is non-existent right now.  I have always joked about not having a funeral and just plunging off a cliff into the sea to become fish food… Perhaps I should not have joked about this… it might be my future.  In the same way I should have never joked about my tanning bed being my bright, sunny coffin - that’s how melanoma came into my life.

Anywho, I don’t want to be too down because there are some good things coming out of what I am going through.  And I am learning how to make the most of what is right now.  Like something simple I could have done months ago was flip my schedule.  I have always been a yoga in the morning and a workout at night kinda girl.  But I have flipped my schedule and am trying to do pilates or simple weight training in the morning and stretching out my body at night with recovery yoga.  IDK.  Sometimes intellectuals have the biggest problems with the most simplest things.
I have also finally relented and am taking something to help with my EXTREME temper.  One day I came home from this job I have ready to kill everyone.  I was crying every morning and crying at work and crying when I drove home.  The stress was palpable.  I’ve been told many times in my life that I care too much in the wrong way.  I’ve never really been able to understand, but one night driving home it clicked.  I know that many people in recovery take prescription or herbal medications to help take the edge off or help with that part of them that cannot deal with reality.  Anyone who has read my blog all the way back knows that I have major PTSD type symptoms from a prescription drug that gave me a psychotic break and so I don’t like prescription drugs or medicine in general.  I just kept thinking that at some point I would get enough healing or growth and be “okay” like other people.  Eight years into sobriety I was pushed past my edge and relented.  I obviously don’t have insurance right now (another issue because I have something I need to see a doctor for and I can’t so prayers - PLEASE) and so I went to Sprouts and looked in the emotional well being isle and just prayed that I would pick the right one.  I ended up with a Stress Response bottle from Gaia Herbs and it has changed my life.  I have no idea how it works or what it is doing other than the fact that I am me - only better.  Stuff doesn’t bother me anymore.  Heck, I can even go to the grocery store and run ten errands after work if I need to and I am not bothered by it at all.   (I have previously mentioned my sincere hatred for grocery stores and pharmacies). I am me, but calm.  Apparently I have an over-reactive stress response to basically anything that is required of me. IDK.  Perhaps that’s why I’m an addict.  I don’t know.  But I am hopeful that this herbal supplement will continue to work for me because it is doing what I cannot do for myself.  It also lets me know that it wasn’t me and no amount of will power would have ever changed me - it’s a chemical and/or biological response that I cannot control on my own.  If it weren’t for this whole crazy 2020 situation I am in - I don’t know that I would have figured this out.  And that is priceless!

I am also working on being really grateful right now in all things.  One night at work, I helped a disabled man out of the store.  I found out he also works in retail for a different big box retailer.  He actually does some of the same things I do just a at a much slower pace.  He is so grateful to this retailer (Kohls) for giving him this job and allowing him to do it in his best way.  It made me think that I should be grateful for my job too.  After all, as much trouble as I am having physically and financially he is doing a similar job with a physical handicap that probably makes it even harder on him and he is grateful and I am not.  God really slapped me in the face with that one.  God gets you like that sometimes.
 
A rabbi recently spoke on Jacob and how he always tried to put conditions on his good deeds.  Like if he was trying to barter with God to get what he wanted by saying if You do blank ,then I will do blank for the rest of my life or the rest of this year, etc.  The rabbi mentioned how disgraceful this was and how Jacob should not really be a hero at all other than the fact that we slowly see him change and grow through all of his mistakes and wrong choices.  You can’t please God my bartering with him and you can’t please God doing good deeds because you are trying to get a certain outcome.  The only way to please God is to do what is right because it is the right thing to do.  End of story.  No questions.

And so I am trying to be grateful in all things and I am trying to do what is right in my encounters with my fellow humans for the sake of doing what is right and nothing more.  Especially, now that I am not a raging lunatic ;-)  Besides, doing good deeds to try and get a certain outcome only makes you bitter and resentful.  It’s a trap I have found myself in too many times.  And so I guess that is another vicious cycle I am being freed from in crazy 2020.  My hope is that I can keep these lessons with me as I continue to adjust to my circumstances whatever they may be in the future.
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How about you?  How as 2020 kicked you butt?  How has it blessed you beyond measure?
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