So This Is 2021

I know I should count my blessings and I do. I know I should meditate on my privilege and I do that too. I know I am living a good life and I enjoy that good life. I know that as an Australian, I am leading a life my friends in Europe can no longer dream of and don`t.

It seems churlish therefore to say that I am not loving 2021. Even more wrong headed to note that I am no longer finding the machinations around the pandemic, novel and that I am increasingly frustrated that I cannot travel and use other forms of escapism to liven the day to day reality of a contracted world. And each day it seems I add another year to the one that will be the year in which I fly again and cross the borders of another country.

I am feeling myself to be burnt out which is peculiar as I have every freedom including not working. Dr Google describes "Burn-out as "a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; I realise that if I substitute "life" for "job " I have a descriptor of how I am experiencing 2021. Bloody COVID is a chronic life stress not successfully managed . There are a plethora of wonderful websites with sage advice on how to manage burn out and I am heeding the advice to care for mind, body and soul.

One of the ways that has been important to me in 2020 has been writing these blogs. They have helped me clear my head but in 2021 , I have found myself wordless. I welcome the political and social upheavals in Australia currently and hopefully, prefacing change. At the same time , I am saddened by the seeming lack of impact of the seismic upheavals that were part of my history in Canberra in the 70 `s when change was the mantra of that time. The mantra of the young. I am wordless when all the signs say "Let them speak " because my story is not the story for this time.

So how to undertake the writing necessary for my well being ? What I intend to do is share my 2020 diary entries because as I was consigning last year to the diary bin, I read back over some entries and realised that it was a truly remarkable year in a very ordinary life. Now as a reading experience you may find this as interesting as watching paint dry but I have been ennobled by Helen Garner`s two volumes of diary entries and by my writing muse Patti Smith`s uniquely personal works. So I am going to play with the words I wrote in the unguarded moments of the pandemic year. I will censor and change identifiers but I want to see if I can find what was the essence for me of the year of being strong and venerable and vulnerable and contained . I hope you join me.