2020 has been a weird year. I wish I had a more sophisticated word to describe the year but I suppose using this common, casual word such as “weird” oddly seems adequate to describe what has to be the most uncommon year of our generation until now.
Typically, this is an exercise for the year end where I sit and reflect over the year. Unpack each month into a mere page or two. The point is to self assess; how many of the previous years problems did I bring with me in January? How many of those are resolved? How many ceased to be a problem altogether? How do I compare against the goals I set for myself in January? In 2019 this was simple. It was a simple mass-balance exercise. The year was so ordinary, and my goals even more so… Then came 2020. I sat and re-assessed in January and the whole thing went out of the window in February.
January started out great, with a short little flight, my only flight of 2020, to snowy Colorado. February, I reached the midpoint of my 20’s and I was thankful to be alive, to have made it to 25. Not because I am suicidal or depressed but because I am impatient. I like getting to point B from point A fast. I wrote The Ride to manage this impatience with life. So much of my life is inspired by religion that over the years I have grown to adopt a personal philosophy that we don’t die to go into purgatory, we are already in purgatory. This is it. So why not just get it over with and go already. Well, 25th was different. I am teaching myself how to be more patient. In general. with myself. with people. with life. And so I realize, the point isn’t the destination it is the journey. And I am immensely grateful to be on this journey.
March through July was just a blur after COVID struck full swing, between working from home, evaluating various opportunities for a dental clinic purchase and a COVID scare. While nothing spectacular jumps out during these months, they were the most productive in terms of professional and personal growth. I learnt how to assess a business based on their financial records, how important a location and surrounding demographics are to a profitable business, how to market, how to file for corporation, how to hire a good CPA, a good lawyer and most importantly how to use all of the above (and much much more) to close a deal on a dental clinic. I am grateful for husain’s ambition that turned this vision into a reality and the entire team of people it took to execute it successfully.
August and September had to have been the most stressful months of the year. First day of Clinic was September 3rd and every breath awake and even our dreams most nights, if Husain and I slept, were dedicated to the clinic. Its funny because I cannot remember specifics, any specifics, of August especially except for me telling our friends on a dinner date late August, “we contemplated whether we could afford to go out to dinner tonight”. I mean, we were (are) a bunch of kids who had no idea what we were doing. At the time, the stress was so real we had lost all appetite. When we did go we’d order one dish to share, collectively struggle to finish it and end up packing it to go. Although now in November as I write this with perspective, I have a huge grin on my face because things always work out in the end. I am grateful for Husain because every time I lost control over myself he was there to ground me and I would do the same for him.
September was a rollercoaster. Now that we were up and running all we needed was a good staff but we changed employees like a model changes clothes on a runway. In September we went through 9 different people, two of whom quit haphazardly with not even 24 hours notice. You could have a dental clinic, and you could have a dentist and you could even have patients but what do you do when you have no front desk? No one to verify insurances? No one to collect payments? No friendly face in the front to smile and greet patients? So we switched gears; started interviewing for loyalty over experience and we struck gold when we found someone who had both (as i said earlier; things always work out in the end). I am grateful for our staff, without whom we are just two gold fish in a broken fish tank.
October and November finally feels like settling dust, comparatively at least because there’s so much to still do, so much we don’t yet know. A lot happened this year which wasn’t planned. COVID for one, which ruined all my plans to visit home, and travel plans with some of my closest friends. And if you had asked me in January of 2020 whether we’d purchase a clinic this year it would have been a hard no. That was almost “spontaneous”, synonymously as spontaneous as accident pregnancies can be, where Husain one day in March woke up with a sudden urgency and insisted that there has never been a better time. And there it was, two things that consumed my year.
All that remains of 2020 is December and although that is merely 2 days away I have zero plans for December because I know better now. Well almost zero plans, except my best friend’s birthday on Dec. 1st, which I get to celebrate this year with her because she’s moved to Texas. I still cannot believe she’s here… What are the chances? I moved here in 2018 saying goodbye to everyone back home including her and here she was.. in a house 10 mins away from mine in Houston, TX. I suppose this is precisely the point I was implicitly making all along. You can plan all you want, write your goals, say your goodbyes but in the end time dictates all. You never know what life has in store for you and regardless of what it is, everything works out just perfect in the end.
So, to end off this post, I am going to list a few of the unexpected things and moments of the year that I am thankful for:
- cooking: I found comfort in cooking this year; the sheer patience it teaches me and for the simple fact it symbolizes: all good things take time
- skateboarding: Never ever, even in my wildest of dreams, I saw myself on a skateboard, so naturally this makes the list. i change every season, i have always known that about myself and yet, this was surprising in the truest meaning of the word, even for me.
- new friends in old acquaintances: thankful to have found some pretty good friends in people i have known for couple years but never really got to know until 2020
- commute: the hour i get everyday to myself, where i let the music drive me, allow the words to dance in my head to form metaphors, similes, analogies, anecdotes that later make it to my pages and help me understand my world. I go from home to work, and work to home with no recollection of how I got to my destination. This is the hour i live in my head.
- job: when i moved to Houston for my husband, his city became ours, his home became ours, his friends became ours, his life became ours and my job was the one and only thing i could call mine, that was important to me then and now especially 2.5 years later with the added pressure of our clinic, to not allow myself to be consumed in my husband’s world.
Anyway that is it for now. 2020 has been a weird one y’all, safe to say a decade or two from now when time does what it does best; whittle our memories and whisk our timelines into an involute haze, we will still remember 2020 distinctly as the unexpected year, the unsuspected year.
So here’s to 2020, the year of Concentrating On Victory Instead of Defeat. haha get it? Oh did i mention i am thankful for my sense of humor too?
Originally published at http://citylightsandslowsongs.wordpress.com on November 29, 2020.
