I got some news yesterday that, if it doesn’t end up getting reversed — a possibility, albeit a distant one — is going to, once again, significantly change my life in the short-to-medium term. It’s the latest in a number of such shifts in the past twelve months, I think…? (It depends on whether or not you count COVID and the pandemic shutting life as we knew it down.) As I sit and let this latest update, and everything it means, sink in, one thing strikes me beyond everything else: I am so very tired of having to get used to new normals.
In the past year, I’ve lost my regular writing gig at Wired after close to a decade, I’ve watched as the world stopped working the way it used to because of a virus that has run rampant across the globe, and in the rare piece of good news, I got money from the divorce settlement that proved to be particularly welcome in its timing. (See also: me losing a regular writing assignment.) Each of these wrenches in the works has required a re-evaluation of how I’m living, how I’m feeling, what I’m spending and on what, and… Well, now I have to do it again.
(Because it might get rolled back, I’m not going to talk about the latest change just yet, but it’s safe to say, it’s another to fall into the Not Good, Kinda Shitty pile.)
On the one hand, I’m all for taking a periodic look at my ambitions and priorities, and seeing if they line up with my current reality. On the other, there’s something to be said for being secure enough in your life that you don’t have to do that every handful of months because of outside circumstances upending everything. But maybe that’s just me.
Perhaps this is some kind of extended karmic ritual for… something I’m not admittedly aware of. Or maybe it’s a sign that existential years run February through January, and my 2020 is just ending with a flourish. All I really know is, I would love just a year or two of calm to follow, please. Please.
Sending good thoughts and wishing for calm for all.