2020, the year kicking off transformation while staying put
I have been writing personal year reviews for as long as I can think of. This is the first time I am doing this on Medium. If you are reading this, don’t be a stranger. Share your thoughts.
A start of the year like no other
Since a few years I have made it a habit to celebrate the New Year in a new, unknown and warm place.
2018 started in an ayurvedic retreat in Kerala, India.
2019 began by dancing madly in a Kasbah in Morocco.
2020 promisingly commenced on the highest peak in South-East Asia: Mount Kinabalu.
2021 was supposed to take off in Tenerife, Spain, at Nine Coliving. COVID said ‘no’.
As I learnt on 18. December, tourists are not allowed to enter the island until 2. January 2021. This measure that has now been extended until 10. January. My rescheduled flight leaves on 11. January, so… cross fingers, I guess? Whether I will be able to fly or not, by now, I am pretty sure I will take it easy. If I have learnt anything in 2020 — and I bet many of you have learnt the same — then that it is about planning less and go with the flow more.
Coincidentally, I was well equipped for going with the flow: it was the intention I had set for my 2020 anyway. One year ago I came to the conclusion that quitting my regular job and follow my passions of traveling and UX Design was the right thing to do. A pandemic was no reason to deviate from this idea. I believed this would lead me on a journey on which I would feel ‘home’.
I was partly right.
Going on the journey
Needless to say, the traveling bit of the journey went largely missing this year, but there were clear upsides to this: staying put in a familiar environment, while I underwent a major professional change, was like a comfy cushion on a rollercoaster ride. I embraced the opportunity to spend more time with my friends than I had previously expected for 2020.
At the same time, I had the chance to fully focus on the journey of changing my career from Digital Marketing to UX Design: I built my website, worked with much dedication with my first clients, went on stage for a speech oat the World Usability Days and conducted a major UX research project for my own side-hustle. Not too shabby for half a year off from corporate life without having had a plan laid out.
I have no trouble getting up in the morning these days. I love the projects I am working on and can identify 200% with them. In the case of my major client, I am also doing marketing besides UX, but it is very different from the way I did marketing before. As my client is a start-up, I feel directly responsible for making the enterprise grow with what I am doing — I am basically an entrepreneur.
The next couple of weeks will show whether this will become an even bigger focus for me or whether I will focus on UX clients only. Both pathways are thinkable for me, but I realized towards the end of 2020 that doing both — marketing and UX for a client in only 3 days per week — starts to feel like doing half-baked things, considering the speed at which responsibilities are growing.
New freedoms thanks to / despite COVID-19
“As long as I am working on things that I feel will impact the world in a good way, there is no way I will feel locked-in, no matter how many travel restrictions are out there”.
This insight hit me one fine day when I walked through my neighborhood Oerlikon. I had not given this part of the city of Zürich much attention pre-lockdown. I got into the habit of doing daily walks — as I am sure many of you did — and found that it actually was a charming place! Without COVID neither would have discovered it, nor would I have told my friends about it, nor would they have asked me to give them tours there!
Let’s be realistic: Oerlikon will not cut it, knowing there are deserts, mountain-tops and secret beaches waiting to get discovered. But it is not so bad either. What I am saying, is: Being free is a state of mind. At least to some extent.
Like many of you, I enjoyed the freedom of working from home regularly for the first time in my professional life. I am placing my bets that working remotely is becoming much more the norm going forward. Quote of a friend:
“I would not even know how to organize my day anymore, if I still had to go to work.”
In my humble opinion, being happy is the biggest contributor to productiveness. Not the hours spent in an office. Happiness comes from autonomy. And that’s what you get when you are allowed to work from wherever you want. Besides saving time from commuting less and enjoying the luxury of doing my laundry at any time of the day, I managed to get into much better shape physically and mentally:
- Fitness: Since day 1 of the lockdown, the boutique gym I am going to (My Personal Gym) switched its group fitness classes to livestream. While it felt weird in the beginning, I soon became to embrace the effect of having the ‘camera on’ all the time. I for sure did not cheat.
- Yoga: I got introduced to my Yoga teacher Manish, who resides in India. I am getting privat lessons 1–2 per week ever since March (and I occasionally screw up the time difference to India).
Needless to say, I love to meet the people I am working out with in real life and I can’t wait to fly to India to meet Manish, but I am glad I can choose between the two options now, thanks to COVID.
Work is done! Anyone home?
While I am feeling ‘at home’ at work, I do not quite feel as much in my private life. I had wonderful experiences with my friends this year and some friendships that were rather loose in the past deepened significantly in 2020, but: I am missing this one person or group where I feel I belong. I can talk about everything with my friends and feel understood. Yet, I am seeking a connection, rooted in the mutual desire to get to know each other profoundly and unconditionally. The lack of such belonging has become even more apparent this year, as meeting people every day was not a default anymore.
Dating was my go-to-tool with which I looked out for such a connection in 2020. I made inspiring and partly lasting encounters, but someone to feel home with was not among them. Nonetheless, I would not have wanted to miss most of these encounters: In hindsight, dating was THE way for me to receive new impulses and perspectives in 2020.
Many of us have strengthened the close ties in their network during COVID, while loose ties towards acquaintances have fallen flat. Yet, these ties are of great importance to see what’s going on outside our familiar circles and help to broaden our understanding for society. So at the very least, dating has helped a news-abstaining person like me to get a more well-rounded understanding what’s going on in society.
Becoming home.
Professional and travel goals aside, a major focus for my 2021 will be to work on myself becoming a ‘home’ to myself. During the first lock-down I hardly saw any people, but did not feel lonely. Since late autumn, however, I feel so more often. How come?
Until June I had a predictable job with regular working hours. Scheduling play time therefore was no problem and I enjoyed spending time by myself. On top of that, during lockdown, everyone for once shared a very similar situation: limited options on how to spend time, hence everyone was available for calls. This created a nice form of connectedness and was a convenient FOMO-decreaser.
Switzerland never went back to a lockdown-like state after May 2020. Options on how to spend your free time became much broader again, so scheduling time to meet with people became an unpleasant requirement again (I am guilty of this too, see below). At the same time, my workload picked up massively and time for myself pretty much got shredded between work and scheduling or going to social meet-ups. To the point where I started avoiding alone-time.
Hence, I have now picked up on the practice of daily meditation again and will deepen my yoga practice. Also, I have promised myself to devote at least 15 min per day to something, which I truly enjoy, which, as a default, will be drawing or writing.
My hypothesis is that living in a coliving space may be indirectly facilitating me to take time for myself, as there is a healthy base level of social interaction over breakfast and common activities. I am looking forward to sharing my insights with you later this year, once I had my reality check.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think there is a shortcut to being happy by yourself, but you can modify your surroundings to make it easier or harder.
We all have our well-paved ways to ensure instant happiness. My safe choice is meeting up with (new)people or going on trips. These activities make me happy instantaneously most of the time. Finding pleasure in alone-time, in contrast, I think, will be a bit of work, but will come with the reward of stable long-term returns. Similar to building a company. Success belongs to the one’s that manage to hold on to it.
One more thing
Despite all the hard work ahead — let’s have fun!
I am looking forward to exchange thoughts with you in 2021, whether or not we know each another (well).
If you feel like anything I am saying here echoes with you, leave me a note or hit me up on your preferred social medium.
Jenny
