2020: The Craptastic Year In Retrospective

Most years I post a look back on what’s happened and what I learned from it, and I suppose I want to get that over with sooner as opposed to later after this craptastic year. I’ve been lucky, but even so– things have been very stressful all across the board except at home.

Overall: This is SO not a “normal” year (though I don’t know that we’ll ever have the old normal back again at this point) with the massive fires and the pandemic, that much of my plans and explorations were curtailed or interrupted utterly. So… many of the lessons I learned were not what I was looking for, but rather what was required to get by… More below on that!

Jobs/Career: The only 2 things on my plate are working on my book projects and doing public service witchery. The in-person service stuff was out due to the pandemic, and we’ll have to see where things are at by autumn of 2021. Meanwhile, I’ve been unable to focus well enough to get much done on my book stuff. I did manage to get a new website up where I can post my edited experiences in chronological order– but I’ve barely begun on that.

Obviously, I am going to be pushing myself to double down on that focus thing! I’ve lost one Patron already (it’s been a rough year, who can blame them?) but I need that extra income, and I need to treat my book project like a job and keep to some sort of schedule. I’ve decided my goal is 2 offerings a week, whether an edited post, a new drawing, or a map or even a transcript of an hypnosis session. I think I can manage that, and it would keep things moving forward.

I feel awful for how badly I’ve done thus far on this! But I have to stay stubborn and not give up. I’ll get there if I just refuse to quit.

Prepping/Decline: It’s been nearly 100% on me except for the purchase of yard machines by Cat. She’s finally starting to get enthused about the property, but we need more help with some things. Not having Sleep around once a month for support has taken it’s toll, but we’ve done our best and managed to move forward on a few indoor and outdoor projects. I think the next year we’ll get even more focused. It was just impossible for me to carry it all alone while fighting Cat for permission to move forward on ANYTHING. We broke that impasse at least.

Social/Lifestyle: It’s just me and Cat in person, and all else has been phone calls and video meetings. I did start a remote RPG game and it’s still going, so there’s that at least. I miss my friends, though, and I can hardly wait until summer or fall when we have our vaccinations and can at last come together for visits, not to mention GOING OUT, and participating in Faires and Festivals.

In the meantime, I’ve tried to work on my own stuff, and that has translated into facing fears and allowing myself to push back against deep dreads. I’ve now got a regular dentist! That was HUGE. And I dare to confront Cat about my honest feelings more and more, and she’s better about hearing me out without getting offended and defensive all the time.

I’ve begun working with a therapist who is also an abductee, and that’s helped. I started hypnosis for getting more memories back, but the pandemic and my money going to a dentist slowed that down considerably. Still… I have a direction for that going forward. AND the abductee support group that met in person and now online turned out pretty well and is not nearly as contentious as the one that Veg Hag ran into the ground back in the mid-90s. Apparently, having a psychologically qualified leader at the helm avoids some big, sticky issues that I came to dread for such situations.

Spiritually, I feel stuck in limbo, though I haven’t lost anything more at least. The biggest events were Brian’s death and his spirit coming to talk to me in a dream– predicting that “hundreds of thousands of people” would die of what he did and that Robin and I would fight and break up. He kept saying, “… but you’ll be okay. You’ll be alright. Don’t worry too much.” I also felt the visiting cuddling spirit Carl portal in next to me right over my bed one night, which was the first time I’d actually caught that. Some weird fae stuff as always, but otherwise–? Pretty quiet year overall.

So, what did I end up learning, maybe despite myself?

~ Lost patience: Something I’ve long cherished in myself is breaking this year. It’s been pushed to the brink by several hard years in a row (including 2019′s foot break and months in a wheelchair) but this crazy year was the last fucking straw. Between the bullshit of Covid deniers and the politically motivated media-machine lies and Robin’s breaking it off with me because I thought protesting police brutality was completely justified, I’m just completely DONE with stubbornly stupid people. I’ve always tried to find points of agreement and to go out of my way to see both sides of any issue, but things are so skewed to one side by the right side that I no longer see the benefit of indulging “fairness.” It doesn’t seem to be a 2-way street and the colossal, PROUD blindness of some people has murdered my ability to be understanding.

I’m hoping that this dynamic shifts, but until the “alternative facts alternative media” pulls back from the massive propaganda bullshit, I don’t see how it can! Too many people are swallowing that bullshit whole and opening wide for another shovel full to dare weaken my stance. It does no good when I do compromise, and allows the harm to continue, unimpeded. The best I can hope for and keep the confrontations to a minimum (because I don’t really have the energy for that) is to just cut people off who show themselves to be blind and deaf to the truth. Speaking of which–!

~ Pushing back & cutting off: One thing I wrote at the end of 2019 in my decade-assessment was how my life had taught me to stop surrendering to other people’s agendas at my own expense:

lucretiasheart.livejournal.com/1473123.html

I realized that I’d lost patience (gee, notice that coming up this year at all?!?) with other people’s bullshit and was starting to argue more. Now I’m going to add after the last crazy, awful year that I am arguing less and cutting people off more. When argument is fruitless, why bother trying any further? Why give attention to those who aren’t feeding me anything useful in return? For too long, I’ve been so wrapped up in my own belief in “fairness” that I go over and above to be fair to those who won’t do the same for me– and why? For ego? To keep the hope of someday “winning”? And what is it that I’ll win? Because I rarely win. Effort without payoff is… well, stupid. And it took a pandemic year of me trying to communicate with a few people devoted to the bullshit alternative news stream (now taken over by Russian proxies) to realize that I’m hurting myself more than I’m helping them.

Yes, they need another source of truth, but why does it have to be ME personally? And if they’re not listening to me, what good am I actually doing? I finally had to admit my lack of influence next to those armies of proxies and just stop engaging altogether.

BOUNDARIES. The one thing that my intense therapy during my divorce taught me was that I lacked armor. I bare it all and am honest to a fault and that leaves too much room for me to be hurt. So building some castle walls and closing the drawbridge when an attack has begun or is imminent is totally justified and I don’t have to feel guilty about that in order to serve some high-minded ideal that does me more harm than good!

~ My inner worlds really are a sanity saver: Though my “productive” life has crashed and burned this year, my inner life has blossomed. I have started or continued DOZENS of pretend fantasy stories this year– the most since before my divorce and then some. Given all this time to myself and unable to do much about reality, I am extensively talented at making up stories. I got some fan fiction from other stories and some alternative life (my life that is) stuff going on and plenty of original material too. I jump from one to the next and round and round goes my imagination, then back again to something I’ve already worked upon earlier.

Thank goodness for that! It was hard for me to let go and imagine other lives and worlds for several years, and when I did, I often felt guilty somehow. But now I’m able to enjoy it without guilt and balance it with other things. And when I’m just losing it–? Ironically, thinking about other dramas helps to ground and center me again so I can handle ‘real life’ once more. I’ve been diving down a LOT this year, but it’s kept me going when I would have otherwise imploded. In fact, it’s kept me feeling almost normal despite all the changes the pandemic and the political propaganda has brought. The more I dive down, the more productive I become. It’s the opposite of everything the experts have ever told me. The escape allows me to pop up for air and deal with the negative once more without getting so thrown off course.

Too much reality crushes me. I need a mental escape for mental resilience.

Later this weekend, I’ll be posting about my goals coming up for the year. Thanks for reading as always!