2022: The Year Of JOY.

As we head rapidly towards the end of 2023; I'm finally ready to look back over the last couple of years. Not because I think I can make all that much sense of them or they've been wonderful periods of immense growth and learning, but because I firmly believe that until we look back, we can never truly see forward. And I could absolutely do with seeing a bit ahead now thanks.

For myself and many others, a post COVID world has been in many ways harder than the lockdowns and the uncertainty that characterised its predecessor. We have felt the weight of social anxiety as we had to relearn how to be around people we did not create ourselves and the burden, once again, of expectation. After all, by 2022, things, we were told, were better. Weren't they?

As a pessimistic Mancunian, I should have known when I declared 2022 'The Year of Joy' three glasses of Moet into the first moments of it, that it wouldn't just 'happen' to become that. That more likely, I'd be sent the lessons I needed to move through in order to learn how to do, be or receive it before it could be mine.

Now, I'm not saying 2022 was an especially tough year for me for a second. There was less grief, less homeschooling and less legal proceedings than some other, recent years, so was a clear winner in many ways compared to those.

But, for some reason, in 2022, 'Joy' was elusive. I wanted to be happy. I wanted to feel amazing. The world had opened up and we were back baby... And yet, the words tired, frustrated, overwhelmed and oxymoronically, underwhelmed, better describe how I felt for most of last year despite the freedom.

I was tired of living in a slightly manic version of groundhog day - facing the same issues, arguments and conversations over and over again (all three of which heavily featured LEGO, getting ready for school and vegetables in equal measure).

I was frustrated that despite trying to wake up earlier to have a better morning routine and eat clean foods, I was so freaking tired I kept dropping the ball on those thing and staying in bed or having cereal for dinner.

I was overwhelmed by the multitude of small things I needed to do each day alongside dealing with the world; because if I stopped at all the fallout was too hard to come back from. Now, by fallout, I really mean just dust and dirty school uniforms, which, while not life threatening or even that important, nonetheless threatened to drown me if I didn't 'keep on top of them' and had me in a state of low level panic for most of 2022. An anxiety I see now was born out of the battles scars of the COVID era where the motto 'just keep swimming' became so ingrained into my brain I wondered on occasion if I was a blue and yellow striped fish.

I was underwhelmed at where I was in my life. Careerless, achievementless and dishwasherless. Especially now I was back 'out there' having conversations and meeting people again and the pressure to have something to say; to be something or someone; was back. And damn it, shouldn't I be grateful for all of that social freedom again?

OK, now sure. As a sideline here, I've done some things I'm rather proud of in my life that could be added to my CV under the 'Achievements' heading....should we be allowed to go waaaay back. But, to be honest, most of them were last decade now so they hardly feel relevant to who I am anymore and that really bothered me as we emerged into 2022.

I felt that since becoming a stay at home mum and then getting trapped there while we socially distanced, my biggest achievements, on reflection, were actually rather small. They consisted of things like 'Not Saying Fuck For Three Consecutive Days In Front Of My Children' and 'Finding a food all of my family eat' (nachos). They were so insignificant in the face of those lockdown start ups and degrees achieved and books written in iso, that what I had (or had not done) ate at my self-worth. None of my achievements could be added to the CV I knew I needed to update in order to move out of my stuck state - so what good, actually, were they?

You would guess then, that the natural place to start addressing this lack of 'joy' in my life last year would have been with a good long look at what I actually wanted that might bring me it... and yet, my preferred choice of action for much of the year was 'drink wine'; because I had a good long hard look once when I had five minutes and, honestly, I came up clueless.

I could tell you what I didn't want. Which seemed at least to be a place to start right? Yeah - I thought so too.

'I don't much want to go back to teaching. I don't want to re-train as a midwife. I don't want to work in an office'.

It doesn't really map out much on a vision board does it?

And yes. I tried that last year as well.

I cut out some pictures of bags I couldn't afford and holidays my kids would ruin and arranged them aesthetically on a large sheet of neon card. I wrote all manner of positive quotes around them that people way more together than I had declared and that seemed inspiring.

Then I dropped it behind a set of draws because firstly, I don't actually have an office or any wall space I could display it and secondly, I have two prolific artist children and I don't want to encourage that kind of 'let's display the shit we've made' mentality - lest my house will start to look like Tony Hart's Studio.

Not one to be deterred from a mission though, mid way through last year, I went back to my usual go-to for answers... books.

I started reading and reading and reading. And listening and listening and listening - because Audible allows you to actually achieve stuff at the same time as learning like clean dishes and folded laundry. Thus it aligned nicely with my daily requirements that, whist could not be said to bring me much joy did ensure less panic if I achieved them which was clearly a step in the right direction.

And do you know what I found out? 8 real books and 12 spoken ones in? I was doing life wrong. Yep, more than 40 years of practise and I was still fucking it up...

And by doing it wrong, I mean perhaps more accurately, that the way I had done 'life' for most of it, was no longer really serving me.

From being as young as I can remember, I have been indecisive. In part this is borne from the fact I am a people pleaser and so am quite happy to take the path of least resistance. But also, before the COVID era really ruined my mental health, I generally liked most things and am happy enough with most of the options on offer in any given scenario. Add in that I am a Libra and while we may well be represented by scales, these are rarely depicted in balance for a reason and you will understand that decision making is hard for me. I can sway between things for days. Weeks.

So, somewhere along the line, faced with my crippling indecisiveness, my 80s-female-first-child-people-pleasing-Libran-self worked out that the best way to do life choices, was to go with what I most liked. As long as that didn't put anyone else out of course. If a choice between A and B only really affected me, I'd just pick the most enjoyable one. It's how I ended up with an almost entirely useless degree in Sociology. A fascinating subject opening doors to, as it would happen, literally nowhere.

Now, while simplistic and not entirely without issues, for most of my life this was a philosophy that served me well. By doing what I enjoyed, I was pretty happy and the opportunities that came my way as a result of any choices I made. They also tended to be fairly well aligned with what I liked and valued. For example, the lack of direction my degree gave me, meant I wasn't collected up by the milk round like so many of my law student and business student friends and thrust into corporate grad schemes designed exactly to build on my qualifications and bridge me towards the career I was destined for like 'lawyer' or 'CEO'. Instead, somewhat less employable, I ended up temping in fields as diverse as Business Banking & Social Housing, learning a lot, but with little real responsibility. As a result, my social life was excellent and I was entirely uncommitted should any other more exciting opportunities come my way I fancied doing - like being a Camp Counsellor in the wilds of Whitby or Teaching English in Turkey.

When I decided to make the move from the UK to Oz in 2006, even my then career in teaching didn't hold me back any. I'd only ended up there in the first place as I found out while I was working on the checkout at Tesco that you could get paid the same to train as a teacher and that sounded like it would be more fun. So sorry school... see ya. I'm off to OZ.

My philosophy allowed me to float between jobs, countries and courses happily.

And then I had children. And those choices and opportunities stopped being so much about 'me stuff' and involving reading interesting things and global travel; and were more about 'the needs of the small people', reading 11 billion books in the Usborne 'That's Not My...' series and as little travel as possible please because my baby hates the car seat.

Now, I'm not saying that my life became joy-less at this point. Though I will say that car journeys certainly did. Overall, in fact, moving away from having any choices and being focussed on what needed to be done made life much easier for me.

Some of my most amazing memories and definitely my biggest learning curve ever in life was when my children were small. And even if I never read anything that wasn't tactile and had low-level anxiety ALL THE TIME about the fact I had to keep them alive: it was all kinda fun before we got locked in together.

Plus, without the same level of adventure and exploration open to me, I learnt to find joy in the smaller things. Drinking coffee hot, watching my babies watch bubbles, days with absolutely no plans we could allow to unfold as they did.

The things is, as we emerged from those pre school years and the COVID era, my babies needed me less and those little moments of joy with them were less too. For large parts of my week, my two fellow musketeers were simply not there anymore and so the other moments of joy I was left with were no longer quite as coveted & thus 'joyful' as they once were. A hot coffee became less of a luxury and my choices were not, 'will we finger paint or go to the park?', but rather, 'will I clean out the fridge or go to the dentist?'

I guess what I found was, after living for little moments of peace in the chaos, things had suddenly become too quiet. Yet, there was no room for big adventures between 830am and 230pm either. Allowing things to unfold as they will & just picking more fun options, is way less fun when you only allow yourself pretty shit options to select from.

Was this is where I was going wrong? I started to wonder. By not actively structuring my time or forcing myself to look at the tough questions - like, what AM I going to be now I'm grown up? I was simply coasting along doing chores. Now while that sounds delightful (the coasting, not the chores bit), the need to achieve things and have an impact that we all feel, was well and truly, I came to realise in 2022, NOT BEING MET.

So, I knew that I had to make myself address the bigger questions if I stood any chance of finding joy again.

With a lot more listening - to those audio books and finally, myself, I figured out that since I had some more time to play with, I needed to find joy not just in the small things anymore; but in service again too. And that needed to be directed and scheduled in. Because I only had some time and not a lot of time to work with.

Direction though, takes decisions. Actual, real, considered ones that are chosen for their purpose and not their playfulness. Not my best skill. But I came to understand last year that I needed to grow into taking better control of my life. To find the rudder of my ship. Because if I didnt, in the five hours of free sailing I had each day, I was just going to keep drifting around in circles of washing.

As I came towards this understanding and sat down to really try and work out what I was good at and where my skills and service aligned - that crossroads that is our dharma - and the place from which I could start to base my decisions, the universe, who I had been feeling more than a little abandoned by last year as I struggled with all this I have to say, perked up her pretty head and thankfully got back involved.

Just as I decided that I needed to look at things like teaching that allowed me to use the skills of pedagogy and processes of observations and adjustments that I find come naturally to me; but not teaching (because of a million practical reasons) and I started researching what I might need to study or volunteer for next, I was gifted an opportunity.

As we headed towards the the end of 2022, I got another new job. Sort of, entirely, accidentally.

I don't know. Maybe planning life isn't my thing after all...

Heading into 2023, I started working one-to-one with kids who need extra assistance outside of the classroom in order to excel in it. Helping them upskill at times, choose tools and methods to manage their anxieties and build their self worth up in the face of a school system that seems hell bent on making them think, because they process and learn differently, that their contributions are worth less. Or sometimes, even worthless.

While this was just the very beginning of this path and who knew whether it was where I was supposed to stay, I was very certain that, in getting to learn, evaluate, explore and crucially, to serve again was where I would find start to joy this year. And in those hot coffees. I made the decision I'd be keeping those this year too.

And so, DID it? Does it? These are the questions I face now as I stop to to take stock of 2023. In many ways it's an easy yes. But also, I don't think it is all. It is something I am already very good at and comes easily to me. One the one hand, a perfect illustration of why it is ideal. On the other, I know I need to go beyond this and add now something that will challenge me in a different way, because joy it seems, isn't just about fit and flow and service. It is also about rising to a challenge and the transformation that challenges can bring. Whether we succeed or whether we fail.

While it pains me to say it, and I swore after the word of the year thing was such a fizzer with JOY I woudn't do the whole word of the year thing anymore, it looks a lot as I look back, like 2023 shaped up to be the year of CHALLENGE. Surprisingly though, while it sounds terrible, there was a lot more fun to be had in that than there ever was in joy...