The Chronicles of 2020: The Office Wall

mind·ful

/ˈmīn(d)fəl/

conscious or aware of something.

I’m taking another brief pause from progressive chronicling to write out something that’s been on my mind this week.

At the end of 2019 (which now feels like eons ago) I wiped the chalkboard wall in my office clean. Unlocking my phone, I dove into one of the many rambling lists saved in my notes app, and read through some goals and ideas that I had been thinking about for the new year.

I’m a big list person. I’m also a goals-centered person. I enjoy setting them for the year, as well as for each month.

Although to be completely transparent, by April 1st of this year I had to chill out with the aggressive monthly goals. I achieved next to nothing in March, and so instead I wrote out three simple hopes for April…

• Stay alive
• Read 1 book
• Finish garden

As of this morning, those are all checked off. ✔️

Back to the bigger picture 2020 goals. As I wrote out my eight goals for the year, I tried to be diverse, measurable, and realistic. See below. Yes, I have the handwriting of a ten-year-old.

Lately, I’ve caught myself staring at this list more often. I’ll walk in most mornings, a warm coffee mug in hand, and scan through the high hopes that I had in January.

How was I doing? Where could I do better?

What, at this point, probably wasn’t going to happen at all?

Running a half marathon — questionable if races will come back this year. Time will tell. No, I’m not really interested in running one on my own.

I was chipping away at reading and listening to books, thanks to a little extra free time.

The one item that continues to snag my eye is that bottom line:

“Weekly relationship check-ins.”

When I wrote it out, I didn’t have a hard plan in mind, outside of to generally be more mindful and attentive to the relationships across my life on a weekly basis.

Yet as I found myself staring at it, I realized that I was actually doing very well with that particular goal. And, in the spirit of finding some good in hard/weird times, I want to point out that many of us are probably doing a little better than usual when it comes to checking in.

I’m talking to my mom and sister a lot more. So far this year I’ve probably seen some of my extended family more than in all of 2019. I’m talking to friends, around the world, on various messaging apps — and we aren’t just exchanging memes. Instead questions are being asked like,

“How are you doing? What’s new, what’s for dinner? Where are you at mentally?”

If I had to guess, the world is doing a lot more checking in right now. I hope, if nothing else, that it’s something that sticks when we come out on the other side of this thing.

I might not snatch 115lbs in 2020, but at this point it seems like a silly goal in the wake of a global crisis. But checking in, and striving to better my relationships as a wife, daughter, sister, friend, neighbor — that’s a goal that I’ll be proud to check off come December.