AND so, this is Christmas. And what have you done? Not much? Yeah, me neither.
In the last few days of any year there's always that urge to tot things up, to take a measure of the 12 months you've just gone through and what you have – or more likely have not – achieved. Another year and you still haven't travelled the world/written that novel/did your bit to end climate change.
At the fag end of this yellow-stained, miserable year, I think it's fair to suggest that if you are feeling fretful about what you haven't done, then you really need to give yourself a break. Getting through this year is achievement enough, quite frankly.
Far too many people haven't, after all.
Travel the world? Fat chance this year. Write a novel? Reading one seems pretty good going to me in a year when anxiety and doom-scrolling have been eating up so much time.
No doubt, right now, there is someone working away on the novel that will nail the smeary, scary tedium of 2020. It won't be me, but I'd be happy to read it when it's published.
The truth is, this year we should be reassessing what our measure of achievement is anyway. If you've managed to work from home without burning out, give yourself a clap on the back. If you've been furloughed and kept yourself together, that's great. If you've been a key worker, whether in the NHS or in the local takeaway, we salute you.
This year what have I managed to do? Did a bit of work, read nearly 100 books (a lot of them short ones admittedly), watched a few movies, listened to a lot of radio, managed an hour or two not seething about the inadequacies of Boris Johnson and, oh yes, climbed Dumyat in the Ochils.
That was a few months back. My mate who's a proper hillwalker took me up, which was kind of him. Admittedly, he spent most of the not-very-taxing walk moaning that it wasn't a proper hill, but I didn't mind.
I've been living close to Dumyat for most of the 36 years I've lived in Scotland (there were a couple of years in the north-east of England somewhere in the middle), and I've kept meaning to climb up to the top, survey the Forth valley, which, after all, is the landscape for most of my adult life. But I never had. In that brief window this summer when we could all go out and do things (a golden age looking back from these dank, wet, tier 4 days), I finally did.
Yes, it was an easy enough walk. But that didn't matter. There was still a sense of achievement and of a task completed. Not a task that mattered or that made a difference to anyone else. But it made a difference to me.
This has been a year for celebrating small victories. It's possible that the year ahead will be much the same. So, cherish the ones you have managed whatever they may be.
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