To begin a blog with the admission that you cannot keep one is the epitome of a doomed start. It follows the same sentiment as hurry up and wait--only this time it's waiting, potentially, for nothing. Read these posts until I lose interest in writing them, or until my life becomes full with other things, or until I make the mistake of looking back on what I've published and am so embarrassed by it that I delete every post and pretend like none of it happened.
These outcomes are ones I've experienced and could experience again, but I'm not listing them because I want to cushion what I assume will be an abrupt end to this blog. I'm listing them despite their high probability. I'm listing them because I want to prove them wrong.
Well, maybe not them so much as myself.
The idea for the project The Year of Proving Myself Wrong came to me a couple of months into social distancing as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. Like so many others, I believed the US would be free of the virus come summer, so I bided what I assumed would be a brief amount of time by planning how I and my then-partner would celebrate once quarantine was officially over. The plans I had for us were glistening and, from what I felt, manageable--camping with our dog in the national parks, taking a trip to Big Sur, California, planning a move to Chicago where I would be partaking in a long-desired PhD program. These felt like "givens" to me, never mind I had fabricated them in my personal mental theatre and negated the fact that they required two people in order for them to actualize as they were intended.
When it came to my hopes for my "post-pandemic" self--a person I am still waiting to meet--I found myself struggling to come up with a task that I could envision not only enjoying but completing successfully. Every time I thought of a hobby or excursion I'd like to attempt on my own, I found myself standing stiff, hand over mouth, staring into the distance as I saw disappointment and disaster resulting from my efforts--"I can't do that!" This happened on many, many occasions and suddenly I was left sitting in my living room finding that I had limited my abilities to a myriad of chores and the two talents I've been known for the longest: writing and academics.
To clarify--because that last part sounds like I resented enjoying and being good at these things--I love being a poet and an academic and would never change my life-path for the world. But was that all I wanted to be able to do? Of course not. I wanted to achieve things that felt like an addition to my identity, not merely a continuation of it. And I was twenty-three with time to explore, attempt, fail, attempt again, change course...but I felt like I couldn't do anything.
So in a moment of ripe, snarky, rebellious optimism, I decided to make a list of all the things I felt I couldn't do and dare myself to do them all. I would even give the list a title, something grand-sounding and intriguing: The Year of Proving Myself Wrong. I would turn the list into a blog! I was immediately inspired and began preparing for what would be a fun project of self-discovery. I even gave myself a deadline to complete the first post...
...but then the pandemic didn't end in the summer. And little cracks in my life became these titanic fissures that I felt I couldn't ignore or combat. I began to panic. I tried to stop panicking, then found I wasn't able. The future I so desired was challenged and, in some ways, destroyed. My partner and I separated, then broke up for good. Three months later, our beautiful dog passed away without me there to say goodbye. And all around these private pains, the Coronavirus raged, mutated, and claimed hundreds upon thousands of lives, of stories, of possibilities. The world seemed encased in a shell of "can't" and "no." I believed it futile, even disrespectful, to attempt to make it like everything wasn't terrible. So I abandoned The Year of Proving Myself Wrong and when it crossed my mind I sometimes mourned, sometimes chastised the hope I once possessed.
This paragraph doesn't exact a fast-forward beyond the agony and loss that has been suffered on a global and personal scale. At most, it indicates a shift. A shift of perspective, of thinking, of being as a result of devastation undergone. I also can't say that nothing has changed. We are still in the midst of a deadly pandemic, but we finally have a political administration that takes it seriously and is working to curb its impact on the general population. I'm in my second semester of PhD coursework and cherishing every minute of it. I have a supportive family, solid therapist, and band of beautiful friends. By employing an average amount of effort, life has proven so many of my dismal assumptions wrong. I am left wondering what else relegated to the realm of impossibility can be reclaimed. I am left with hope...and a long list of things to do.
With purpose,
Eniko