2020 was going to be OUR YEAR!, wasn’t it? All of us? Y’know. Until it wasn’t.
I’m not one for new year or resolutions or expecting too much from a calendar change, but in Classic Me style, I decided early on that 2020 might actually be a good one for me. With the dawn of each January 1st, I still manage to convince myself that I will make more of an effort in self-improvement for the coming year and beyond. I gave up on making actual strict resolutions years ago, after realising that I was incapable of setting realistic goals. I seem to recall when I was 14, vowing to “write a series of a sitcom” in that one year. And that was only one item on my extensive To Do list.
This year, I decided to keep it attainable with one real resolution:
- I will not ride the Dufferin bus.
The Dufferin bus basically stops right outside my house and is undoubtedly the most convenient bus for me, but it’s quite simply the worst. It’s never not uncomfortably packed and all of the drivers on that route drive like maniacs over an incredibly ill-maintained stretch of road. It was a joke resolution, and there were times when taking that particular bus was unavoidable. However, on several occasions, I managed to go to great lengths to avoid it, often inconveniencing myself by taking other routes that would take me further away from my destination and I’d end up walking more than I would had I just taken the bus. I switched up the route I would take to and from work every day and I felt pretty pleased with how long I managed to go without the Dufferin bus. Then the pandemic hit and I had no need to commute or go anywhere, so the job was done for me.
Although not an official resolution, I also decided that I’d actually follow through with trying to work on myself. I’ve been growing increasingly frustrated with my lack of creative output for the last few years and often start on projects in order to combat this, only to give up or forget about them. I don’t really know how to do much, so I wanted to learn things. I had agreed to be in a band who had one show lined up in September, so figured I should actually learn how to play bass, rather than just noodle about and teach myself the odd song here and there as I’ve been doing inconsistently since I was 16.
So, I took the plunge and had my first ever bass guitar lesson! It was great! My teacher actually cared about what I hoped to get out of it and didn’t make me feel stupid, which was a real worry. It was a success and, as he left, I said I’d definitely like to continue. He told me he was out of town for the next couple of weeks but to drop him and email and we could continue from there when he got back. That first lesson was at the end of February. There have been no further lessons. I can blame the pandemic for this one, right? Excellent. The end.
Not really. I’ve been feeling conflicted since March, when things went weird. I’ve got so much free time and, on one hand, I’m firmly in the “don’t feel bad if you’re not using it to be productive when you’re trying to navigate a fucking global pandemic and all that comes with it”, but on the other, I am tired of making excuses for myself as to why I don’t follow through with things. My primary concern is that I don’t know what to follow through with and I float from idea to idea, interest to interest, but rarely for long enough to make any progress. A conversation that has come up often with a friend is that we miss making things for the sake of making them. This seems to be something particularly prominent when you’re young, but maybe life just zaps the will out of you as you age. So, I’m trying to reclaim that a bit. In the last few months, I have made a couple of little things for no reason and it’s felt great.
I figured it’d be good to put them somewhere and maybe some people will see them and enjoy them. I don’t have a discipline, I just have stuff I like to do. I enjoy making silly videos, taking pictures and writing things down, so I suppose this page will just be that. Maybe this will help me figure out where I want to spend more of my time, or maybe it’ll just be a dumping ground for what’s in my brain. Anyway…
I’ll
just
leave
this
here…
kirsteninneski.ca 