Live

I picked a word this year. Not in January. It came mid-lockdown, when the world had closed and every plan had expired. Live.

Everything around me said wait. At some point I decided I wasn’t willing to postpone living just because the world had paused. If that meant I had to live within the confines of my loft condo, then so be it.

The word also came at a fork. I’d been doing whatever, taking whatever came, without much thought about a next step. Live meant forget the rules, forget what anyone might say, do what feels best in the moment and let that be enough.

I once wrote about things I stopped asking permission for. Live extended the list. I dropped the habit of asking altogether and did things simply because I wanted to, which is a strange sentence to write as an adult.

The funny part is that living still happened, just through a webcam. Meetings, workshops, birthdays, all on Zoom, like everyone else. Locked in and still living. I count it.

This was also the first year I actually liked who I was. Loved, on some days. More than any year before it. I can’t explain why. My best theory is that the lockdown cancelled all my other plans and most of my people, so I ended up spending the year with myself, the one appointment that couldn’t be rescheduled. Turns out I liked her.