How to Prepare for Post-Holiday Blues in a Pandemic
By: Autumn Christian
Tags: Life Hack, Self Improvement, Life Lessons, 2021

What will 2021 bring after this shitshow, and how can you be ready for it?

Image by kinkate from Pixabay

Well, to put it lightly, this year probably could’ve been better.

It’s the day after Christmas, and as we look toward New Year’s Eve we’re all collectively feeling the weight of 2020. Maybe your Christmas was great. Maybe you didn’t even have enough money to fill a stocking. Maybe you spent the day alone in your apartment, getting drunk on a bottle of cold egg-nog and watching bad Christmas movies, because your family was either socially distancing, ill, or dead.

Maybe Santa left hand sanitizer and a mask in your stocking. Or it’s possible even Santa is socially-distancing this year, left you nothing but a dry cough and a mothball in a limp sock.

Maybe Christmas has never been a good time for you — because of a past history of tragedy or abuse, Grinch-like predilections, or lack of funds. A kind of grimdark ritual that’s something you’ve learned to merely endure. And this pandemic is just a rotten cherry on top of your usual shit cake.

I was lucky to be with at least some of my family this Christmas. I’m trying to learn how to do family things, after years of avoiding them. (I was off in ~Seattle~ and ~San Diego~ living that lonely writer life) A small group of six, and we ate a big meal with lots of mashed potatoes, macaroni, noodles (From a secret family recipe!), and turkey. Followed by a berry cheesecake (and a shot of whiskey that my uncle and I secretly downed in the corner.) I snuck food to my dogs, we exchanged presents, and I went home to fall into a warm, comfy coma.

And I’m lucky to be an extreme introvert and a writer whose partner is in one of the few industries that have grown during the pandemic (Games). But nobody has remained untouched by 2020, and its repercussions will be felt for decades to come. It remains to be seen what will come of this year, how it’s affected the hearts and minds of children, of young adults who were supposed to reach certain hallmarks and got stalled, of those with destroyed family businesses and dead relatives and broken relationships.

It’s not often that the world gets the privilege of collectively spiraling into a crisis. It’s like everyone’s holding hands while being rocketed into hell. Some of us are biting at each other’s fingers, scraping nails together, shouting, but we’re all holding tight. Trying not to lose hold of our lives. Our jobs. Our security. Our economy. Our sense of self.

But the first vaccines have been shipped out and administered. Hope is cresting on the horizon. The U.S Secretary of Health and Human Services says there should be enough vaccine doses in the second quarter of 2021 for everyone, but others say it could be as early as spring. The end of this particular crisis is coming.

Soon we can focus on all the other horrible things existence has to offer.

New Years’ is coming. And maybe the morning after Christmas you’re already thinking of 2021. Maybe with a mix of apprehension, hope, and dread. That shiny New Year’s ball has been tainted with grime, its bottom bubbling with a plague and bad memories. A time to reset has many of us thinking that maybe the worst has yet to come. Meteor strikes, war, or maybe a robot takeover.

This time last year I’d just moved to Oklahoma, bought my first gun, cooked and eaten a deer heart, and was learning how to make bread. In those early months before the pandemic, I traveled to L.A to visit with friends, was writing more than I had in years with a fresh perspective, and felt like the fairy lights inside of my brain had turned on. I was more aware, more present, more awake.

Then Coronavirus happened.

I fell into a panic for the first few months. But later I managed to pull myself back together. I went back to my usual diet. My usual writing routine. I upped my exercise, began to meditate and decided to dress in more than ragged sweats. I ran my anxiety out on the stair master. I decoded some of my writing issues. Most of 2020 was awful, but I’m better than I was before physically, mentally, and emotionally.

It’s okay if you haven’t accomplished what you wanted to this year. Maybe you’ve barely had time to breathe. Maybe just getting out of bed is an accomplishment, and each night the sheets fall heavy, every molecule in the air feels like it’s screaming as it’s being burned alive. And now that Christmas is over and New Year is coming a big vacuum of emptiness, a question mark, is waiting or you. And you’re wondering what kind of fresh hell is on the other side of 2020.

I don’t know what you’ve gone through and I won’t insult you by pretending that I understand.

I will just tell you what’s worked for me. What’s helped me steer myself through the abyss and void that existence can feel like.

I remember this: Reality isn’t a game, and it isn’t a dream. It’s not a test, and it’s not a punishment. Life wasn’t made as a human torture chamber, and even though it often feels like an empty void

It’s a huge interconnected web of cause and effect. Reality exists as it does because it has to. It was built upon laws that meant it would run perfectly, enmeshed within itself, in harmony and symmetry until the end of time. And everything that exists inside this reality is enmeshed in the rules.

Including you. And once you learn what the rules are, you can do anything within its confines. This is how people looked upon the chaotic primal planet, with its snarled jungles, deadly venomous snakes, dangerous deserts, and angry wolves and sparked the fire, grew crops, sculpted art.

You are in control of yourself if you understand how you work. That’s true whether you’re in prison or on a private island in Bali. Whether you’re young, old, sick, healthy, rich, poor, black, white, or brown. And although something like a raging pandemic can storm through your life, you can figure out how to weather it. Pain in this existence is inevitable. There will never be a moment that nothing is going wrong.

Even a monkey probably dreams of going to the moon. Frogs dabble in the sparkling white moonlight

But how do we get there?

Everything about human beings was designed to get us to the moon. And if we can break through the atmosphere and get to the moon, you can wake up to work out. Or write that book. Or give your children the attention you know they need and be fully present. Or just simply walk outside into the cool air and take a moment to breathe.

This is how we get to the moon:

We looked up in the sky and saw the moon. (Reality)

We dreamed of going there. (Art)We believed that we could. (Religion)

We figured out how to get there. (Science)

We went there. (Action)

And so it is with you. Whatever you want. Whatever you need. You can’t manifest it. It isn’t magic. And it probably won’t be easy.

But next time you look up into the moon, think of what it took to get us. And realize no matter how awful the world gets, the same way a person gets to the moon is the same way a person climbs out of their stress and anxiety, endures a pandemic, gets out of bed, or gets the job they really want.

See. Dream. Believe. Understand. Act.