20 Little Things I’m Grateful For That Made 2020 Better For Me Than 2019
By: Lark Morrigan
Tags: Life, Self, Mental Health, 2020

I don’t need to say again that 2020 was a shit year for the vast majority of people. It was a year that not only exacerbated the brokenness of the system but also exposed what has been previously wrong with it for decades.

But still, I hope you are encouraged to make a list of things that went right for you just to keep yourself going in the midst of oppressive opposition and draining negativity from all forces around you. It may sound silly or superficial for you, but I find it more conducive to my personal growth when I am not 100% negative or putting myself down all the time — ya know?

I am aware that fall into the privileged but not privileged category. I am fortunate to be living with family during this time while others don’t have the privilege and are being evicted from their apartments. I am still employed and able to work from home. I don’t face blatant racial discrimination. I live in a relatively safe area. I don’t have to work on the front lines during this pandemic.

However, even though I benefit from middle-class privilege, the future statistically is bleak for me. I don’t earn enough to live on my own. I have pondered whether or not I am chronically ill due to my persistent fatigue that makes me work half as much as a normal healthy, able-bodied person and leaves me bedridden for 2/5 of the day (excluding nighttime sleeping hours). I haven’t seen the doctor for four years. I am not in a position of power or influence and I’m pretty sure elites controlling certain industries would hate my guts if they knew my personal views on certain things that I am unwilling to compromise on.

In the grand scheme of things, I am pretty much powerless (what offends me the most is not Asian jokes but when people assume I’m like a “rich white girl blogger” and I’m not even white or rich and an influencer’s outfit on Instagram is worth more than what I earn a month — but that’s beside the point). But I am also aware that I am fortunate that I am able to have things that many others don’t, including safety, food, shelter, and some time to think of my dreams (even if it is not as much as I’d like).

It’s easy to stew in negativity. It’s easy to think about ways you are falling behind in life due to things beyond your control. My limited level of privilege may give me a slight advantage, but I still feel like I am falling behind other people who are richer, more successful, more productive, more charismatic, more well-connected, and more powerful than me. There will always be many people in society who are above me — financially, socially, and mentally — and there is nothing I can do to catch up to them, even if I double down my effort to be like them (but over time, I realize that the only person that is worth being is a better version of myself, nothing unrealistic).

My mental health has been down the toilet for the vast majority of the year and I’ve been in far too many creative ruts to count and admittedly couldn’t control how much I felt frustrated about it.

However, as much as I skew heavily to believing in the most pessimistic things and hate toxic positivity along with forcing myself to feel happy when I’m clearly not, showing gratitude from time to time is a genuine way to help me get out of an overly negative rut that drains me and keeps me in a self-destructive cycle of hopelessness, paralyzing self-doubt that prevents me from reaching the point where I’d like to be — flourishing creatively and authentically, and analysis-paralysis that stifles me and makes keeping the creative momentum harder to maintain.

There is a time for releasing repressed emotions and a time for acknowledging what went right to give yourself hope because in times like these, hope may be all you have to hold onto and to remind yourself that you are not a disaster-in-the-making, a lost cause, or worthless compared to people who seem to have it all together.

If anything, I’ve learned that it is far more productive to remind myself of how far I’ve come, compared to when I first started to make real changes in my life, instead of beating myself down to the ground so hard that I feel like I can’t ever get back up.

Without further ado, here are 20 little things that went right for me this year: