I’m Only Human By Nick Dauk

I don’t have the time or energy to write this.

Which, as a professional writer, is embarrassing. If anything, I should have nothing but time and energy to crank out a few hundred words. 

But tonight, I’m a writer struggling to string together sentences, a husband working yet another weekend, and a father wishing I wasn’t in my office, a world away from my beautiful baby boy.

I’m someone who let 2020 steal my mindfulness.

2019 was a milestone year. I turned a lay-off from a career in television into an opportunity to chase my dream. Granted, I worked harder than I ever had before, but this time, it was on my own terms. 

I controlled my workload and my schedule, stepping back from the stress when I needed a break.

I hardly worked a weekend. 

I went to the gym six days a week. 

My health and my relationships were a top-priority, two areas of my life that were collateral damage for six years while the 24/7 nature of broadcasting consumed me.

I felt good and I looked good, not by chance, but by choice. 

Then 2020 hit and my mindfulness unraveled. 

Lockdowns meant no more gym sessions, no more meetups with friends or family. A new pregnancy during the pandemic meant trading healthy-eating for the comforts of junk food, one of the only vices we had while quarantined at home. I was a travel writer who could no longer travel. I was a copywriter with clients who suddenly had no budget. 

The compromise? Fight to keep my dream job even if it meant sacrificing my mindfulness.  

I worked harder and harder, picking up every job no matter how insultingly low the pay. I stressed myself out writing the equivalent of a full-blown novel in July… for less than $1,300. I strained my eyes, wrists, and willpower, confined to the keyboard no matter how desperately my body and mind screamed for respite. 

I fell to the pressure of making 2020 “count”; this bizarre notion that my productivity should increase with the pandemic in parallel fashion. I had to move forward in my new career, I had to make as much money as possible. It was as if 2020 was a uniquely personal challenge and not a global catastrophe that disrupted the lives of literally every other human on the planet. 

The anxiety, the self-doubt, the negativity I worked so hard to overcome in 2019 were now my coworkers in 2020. 

If you also traded mindfulness for madness this year…I applaud you.

Psychological sobriety is vital and mindfulness is medicine, but life is never black or white and 2020 colored all of us confused. Forgive yourself for what you did — or didn’t — do. Whatever was lost or gained, at whatever the cost, was the best that you could possibly do while enduring an epidemic that altered every aspect of our lives overnight.

I don’t have the time or energy to write this, but I’m glad that I did, because it was what I chose to do despite the moment telling me otherwise. 

And now I’ll walk away and hold my son, you can always reclaim your mindfulness the moment you choose to.