Surviving A New Year

The thing about surviving is that you just go. There isn’t any heed or notice to time passing as you go.

Go is all I’ve done since restrictions rolled back earlier in the spring.

No complaints, really!

Kicking over all traces of people, places, food, ideas, books, music, and football.

Smiling like I haven’t in a long time. Yet the universe sent me a clue for 2022.

[“Take what you’ve learned and start again.”] ~ The Universe

When my phone completely died on the way home from an epic night of Arab Cup Football, I lost just enough contacts to get me listening to the universe. [You won’t need them…] When messages synced to the last saved version, I lost conversations as well. [Nothing left to say…]

[“Hey, you… I’m even killing your phone so you have a clean break…”]

I was feeling awful, emotionally and physically, without my old phone… But managing, making my way, knowing that new things are ahead, and if needed, it would re-appear.

It was a reminder of my 2017 motto: ”What comes, comes, what goes, goes, and what sticks and stays, sticks and stays.” I also needed a doctor visit at the hospital because I was fighting RSV (a Christmas gift from my students) as well as a massive respiratory reaction to my Pfizer booster.

I was feeling plague-like sitting with RSV, in red signal construction traffic, at 9am, near the hospital. A man painting a traffic signal pole, the midst of a global pandemic, caught my attention.

What a completely unrealistic and somewhat asinine thing really, which created managed chaos in the traffic patterns circling around this man.

With everything happening in the world at the end of 2021, painting a traffic signal with a gray roller, on a Tuesday, during morning traffic, at the 3rd busiest intersection in all of Qatar, was on someones’s priority list. I wondered what absolutely frivolous things did I make a priority in my 2021 which detracted me from my initial goal list? Mastering glittery eye makeup? Frivolous, but definitely a goal. Cat eyes for 2022!

Hopped up on Decadron on my way home from the clinic, I asked myself for 2022, what light poles will I paint while the world is passing around me? What am I making priority and what am I deeming frivolous?

I then got thinking: Am I satisfied with the way I stop at red signals from the universe? Am I speeding through green ones? Which signals need a U-turn for 2022, turns left or right, and how do I manage those persons who don’t use a crosswalk?

2022 is my five-year anniversary of 2017 Year Of Adventuring.

I am re-setting the adventure coordinates to things I want to see, do, believe, and experience.

People, places, recipes, ideas… everything needs an edit to make my 2022 a successful and safe journey.

So, what’s on your priority list? What’s coming, going, and sticking and staying?

Adventure. Everyone wants it but few actually have the courage to attain it.

Few have the courage to put the work in for it.

Few are afraid of it. But for me, adventure is worth the cost of a new phone at quarter to midnight after a street party with Moroccans and this trance music… after the universe inspirationally edited my digital footprint. “Yalla bye, oh, bye, ensay…“ ~ not The Universe but a song titled Ensay by Mohamed Ramadan and Saad Lamjarred, “Forget the day you met me, I’m not yours anymore…I’ll do as I please and it will be easy to live without you…”

Thank you, 2021 for your wisdom, insights, and perks. Here’s to a 2022 that honors all of what has been learned.

Weigh the cost of what you’re carrying versus how far you want to go. Travel light and take little with you (store it in the cloud).

Keep things in your heart, speak kind words, and treat others with respect. Stop. Look. Listen.

I wish you a 2022 filled with all the happiness of getting only the green signals on the corniche and no traffic on C-ring road.

Sláinte.

(I’d give you photos in this post but they’re downloading from my Shutterfly account! So grate for the cloud!)