Bye, 2021: Five things that didn't suck this year

Even in the helplessness of this era, I managed to pull off some cool stuff, large and small

I did not have the time of my life. But it wasn’t all pestilence and doom.

It’s December 31, and just a few years ago the date might have prompted me to jot down a few resolutions for the New Year. But if 2020 and 2021 have taught us anything, it’s that plans should be written down in pencil or, better yet, just in your little brain like a mental note, because Coronavirus thinks your plans are cute. Adorable. Dig: this time last year, I had a lot of things I had absolutely planned to do in 2021 - run 50 5Ks in honor of my 50th birthday; find a serious relationship; go to Jamaica; lose 25 pounds. And friends…I DIDN’T DO ANY OF THAT STUFF.

I did, however, manage to make some changes to my life, most of them things I would not have predicted. But I trusted myself enough to make them. Some of them were decisions I prepared for, and at least one involved just walking down the street on my lunch break and sitting in a chair. In retrospect, maybe big moves are easier to make in a messed-up time when you don’t feel you have a lot to lose. I can say that these five things made my life better, and even when things got iffy I’ve never regretted them. Who has time for that?

1. I quit my job without another one to go to: In February, I left a corporate job in communications that I’d had for just six months. It was the first time since college that I hadn’t been a full-time newspaper reporter, and I had never worked a professional job for less than a year and a half - I’d been at the Palm Beach Post, which I left to move to Baltimore, for 18 years! But it became clear, very quickly, that this was not my jam. It wasn’t creative in the way I was used to, it was on-call and stressful in a way that didn’t work for my family, especially my pandemic-weary little boy, and it wasn’t my passion. I tried to stick it out for longer, but then had the weirdest thought: Why? This isn’t for me! What am I trying to prove and to who?” None of those rules applied anymore, because I just wasn’t happy. So I took a deep breath and literally prayed, every morning for a week, “God, give me a sign that I shouldn’t quit.” And when I didn’t get one, I quit. FRIGHTENING. And liberating. That decision opened me up not only to the possibility of freelance for places like The Washington Post and The Seattle Times, but to some side gigs like writing musician bios and writing coaching. I’m even halfway through my second book. I can say, resolutely, that I am happier, professionally, than I have been in years, even with the uncertainty, because I’m my own boss. I can’t control everything - I had a potentially lucrative possibility cancel just this week because the subject tested positive for coronavirus. But two hours later I got asked to pitch a big publication. There are possibilities. And it all started because I trusted myself and leapt. Haven’t crashed yet.

2. I cut all my hair off: The week before I quit my job, I told my co-workers, sitting across a Zoom, that I was logging off to take a lunch break, and then walked to the barbershop on the corner and said “Just cut and then keep cutting.” Some backstory - 20 years earlier I’d done my first “big chop,” when as a Black woman I cut all of the relaxer and straightening chemicals out of my hair and let it grow back natural. In that time, I’d colored the crap out of it, leaving it damaged, and capped off that damage with a blowout last September at the same time I got it dyed blonde that apparently pissed my hair off so much that it refused to look right ever again. My signature coily curls, which were part of my personality and style, never came back, and at one point I was like “If I can’t have a big curly blonde Afro, I’ll just dye it black.” That didn’t make me happy either. It wasn’t me. So I thought, “How do I know what’s me anymore, at almost 50, in a new house in a city you haven’t lived in 29 years? I don’t.” So I just cut it all off and started all over. In a way, that chop was a precursor to quitting my job - burning it all down and letting it grow back however it may. To paraphrase Celine Dion (and Dave Stewart and Kara DioGuardi), I jumped off the edge, never knowing if there’s solid ground below, or a hairline to hold, or weird bumps at play. And I look kinda hot.

3. I got soft contact lenses: I wrote about this more extensively on my blog, but the gist is that after decades of wearing very uncomfortable hard gas permeable lenses, I finally got soft contacts. And it was initially terrible, and I couldn’t take them out by myself and had to get my mom to help me, and felt like a complete idiot baby. But like everything else, I had to remind myself that trying new things sometimes includes a learning curve, and failing the first several times, and feeling like a complete idiot baby before you get the hang of it. My eyes are now much more comfortable, see much better and, along with my new short hair, I am seeing myself more clearly than I have in a long time. Like, in all the ways. (I’m a poet!)

4. I started therapy again: As a widow, I owe some of my recovery to my therapist, who I first sought help from in the initial days after my husband’s death and who I went back to year later, as I prepared to go on a book tour about that death, that didn’t happen because BIG FLAMING PAN PIZZA. When we moved to Maryland, we had to part ways because she isn’t licensed here, and although you’d think living through a pandemic would have made finding a new person to talk to a priority, it took me a while to do so. But we finally started again with a family therapist, who we see online, and who is so chill and honest. She does what the best therapists do, which is listen and then go “Girl, what are you doing?” This pandemic has made it easy to live in your head. It’s nice to remember you don’t have to.

5. I decided to quit Noom and stop formally dieting: OK, so this is a new one. Like, this week, new. And it’s possibly the biggest change, because it’s about adjusting behavior I’ve had since I bought my first Lean Cuisine like in high school. I have been on some sort of diet for the 30 years, and the most recent one, the allegedly psychology-based Noom worked well for me when I first started it in April 2020. But like anything else, it’s not magic (and it is a diet, even though it says it’s not) and I gained back the weight I lost, for various reasons including the stress of moving, that job I quit, and starting menopause, which slaps your hormones around and says “THIS IS WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE NOW. Have a cup of coffee and sit down somewhere.” None of those things are a necessary dealbreaker to weight loss, and maybe there’s something else that would work for me, but after almost two years of losing and gaining the same several pounds, Noom ain’t it. I did pick up some really helpful advice, like really thinking about why I wanted to eat and what, and weighing my choices in a different way. It’s apparently worked for some people. But I got tired of feeling like I had to pause to immediately enter my meals and my exercise, which is supposed to give you a clear-eyed idea of where you stand in the choices you make, but which made me stop conversations to hurriedly decide whether I could have dessert, or just lump it all and go to bed. Also, it established a running tally in my head that never let me stop thinking about food. And I still wasn’t losing weight! So this week, I wrote down what I ate in the notes mode of my phone and didn’t put it into Noom until the end of the day. I trusted myself. And most days I didn’t go over. I actually lost weight during a holiday, proving that I don’t need to pay someone to do so if I want to. And I’m training and running again, so my body composition is toned again. I’m thicker and bigger than the last time I was this fit, but it’s solid and I like it. But that’s not the most important part. I took the above photo in the mirror a couple of days ago while on vacation and thought “I like the way I look, and if I never lose any more significant weight other than on a doctor’s specific orders, I’m cool with it.” AND THEN I ATE A SCONE.

Reading this list, I’ve discovered a common thread in the big moves I’ve made in 2021 - Decisions based on who I was in the moment, not who I thought I was supposed to be, or who I had been. I quit my job when I decided it didn’t matter if I’d never previously thought of myself as the kind of person who quit jobs in six months, because the person I was right then needed to be. And I quit Noom because at that moment I didn’t have to have the body I had at 25, or 35, or even at 48. The one I have is one I like right now. Who cares what 35-year-old Leslie would have thought?

2022 could be better than 2021, or it could be a bigger dumpster fire. I don’t know. I don’t have a crystal ball, and I wouldn’t trust it even if I did. All I can say is that I’m going into it with eyes open, head on a swivel and the understanding that you can never say never. It would be boring if you did.