2020 A Year In Review
I’m conscious that I haven’t written anything on the blog this past year so I thought I’d write a letter to update you and wish you a happy new year.
The last twelve months were pretty wild, right? I’m sure I’m not the only one that needs a break from the endless bad news cycle so I’m going to try and stick to the positives in this letter.
I can’t believe how fast last year seemed to pass considering the circumstances. Faye and I worked from home for most of it and have only really left the house to go food shopping or for the occasional walk.
I would say 2020 was a largely positive experience for me personally. In a lot of ways, I have relished the changes to our lives that coronavirus has bought. There’s obviously been some pretty big downsides and anxiety-inducing moments too, and I’m definitely conscious that not everyone is as fortunate as I, but like I said, I’m trying to stick to the positives here.
No longer fighting the rat race, no daily commute, slow walks in the woods, more time spent at home with loved ones - I've just found the gentler pace that life seems to be taking much more relaxing. It suits me better I think. If you'd asked me last year what I thought it would be like to live through a pandemic, I don't think I would have had such a list of positive experiences at the forefront of my mind but in many ways I think 2020 was one of the best years of my life.
I've been feeling a lot more confident in my sobriety since I passed the one year mark, and proud that I managed to keep a hold of it during these trying times. In the not so distant past, anxious times would have definitely had me reaching for the escape found at the bottom of a bottle and I don't like to think of how lockdown could have been an entirely different journey had I not given up drinking.
At the back end of last year I joined a local meditation group and since we can’t meet in person we’ve been doing zoom calls. I haven’t made it to the meetings as much as I’d like - sometimes the last thing I want is another zoom call after a day at work - but it’s brought me great comfort and calm knowing that there is a community of friendly faces there if I need to warm the spirit and share a moment of peace. Practicing meditation and mindfulness has definitely helped me to come to terms with the situation we find ourselves in and I’ve learned that accepting a moment of anxiety, somewhat paradoxically, seems to facilitate it passing more quickly.
I haven't done much in the way of photography, but that's ok, I don't tend to force it when I don't feel like it. I take most of my pictures on day trips and holidays and we haven’t really been able to do much of that. I did get the opportunity to meet up with my long time friend and fellow member of And The Last Waves, Sean Lotman. He visited the UK back in February just before the whole covid thing really took off here, and we went for a drive in the Cambridgeshire countryside, took a walk and had a pub lunch. That was probably my last day out in the ‘old world’ and it was a good way to spend it.
After the first lockdown ended, Faye and I managed to get away for a few days. We hired a VW camper van and toured around Wales. We stayed away from the usual tourist hotspots in a bid to keep social interaction to a minimum. It worked out pretty well in the end. Having the van meant we could go wherever we wanted and just park up near a beauty spot for the night. Apart from seeing the occasional hiker or local fisherman, it almost felt like we had the whole country to ourselves. It was a pretty special experience and I came away with a few photos I liked.
For the most part, instead of photography, I've been pursuing other creative interests, particularly music and drawing. Over summer I spent a lot of my spare time riding my bicycle. Getting out into nature brought a lot of comfort and forced me to get away from a screen for a couple of hours. I definitely felt the uplifting serotonin boost brought about by exercising in the fresh air. Since winter has arrived, I've spent a bit of time tidying out my office, which has been a long time coming. Now that I have all of my photo books and unfinished projects categorised and neatly stored, perhaps I will feel more inspired to turn them into books/zines. Having said that, my printer seems to have unexpectedly died during the office move so I’ll have to get that fixed before I can start making work prints again. I picked up a bunch of new photo books and I’ve been reading and listening to audio books quite a bit too, I’ll make a list of those on my blog at some point.
Since we’ve both been working at home, we decided it was the perfect time to get a dog. Faye has wanted a dog for years and I finally relented. He’s a Miniature Dachshund called Neil - aka. Cornelius, Corndog, Long Boy, Big Ears and an exhaustive list of expletives that are used several times a day whenever he decides to eat shoes, door mats, chase the cat, evacuate his bowels on the carpet, etc.
Puppies are hard work. We spent the first few weeks of him being around asking why we had chosen to do this to ourselves. It was a constant stream of mayhem and mischief requiring constant supervision and attention. Thankfully, he’s settled down a lot since and we’ve got used to him being around. Him and Maureen (the cat) still don’t really get on. They haven’t fought or anything, it’s just that Neil really wants to be friends and play chase all of the time, and the cat is really not keen on this idea at all. She prefers to sleep for 95% of the day, occasionally slinking around the house at an almost glacial pace in search of a human to deliver some sustenance. Needless to say she does not appreciate being forced to expend valuable energy running away from an excitable canine. In an effort to maintain her way of life she’s moved herself upstairs and Neil stays downstairs. We put in a stair gate to prevent Neil from making skirmishes to hunt for leftover cat food, although we occasionally forget to close it and he almost always devours the lot before you even notice he’s gone missing. In the last few days he seems to have developed a method for escaping his crate at night and we’ve been woken up by tail slaps and saliva slathered kisses. Luckily for him, he’s very cute so you can’t stay mad at him for long.
With things being the way they are, we’ve stayed at home for Christmas and new year. It’s actually the first time in our 13 years together that Faye and I have spent the festive period away from our families. It’s normally a pretty busy time for us. With our families spread out across the country, it’s normally a lot of driving and socialising, so we’ve been enjoying just chilling at home with the pets and taking some time to rest and recuperate.
Feel free to write back and let me know what you’ve been doing this year. I’ll try and write more frequent updates on the blog this coming year.
I hope you are doing well and wish you all the best for 2021.
Take care and stay safe,
Matt