It feels like I made these goals a lifetime ago. So much has changed since then; the world feels like (and, to an extent, is) an entirely different place now. I’m not sure it’s possible that anyone could’ve predicted how this year would play out – maybe certain elements but not the whole picture. I don’t know about you reading this but I really struggle to reconcile the person I was before the pandemic, with the hopes, issues, and perspectives I had then, with the person I am now with all of 2020 taking up so much space in my brain. It feels like 2020 was bigger than (or at least, as big as) my whole life up to this year; I know that’s the illusion of time but regardless, I’m finding it very difficult to make sense of everything I’ve experienced in the last year.

With the way the world was turned upside down this year, I have no idea how to think about 2021 but before I address that, I wanted to just take a brief moment to look at the goals I set at the beginning of this year, pre-pandemic, and see how I did, despite everything that’s happened.

GET BACK TO SWIMMING

I struggled with swimming at the beginning of the year, having essentially had no break between my first and second semester. I was exhausted before the second semester had even started. I found it very difficult to balance my uni work, my exhaustion, and swimming so going to the pool did fall by the wayside more often than not. And then, just as the semester was coming to a close with my empty semester (and plenty of opportunities to swim) in sight, the pandemic really hit the UK and we went into a national lockdown. That obviously meant that all of the gyms were closed, eliminating the opportunity to swim.

As the restrictions lifted, I did try going back to my normal pool but it just didn’t feel safe so my Mum and I spent a long time looking for a pool that were really careful and meticulous about their safety precautions. Eventually we found one and although we couldn’t go as much as I would’ve liked (due to the limited number of people they allowed in the pool at a time), it was wonderful to swim again. I just loved it.

When I was diagnosed with hypermobility, I was referred for hydrotherapy (we’re still waiting on that) but the specialist encouraged me to keep swimming as it’s the best exercise for hypermobile people and gave me some basic hydrotherapy exercises to start doing while we waited for the referral to go through. Unfortunately, I only got one more swim in before the UK went into a second lockdown and the gyms closed again. I am all for the lockdowns (not that that second one felt much like a lockdown) but I was upset to lose the swimming.

I got a little bit of swimming and hydrotherapy exercises in between the end of lockdown and everything closing for Christmas and now the Tier Four lockdown, which I was pleased with although I’m really missing the swimming. I have no idea how long it will be before the gyms open again and I can swim but I feel like I’m in a really good place with it so it won’t be hard to get going again.

START WEARING MY INVISIBLE BRACES AGAIN

I struggled to wear them while I was going to university. Sensory-wise, I find wearing them to be really overwhelming, to the point where I can’t concentrate because the pressure in my mouth takes up all the space in my brain. I usually wear them at night to avoid that but it often just gets too much and then, once I’m out of the habit of wearing them, it’s really hard to get back into it again.

Several months into lockdown, once I started to feel a bit more stable, I actually managed to wear it almost every night. I even made progress and moved onto the next one in the series. But again, when uni started, it started to feel like too much very quickly. It’s a lot of sensory stuff during the time when I’m supposed to get a break from everything. It’s really hard, but I’m not giving up.

COMPLETE YEAR 1 OF MY MASTERS DEGREE

This is a simple one, thank god. I completed the second semester of my Masters Degree a few weeks into the first UK lockdown and that was the first year completed. Most of my friends were full time and had to power through with their final project mid lockdown, which I am endlessly impressed by. I genuinely don’t think I could’ve done that. So I’m super proud of them, not only for the amazing work that they created but that they created it in such difficult circumstances.

So I managed this one and I’m proud of that, even though it was largely unaffected by the pandemic. The Masters has been a hugely challenging experience for me and so getting through the first year does feel like a big achievement. And what’s more, I actually did well on the essay for the second module, despite my anxieties. So I’m really proud of that too.

As of the end of 2020, I have completed three of the five modules of the Masters, although I don’t yet know how I’ve done in the third. But I’ve done it. I prepared for it, I worked hard throughout the twelve weeks, and put everything I had into the assessment (I always feel like I could’ve done more but I’m trying to get better at recognising what my limits are and I do think I did the best that I could). Now I just have to hope that it was all enough to get a good grade. I know that the skills I’ve learned are the important part but I still struggle to disconnect my self esteem from my grades. It’s a lot of unlearning to do after so many years in education.

CONSUME NEW MEDIA RATHER THAN JUST FAMILIAR MEDIA

I’d gotten into a bit of a rut, just rewatching old favourites, so I really wanted to branch out and try new things. I didn’t manage much during the uni semester since I was so busy; I was almost constantly working and background noise helps me work so familiar movies and TV shows worked quite well in that regard.

When we went into lockdown, my mental health was so bad and my anxiety around the pandemic was so high that I could barely get off the sofa. I rewatched a lot of my favourite things, needing the comfort and familiarity and nostalgia, but after a while, I tentatively started watching new things. They turned out to be a much needed form of escapism and I discovered so many awesome films and TV shows. It also kept my creative brain working even when I wasn’t able to use it; since it has started functioning again, I’ve written several songs based on stories or characters that I found myself emotionally invested in.

GET BACK TO THERAPY AND FOCUS ON MY MENTAL HEALTH

I was consistently going to therapy before the lockdown and felt like we were doing good work but since the pandemic began and my therapy sessions moved onto Zoom, they’ve been much harder and much less productive than I’d like them to be (and I definitely missed some because I just felt too overwhelmed by everything going on). But digging into the hard stuff is often painful and I’m not exactly keen to upset the fragile balance of my mental health that I’ve managed to maintain, for the most part, over the last few months. I’ve just found it so frustrating because the sessions always end up focussing on just getting through instead of moving forward, which is especially demoralising because I feel like the pandemic has been undoing some of the work we’ve done. So I’ve really tried but it has been beyond difficult. I have to hope that this year it will get easier at some point.

WORK ON NOT COMPARING MYSELF TO OTHERS IN MUSIC

This was something I really wanted to work on this year, in therapy but also in practice as I released my EP and played gigs. I’ve just always really struggled with insecurity and I guess what you could call comparison anxiety, always feeling insecure and anxious and bad about myself. At worst, it can make me feel really bitter about music. And I really, really don’t want that because music is the thing that makes me happiest.

Lockdown was oddly unifying because the music industry just shut down and pretty much everyone was forced to stop what they were working on. We were all stuck and frustrated. The comparison anxiety wasn’t really present, both because no one was really releasing anything and because the pandemic anxiety was so high that there wasn’t the space or energy to be anxious about anything else.

The only real exception to this was the releasing of Taylor Swift’s folklore but that was so different to what I’ve been working on that, rather than comparing myself, I found myself far more focussed on what I could learn from it. I also spent the summer learning the songs of my favourite writers and artists to improve my musical skills and that also had me focussing on learning and getting better rather than on how I wasn’t good enough and would never be good enough. So I felt like I was actually doing well, all thing considered, like I might actually be making progress in this area.

But then the industry started up again and people started releasing and promoting and so on again and I realised I hadn’t made as much progress as I’d thought. The pandemic anxiety compounded all of the anxiety I have normally around releasing music, leaving me at even more of a disadvantage and making it feel even harder to ‘keep up’ and work through my issues around it.

I always find it hard when everyone starts posting their Spotify Wrapped but I was actually looking forward to it this year, having released four tracks and the EP having reached over 30,000 streams on Spotify. But it turns out Spotify stops counting your streams on the 31st October, one day after my single, ‘Honest,’ was released, the single which brought in most of my streams. So my Spotify Wrapped wasn’t at all accurate and didn’t reflect the year at all; I didn’t end up posting it at all.

I’d really hoped to make some progress with this goal but without the work in therapy and the added anxiety of all that’s been going on this year, I don’t really feel like anything’s changed. And that’s hard. But I’m trying to focus on how proud I am of the EP and how proud I am of how far it’s gone, considering that it’s my debut EP that was pretty much made in various bedrooms with a handful of friends. Because I am really proud of that and grateful for everything that’s come out of this experience. Hopefully I will make some progress in this area this year because I don’t want to feel like this. I just don’t think I know how to get to that place on my own.

I feel like this has been the most helpful approach to a new year of those I’ve tried so far. I like the setting of goals (rather than a strict list to be checked off) because it gives me some structure and helps me to progress as a person without loads of pressure or the constant fear of failing or not trying hard enough. I feel like, for me, it falls nicely between being too much and too little.

As I said, the world was a very different place and I was a very different person when I set these goals so the fact that I made any progress at all in any of them feels like an achievement but I would like to manage more next year. I’m hopeful (because I have to be – it’s too easy for the depression to infiltrate otherwise) that this year will be better, at some point at least. Maybe then I can make some real improvement with some of the more difficult areas of my life and, until then, I’m gonna work on what I can. That’s probably all any of us can do right now.