Yeoooow, it’s been a minute, and I promise I haven’t been neglecting you intentionally. I guess I’ve just been having a moment where nothing is inspiring me to get back to the page.
Since the end of the Fall Series-COVID-pseudo-soccer season, it’s been back to a sense of personal calmness amidst the turbulent backdrop that is 2020. I’m in the off-season training and preparing for the “blank slate” of 2021.
As a friend of mine said to me, we have all been through it this year. That ‘it’ has looked so different for everyone. There’s so much to be thankful for, of course, but also so much to regret and miss. What has kept me grounded is how fortunate I am to have family and friends who are healthy and safe. My family has been able to maintain their jobs and some have even advanced their careers. How can I not help but smile?
We’ve all been challenged and a new meaning of the word ‘appreciation’ has bubbled over in my heart. In the most unpredictable year of our lives, I have realized some dreams, created some new ones, but ultimately found and felt love in so many different places. Those places were in people and in friendships, but also in moments that will be the stories I bore my future nieces and nephews with one day.
It’s the moment I signed my professional contract, or when I played in my first professional game, of course. But it’s also that feeling of the weighted vest loosen from around my chest as I drove down Santa Monica Blvd. with my sister, listening to people blare their car horns and shout with pure and unfiltered joy after the results of the Presidential election. Or the feeling of disappointment when my family cancelled all three trips back to New Mexico this year as COVID cases continued rising. It’s belly-laughing with my sister and mom over some card games, because we can’t really do anything else this holiday season. I mean, all of the ice rinks are CLOSED, people.
It’s the feeling of sitting on a porch, socially distanced from your hometown friends, sipping and reminiscing about some inside jokes, and discussing new “adult” topics, because you’re also realizing how in one short year post-undergrad, we might actually be starting to grow up.
Any way that I think about it, the magic of the holiday season -- however trivial and basic that might be -- is making me feel all warm and fuzzy in a different way. Even though I want to be home in New Mexico, partaking in family traditions and playing with my little cousins, I’m still feeling all of the love. I’m feeling the love from old friends, from new forever friends like Lulu, Jassy and Lani, from new fans that I have interacted with, and from all of the little moments that have come with this year. 2020 has taught me a lot, but I’m good to leave her right where she is at.
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas from me and mine!
Xoxo
Bình luận