10 Things to be Grateful for in 2020

Change is the only constant. We’ve all heard this line and probably quoted it too. But how open and comfortable are we really, when it comes to changes in your very being? 2020 sure has been a very ‘unusual’ phase of life, to say the least. But I, as a person, have always loved the change! But one thing I didn’t change even in the phase of the Pandemic, is to be grateful and see the good in things. 

I’m totally an adventurous person, an out-of-the-comfort-zone kind. I Play with my appearance a lot to stir things up a bit. Sometimes, I completely change the settings of my home, or phone, to get out of monotony. So honestly, when the lockdown happened, I wasn’t quite scared, except for the aspects of safety and availability of resources. 

Once we had basic information on fighting with the virus, preventing the disease, and stocks of items became available, life didn’t remain as hard. But here are 10 things that happened during 2020, and that I am honestly grateful for. 

1. For Having Twins

I know, a lot of times I or my fellow twin parents have cribbed about having twins and the tonnes of difficulties managing them. But so, so many times during the lockdown, I closed my eyes and said a prayer – thanking God for the gift of twins. I’m grateful that my twins were old enough to engage with each other during these times and kept each other busy. Whether by fight, play, or random silly things – my kids did not miss the playground that much. Thank God for that.

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2. My Husband.

The gift of family is indeed the best gift ever. While Vinod and I went through many ups and downs during the lockdown, I am truly grateful for being married to a gentleman. We fought, we stopped talking, but we also just sat together aimlessly and had quality time. I was bogged by his office work as he was drowned in it, but I’d rather have him work late at home than work late at a place where I can’t see him. 

3. Househelp

Do I even need to elaborate on that? I’m a true lazybones and hate any chore that needs much physical effort. So when the maids stopped coming, all hell broke loose. My husband did help me, but with him having loads of office work, and me having almost none, it was obvious the load was on me. I did not like it one bit and did it with zero zeal and without proper cleaning. In that phase, I thoroughly respected the amount of effort my help put in when cleaning. I have mostly been considerate with the work I give to my help, but it helped me be even more cautious and conscious about the amount of hard work it takes to do the most basic of jobs. So, I’m grateful, for my house help and the efforts she puts in keeping my home clean. 

4. Work Load

I’m a freelancer – blogging, influencing, are project-based tasks. Some are paid, most are not. But it is the non-paid ones that attract the paid clients. When the lockdown happened, paid projects vanished from the market. The ones that came went only to certain Influencers and many of us either had no good work or very poorly paid projects. I’m grateful for this phase, I truly am. In this phase I got the ability to generate content I thought I never will, I got projects from friends and followers who were not planning to engage with massive Influencers, but people they spoke to often and connected with on an individual basis. 

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I truly am super grateful for their faith in me, because not just content, who I am as a person, drew them to my [age and offer me work. I’m grateful, very grateful for the sufficient amount of work that came my way, brands, and clients that trusted in me. I’m also grateful to the clients who refused to work with me because it helped me introspect and understand and sometimes even let go that I am not the best, or I am not the best fit for a certain client and that is OK. 

5. Keeping Busy

In terms of my freelance work, as I said, most work is unpaid. A few challenges like the makeup brush challenge, the Jeet Jayega India Challenge, and many such challenges were viral on Instagram. I did not initiate any, but I made a point that I participated in each and every project that came my way, without thinking twice as to who all was in it, whether they matched my following or not. If they asked me, I said yes. If a little bit of my effort made someone happy, how could I let go of that chance? I’m grateful to each and every creator who thought that I could add some grace to the video by participating in it, I’m grateful for them for keeping me busy when I needed it most.

6. Friends

I am close to a lot of people, but my friends are very very few. I’m grateful for being in touch with them, albeit on and off. I’m grateful that I do not need to constantly prove my love to them in a compulsive way. I’m grateful that they understand the value of affection and are secure enough to understand its value. 

7. My health

I have always been a plus-size person. When the lockdown started, I started gaining weight again, and one fine day, I hit the 3 digits. I was petrified, uneasy, and absolutely in disgust with what I had become. But I decided once again to change that and also assured myself that I will go slow and expect less. Weight loss and fitness are a slow process but I always end up losing my patience about the process. This time, I promised myself I will go slow, I will not push myself too hard, and I will give myself 2-3 years to get to my target weight, or even lose a big chunk of my weight. 

And I did. I went slow, I went steady, and I lost a decent chunk of weight. The maintenance was hard and I haven’t been able to keep up because of my travel, but I am very happy that I could do it, and I can’t wait to get back home and go back to my routine. 

8. Sushant Singh Rajput

I am, grateful, for him, his death, and the entire mass joke that became out of it. I’m sorry if reading this line hurt you, I understand it because it hurt even when I was typing it. But the truth is, that I am indeed grateful for the entire public joke that happened at his death.

I’m grateful that as the news of him dying came, I lost all my brain cells and had a relapse of depression, unable to cope with the news of his death. I’m grateful that I decided to talk about my mental health struggles publically. I’m grateful that many people related to it, connected with me, and I gave the number of my psychiatrist and therapist and they sought help. 

I’m grateful that I was so engrossed with the updates about his murder/suicide, that I followed the news diligently, and realized soon enough that this is going to come out as suicide and nothing else is going to become of it. I was right. I started avoiding his news, updates, etc soon enough and I think it was one of the wisest decisions of my life. One month after his death, I promised myself I won’t talk about him or share about him or even follow news/videos related to him. This made a huge difference in how this worked for my mental health, and for the mental health of all those people who were connected with e for the reason of getting updates about him. I told each and every one of them to stop following that news because if it is to bring that much negativity to me, then it is not worth it. 

Also, the practical aspect of it all was that he wasn’t related to me, so mourning his death for too long wasn’t a sensible thing to do anyway. 

One of my very close family members was deeply engrossed in his death and it had begun affecting them intensely. But I let them drown in that pain and vent out the hidden pain that they were projecting on the death of SSR. They eventually came out of it, but I a grateful that at that moment where the world wouldn’t stop reminding that person that they were extremely stupid to mourn the death of an actor they didn’t even know, I am thankful that I understood what was going on inside of them and was ‘there’ when I should have been. 

9. Mental health of my parents.

In the pandemic, I was really thankful for the fact that I ‘tricked’ my parents into consulting online with my psychiatrist. It wasn’t easy, because I had to cook up a lot of lies. After being a parent myself, if there is one thing I learned, is that you cannot fool your parents. So it was hard to convince them to take a mental health checkup, or do follow-ups, and why they needed to take medicines. My father dropped follow-ups very soon, but y mother was pushed into continuing it. My mother became a whole different person after therapy and treatment. Her anger, her frustration, her body aches and stressors, all came down drastically. She became the kind person that she is on the inside, the happy person that she wanted to be this whole time, and I am ever, ever so grateful for the pandemic to happen – so I could push my mother to take this step and fix her to such an extent. She still doesn’t know how much I pay for her sessions, but as long as she is willing to continue, I am willing to spend every penny I would have. 

10. Life

I shall never underestimate the gift of life. To be able to wake up and have pretty much fine health, to have children to hug, a partner to care for, a family that checked on me, friends that stay connected through the heart. I am grateful for being alive to witness beauty, witness love, and witness the becoming of things. I am grateful for having enough food to eat, enough money to survive, enough wishes to splurge, enough medicines to keep me in good health, enough love to make me see and realize the importance of it all. 

Thank you 2020. 

For everything you gave me, for everything you helped me realize that I already have, to appreciate the minutest things, and knowing, that the big things mean nothing without the greatness of the small things. 

I am grateful that 2020 has been the best year in so many aspects for me. Thank you for all the gifts you brought to me and gave me, 2020. I do not like to use the words like New normal, or wish that 2020 should end. It is a year like any other and yes, maybe the Virus took the better of us. But with prayers in my heart and love in my eyes, I choose to walk forward and say a small prayer for everyone. May the Lord do what is best for us all. May he keep us safe despite the years, despite the pandemic, despite the fact that maybe things are not going as planned. 

This post is a part of the ” Welcome 2021 Blog Hop” organized by the immensely talented Swarnali Nath. Find all the blogs of this blog hop here