What I Learned In 2020

Being 50+, I shouldn’t have a great deal to “learn” I thought, until 2020 came along. I guess I am never too old to learn something new or to relearn things I had forgotten. I thought I would share my year 2020 list.

Dehydrating Herbs/Veggies –

I maintained or helped to maintain three gardens with a variety of plants this summer. Those gardens produced more than we could eat right away. We decided to purchase a dehydrator and started dehydrating the extras. We now have a huge quantity of items that can be used for our future camp meals. If any of you have ever purchased dehydrated meals for camping you know those meals are expensive. The reason is dehydrating is time consuming and tedious process. The best part of learning this new skill is we now will know 100% what is in our camp food.

Drinking Fresh Ginger Tea-

Somewhere this summer I read that fresh ginger tea is good for the digestive system. As I age, it seemed that what use to work perfectly now needs some extra external encouragement. I tried fresh ginger tea and it helped many of digestive issues. I learned to try a new food this year.

Healing Herbs-

I took an online class this fall on herbal remedies. Mostly to try to beef up my knowledge of natural healing by using herbs. I learned a good deal of information. I am still learning each time I pick up one of the several herbal remedies books I purchased. Witchcraft? Not really, these herbal remedies have co existed with humans since the beginning of time. I like to think I was just relearning an ancient natural trade.

Sharing in the time of need.-

This is something we all like to think we are good at but I know I struggle with this as I get older. I am a bit more pessimistic about the world. It is also hard to gage sometimes when it is the right time to help and when it isn’t.

This year I volunteered at a local community garden. A great deal of energy and courage goes into just getting to the point of asking to volunteer. As a foreigner living in a country not of my birth, speaking a language that is not my native language, putting myself “out there” in any normal time is scary but this year it was dangerous.

Did I have the strength to control my doubts?

My way of gardening differs vastly with gardening techniques used here in The Netherlands.

Personalities and group dynamics (just like everywhere in the world) in volunteer organizations sometimes don’t click. This summer was a personal challenge for me and many times I had to catch myself from not doing the eye roll or just telling people to stop treating me like a child. Yet, in this time of COVID I just needed to be part of a group and feel connected to this adopted land where I now live. I volunteered through the challenges. This year helped me learn that sharing can help me build new relationships, it also helped me practice controlling my eye rolls and to hold my tongue.

That I am only guaranteed today.-

It is a lesson many of us in the 50+ group understand as we have most likely have lost friends, co workers, and family with more than a half century under our belts, but… this year was hard.

We have had friends and relatives pass away this year suddenly. I have paused, thought “wow, I didn’t think that the last time I shared a cup of coffee at their table, house, apartment would be the last time”.

Did I say all I needed to say to them? Was I as kind as I could have been then? How can I do better today? What can I do today to dispel misery right now with my own hands?

Today, is today and I am not guaranteed tomorrow. I learned I can always do better, be kinder, listen more…today.

Democracy is not dead.-

I had my doubts. I am now certain that people will make their voices heard by voting.

Now, Congress…so called “leaders”, listen! Fix this democracy to help all the people from the far left to the far right! Because, each of us has a voice and even if the voices differ in a democracy they all should be heard and considered!

Analog vs Digital.-

My generation 50-60 year olds, we came of age in the computer age. We like our technology. Maybe “like” is a bit strong of a word, we mostly embrace technology.

Flashback- The school I attended in the late 1970’s in Northern Minnesota had one of the first computer science classes. We used a dial up modem to the University of Minnesota where we could write programs that printed out cool stuff like a Christmas tree in ones and zeros. Wow! In eighth grade that was really cool.

Flash forward to last December and I would never (even after a career in high frequency radios, satellites, and computers) think there was anything else I needed to learn about technology.

Then there was the year, 2020.

WordPress “blocks”, Zoom chats, and my very first National conference attendance via online participation!

It still makes my head spin from all the new terms I needed to learn, protocols I had to follow (push the little hand in the tool bar if you want to ask a question), proper clothing to wear for these events (as long as you are sitting the bottom half of your body can still be in pjs while the polished business like attire must be seen in the camera view).

We have determined here at The Cedar Journal that we still prefer books with pages, paper and pens, and dressing like we are going out to canoe at any moment without having to schedule a zoom, team, or other social media video event that is socially distanced.

So we learned we are more analog (old school) than digital (modern). We are very OK with that!

Wait.-

We waited in lines, we waited for months for mail to arrive on the slowest ship the USPS could have contracted to save money, we waited for an election, and we waited to hear from friends and family. Some of those times it seemed like the wait would never end, like time was waiting for us to choose to stop the waiting. But, we waited anyway and found time did move on even if ever so slowly.

We learned to wait this year and hopefully that will give us a bit more focus and make us a bit wiser on how we can move forward in 2021.

What new things did you learn this year?

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