Aurora's Blog

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Goodness, goodness, goodness gracious. What a freaking year.

Buckle up ’cause this is a really long post (sorry… I’ve been gone a while, and a lot has happened to reflect on).

Now that the world is opening up again, I reeeeeally want to start blogging again, and I was gonna do a whole post that was sort of like “I’m emerging. Here’s what happened during quarantine.” However, I actually think I can probably just fit that all in here, since this is a reflective post on the year anyway…

So, I guess let’s get to the questions.

1) What are you proudest of from this year?

Big oof! haha Okay, we’ll get to failures in the next one, because I don’t have a lot that I’m proud of this year, but I guess I’m gonna go with –

I got accepted in a grad school program I really wanted to do. (I’m going to Berklee to studying writing for musical theatre, and I’ll start this September).

I also just (like just under the wire of my birthday haha) got hired to work on an Ava DuVernay show, so that is pretty dope.

Besides that, you know, I dunno. For the first like 7 or so months of the pandemic, I kept up with things pretty well, worked out a lot. Overall kept my sanity haha. Kept up with zoom ballet and even some zoom improv and sketch. I also went back to finish undergrad (because if I’m gonna go to grad school, I obviously have to have graduated from undergrad).

I worked on my first ever cartoon (obviously from home, as that’s where basically all computer-y jobs went). And I also worked on a documentary about racial justice issues produced by LeBron James.

And I worked on a talk show and got to edit some great episodes (Cory Booker, Anita Hill, Debbie Allen, Pete Buttigieg).

I also volunteered during the pandemic. I did this phone volunteer thing to check on seniors and make sure they were getting food.

I think that’s all the sort of good I can think of. But when you write it out like that, maybe there’s a liiiittle more good (at least for part of the year) than I give myself credit for).

2) – the opposite of that question in a way in which you choose to look at it (e.g. your biggest failure, regret, lesson etc.)?

Oh my haha.

So… I know a lot of people really struggled during the pandemic – all in various ways. And to some extent, it maybe hardened all of us. So, I’m sure I’m not alone in calling this a “tough year.”

That being said, I feel like I just keep calling every year a “tough year.” For the last like maybe 5 years (which is really starting to be like… a long time! That’s like half a freaking decade! Where is my life going?), while I’ve had some very super bright spots, overall, I just keep thinking I’m in a “tough year” or a “rough patch” or a “tough spot,” but it’s like a temporary setback and things will be great soon…

But then I just hit another setback and I like never actually get the real momentum I want. I always feel like I’m on the precipice and something happens.

And I can’t 100% tell if it’s because I’ve had some unluckiness, or if it’s because a traumatic thing from about 5 years ago knocked me out so badly, that I’ve been so ‘weak’ every time I tried to fully get up that any normally smaller thing just like knocks me on my feet –

or if it’s that my resilience gets lower as I get older and more like ‘life battle scars’ or whatever… or if maybe in some ways, I’m not doing *as* bad as I think, and I’m sort of overblowing it?

But for one thing,
A) When it comes to regrets and lessons and stuff, I sincerely hope I don’t say on my next birthday, “oh, it’s been a really tough year.” Like, even IF it is a “really tough year,” I hope I am able to have a higher level of resilience and positivity and willpower, and just like basically force it to be a good year haha

So, that’s sort of an overall thing. As for some other failures this year:

B) I feel like I’ve been way more selfish than I’d like to be. My last “52 in 52” project was “52 interviews in 52 weeks” where I interviewed either strangers or people I knew just to like get to know them better and try to put the conversation on them more. [I’m so far behind on this blog, I haven’t even published most of them.]

And the whole reason I wanted that specifically as my project was because I thought I was sort of inward focused on some of my personal problems. I was distracted and bad at staying present, ruminating on things I needed to “fix,” and kind of leaning on others too much in my stress.

So, i wanted to be a better listener, and a better friend, and go first more when it came to asking questions/asking people how they are/how their day is/etc.

But the project didn’t really stick. I was hoping I’d form a habit. But if anything, during the confluence of events in my life in quarantine, etc., I feel like I’ve gotten even more inward/more distracted/more selfish. So, I hate that.

And I haven’t been selfish all the time, of course. But more than I wanted. A good example is a friend whom I don’t know if I’ve ever missed their birthday – I even sent cards all the way to Afghanistan when they were over there… I forgot to even send a text last week. Like, that’s not good.

So, I just want to re-open my eyes to other people and really make them feel loved.

B (conclusion)) Yeah… I wanna love more. [That’s not my like “official” answer to the question. But I would like to do that.]

C) Trust my gut more! The issues that caused me more and longer pain than they should have mainly came from not just trusting myself. I have a good (iiiish kinda) internal compass. I should use it.

D) I didn’t give my kidney away! (Cry face!) I will give that its whole entire update post. But aye aye aye aye aye aye aye. So, the biggest goal from last year was not indeed achieved.

E) I told myself I would never gain weight back after losing so much. And after some years, I finally did indeed gain some back. Which sucks. In September of last year, I took a huge emotional hit right at the same time I broke my foot. So, physical health not good, which emotional heath not good, while starting 22 credits at school and working full time for part of that. And then I took another giant emotional hit in February. Like… there were just some perfect storms where I ended up gaining some weight back and I greatly regret that a lot. It’s embarrassing and it feels crappy.

It’s not so out of hand it can’t be fixed. And I’m working on that now. But eesh.

F) Not standing up more for myself. This is probably applicable in many ways. But one of the ways is my medical care for my broken foot was kind of confusing and all over the place with the plans often changing and they decided to take my cast off early. And my leg was itchy and I trust doctors, so like, “okay, if they think early is good, I should get it off early after all.” But no. It didn’t totally heal correctly, and it’s affecting my ability to do ballet, and that’s not helping with the weight stuff. So, I would’ve rather just had the cast on for another month than have problems with my feet that I’m scared I might now have for the rest of my life. [And this goes hand in hand with the trusting my gut thing too.]

G) I didn’t do what I said I was gonna do last year – not just in the kidney thing, but in the not riding the fence thing! I rode the fence even HARDER. [I don’t really want to get into it because it’s about a relationship and I don’t like to talk about those publicly/on the blog]. So, I’ll just kind of quickly and vaguely say I both kind of loved and hated someone. A real Ross and Rachel sitch. And I couldn’t really decipher between love and hate haha. And we did the 1,000 breakups. And I can say all I want like “he was confusing and I was following him. How could I not ride the fence if he was? I needed him to get down on one side or the other, so I could join,” but like… I have autonomy and freewill. So, I went exactly AGAINST what my lesson was supposed to be of last year and caused me and someone else (and probably my friends and other people in our circles) heartache. So, that sucks. So, no more riding the fence, for real. Which leads me to my actual lesson I’d like to work on (and a bonus one):

H – The “OFFICIAL” answer) Cory Booker says all the time he wants to be a “thermostat, not a thermometer.” You don’t want to react to the temperature. You want to set it. And I feel I’ve been very reactionary, at least in the past year, and maybe even before that. So, I would like to work on setting the temperature. And that can be really hard because I know I’m kind of a people pleaser at heart. So, I look to others for their moods and how to try to keep them stable… But I’ve kind of realized that the more I’m just trying to find reactions to keep the stable, the more unstable things get, because either I don’t know what they need and misjudge when always looking to other’s emotions first. OR I actually get it right, but I become so very resentful in the process for “having” to take care of someone else’s emotions [I put “having” in quotes, ’cause I’m doing that; they’re not making me], and for not getting to worry about my own emotions that they bottle up, and though it takes a whiiiiile, eventually, I’ll go from “0-60” in like a second, because I’m not at 0. I’m at like 59 and no one’s noticed, ’cause I’ve been pushing it down. I also just want to sort of be a more active participant in my own life. So, if I don’t like the room, I’ll leave it, and if I do like the room, I’ll try my best to set the temperature/keep my own steady temperature, rather than be such a reactionary thermometer all the time.

I – The “Bonus” answer) Even IF you end up sort of riding the fence about something – you’re dipping your toe into something you don’t have enough information about or whatever. Or maybe it’s not even riding the fence. If you’re doing something you reeeeeeally do not want to do, but for all intents and purposes, you “have” to. [I mean, we don’t have to do anything, but there are sometimes steep consequences, like if we all quit working and had no money, you might get kicked out of your apartment etc.]

So, if your life circumstances (or mine, at least, ’cause I’m meaning this lesson for me, really, I don’t ever know if any of this is applicable to anyone else)… But if my life circumstances make it so I “have” to do something (work a job I don’t love, take a required class I don’t love, etc.), like of course I’ll try to get out of it as much as I can, but if I reeeeally can’t, or if it’s gonna take a while to get out of it, I want to choose to want to be there. I want to find the reason it is indeed beneficial to be there, and get excited about it for that reason.

e.g. [thankfully, I’ve only been an editor anytime I worked this year, so this is not a specific example to this year, but just an example in general, from last year, really] “Man, I reeeeeally don’t want to be an assistant after years of editing, that sucks” – instead of focusing on that part, being more like “I want to pay rent this month because I love my apartment. And at least as an assist, I can catch up on podcasts [etc.]”

Like, focus on the good you’re getting out of something, and find excitement in being there. And if you reeeeeeally can’t, then you’ve gotta change it. If it sucks THAT much, quit school. Quit your job. Work at McDonald’s instead. Like, I did too many things this year completely out of “obligation” AND didn’t find the joy in them. So, I really want to not be in that position again – I want to either drop the obligations if they’re THAT much of a burden, or find the joy/good parts of them.

Oof) So, yeah, you know, I wanted to write this really happy-go-lucky excitable thing about everything I accomplished during quarantine, and how I’m gonna come out with more television credits (including my first cartoon), and a bachelor’s degree and all of that. But realistically, for the last 10 months I’ve struggled greatly and I would say this year, for me, was more of a failure than a success. And I want to make sure the next 5, and hopefully all the years after do not look like that again. I’ve gotta awaken that inner strength and “sunshine in a dress” needs to come back with a vengeance!

3) What’s your biggest goal for the upcoming year?

I want to have the best body I have ever had. Preferably with the measurements of “Baby Got Back” if I can make my body fit them. (“36”, 25”, 36”? Only if she’s 5′ 3” [she is haha]).

Let’s make it happen! 2021-2022, here I come!