What unexpected joys has this past year brought to you?

I have become obsessed with wooden puzzles (Liberty are my favorite) and find them incredibly challenging and fun. The pieces are works of art and putting them together is wonderfully frustrating and all consuming.

Love my Ipot ! have to remind myself it can not, and does not, love me back.

Cooking at home and eating meals together at the dinner table with my wife.

Traveling across the US

connecting more with my children and family of origin; wooden jigsaw puzzles shared with my exeter friends

Puzzles, scuba diving

passion for community service

More time with family, Home Chef, Cooking, Long Fast Walks outside, time to observe, Avett Brothers, Sturgill Simpson, Wellerman, Big Little Lies, Lost, Ted Lasso, Mare of Easttown, Splendid and the Vile, Just Mercy (book and movie), Revisionist History (Malcolm Gladwell), all Christopher Nolan movies (Memento, Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, Batman movies).

sharing wooden jigsaw puzzles (across the country); zoom pilates classes taught by my 76 year old aunt in PA! Boredom? Never. Stress…. well yes, but working on it.

Peace, baking accomplishments, new opportunities to help my community in need

Inspired by Paul Hollywood, I’ve started baking bread. My kneading technique still leaves something to be desired, though.

more writing, I guess; small successes with patients,

Big mistake by me. I started this but have to leave for work. If it is here later I will try to get to it. Need more coffee too!

Reading War and Peace again, sharing shows with my husband, more time with my dogs

Been working on perfecting my meat ragú ; may have seen every single Law & Order series’ episode in the last year; have consumed many bottles of vintage wine lovingly, ex libris

An appreciation for so much of what we took for granted before COVID – a sense of gratitude that we live on the whole very good lives.

Decluttering my life a bit and focussing on some enjoyable hobbies.

Netflix Binging with my hubby – sitting together holding hands as we watch crime series from all over the world!

I was apprehensive about being fully retired, but it is suiting me just fine.

I taught myself to quilt this year by watching tutorials from Missouri Star Quilt Company’s marvelous Jenny Doan. I am not a seamstress and generally wrestle with machines (I once threw a typewriter out the window of our (one story!) cottage.) But somehow this took. I love piecing together fragments to make something “bright and beautiful” that someone can use and feel warmed/loved by, as well as the free-wheeling actual quilt process at the end. The whole thing is a great metaphor for the writing life, as I continue to piece together novels one (often struggled-after) word at a time. Margaret Stephens

Satisfaction being at home with my spouse completing projects in the home and yard

A reaffirmation of the deep love of family and human connection. A sense of resilience within myself and those going through this difficult year. Finding new shows on Netflix. Playing the piano everyday. Having socially distanced patio parties and getting out the fire pit that has been sitting in a box and lighting it up.

My elder son “took over” my cottage at the beach (with his wife, 2 sons, and their nanny) and I stayed in the former boathouse guest cottage. He’d said it would only “work” if I surrendered my standards and “lifestyle” to theirs, or I’d lose my mind – he was correct.
The passiveness required of me – and the surrendering of (almost) all authority and control was strangely relaxing. I also had the most time alone with my youngest, my daughter, since her father’s massive stroke (when she was 14 months & he was 39 years old.) She and I worked through a LOT of feelings together…

Name one to three things you want to accomplish or experiment with in your life, moving forward.

Better manage my health/mental health and well being; More travel to places I have never been; Get involved in public issues/politics once I retire as my current job has never allowed me the opportunity to do so.

Golf , travel, substitute teaching.

As crazy as it sounds, I still want to one day publish the equivalent of the Great American Novel that attracts a wide audience like Stephen King. Perhaps too late, but I’ll die trying.

Volunteer for a social justice organization

I don’t know

Looking forward to1) landing a giant bluefin tuna. 2) retiring and spending more time with grandchildren

Find ways to help people improve their health in their own homes and neighborhoods outside of health care system

More outreach to friends, family, colleagues (including former). Choose a new volunteer/pro bono project. Start on a book on the Civil War that I have been thinking of for years.

CONSERVATION: 1) helping to protect land by a collaborative plan to acquire 25 acres currently undeveloped (but at risk of…) then design and implement a smart-development for affordable housing that includes land protection on the 80% of this acreage through a conservation restriction; 2) giving away wealth (mine and others) to protect earth and wildlife in meaningful ways — to slide into home base with as few possessions and assets as I can — and be green-buried in a local cemetery — which means to 3) get green burials allowed and promoted in my town.

I want to schedule a couple trips to great wilderness photographers who offer one-on-one workshops, I want to find the time to resume my new hobby, needle-felting, I want to organize and clean my home (something that most people did during the pandemic)

I’d like to take classes to become a master gardener and spend more time our beautiful Colorado mountains.

I keep wanting to write my book about dragonflies but perhaps don’t quite know enough about them to do a good job of it; it would be nice to see my career through to getting some kind of disease-modifying treatments for Parkinson’s and/or Huntington’s diseases; hmm, and whatever else new comes to interest me, never know what it will turn out to be…

More travel, become an expert in something, get my only daughter well on her way to self sufficiency

Slow down to smell the roses — with help of Allegra.

😆 picking up where George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, and Robin Williams left off in their examination of humanity

Write more music & prose and travel more.

Offshore sailing qualification.

Travel by train across NW Canada, Take the grandkids on a vacation without their parents

Staying forever young.

Publish again, after long silence, and have the audience that writers crave.
Push past the paralysis of anxiety and get out in the world more. MArgaret

Learning to focus on the most important things in life and adhere to a good day and sleep cycle

I would love to make space in my life to write down my stories. We all have so many to tell.
I would also love to be less busy, but life on a farm doesn’t allow for much leisure .Figuring that out is an ongoing concern. I’ve done quite a bit of volunteering for non profits and will continue to do that. Cleaning out my basement is also on the list!

Trying to figure all that out.

I keep needing to have pretty invasive orthopedic proceedures… (Last week I blew out my Right ACL, again. In 2004, I had blown that ACL, my MCL, and torn cartilage in a ski crash, 25 years after having to have my right shoulder fully rebuilt from a series of accidents on skis, with golf clubs and on (off!) horses.) I have a 6 year old hip replacement, 2 rods & 6 pins in my spine, and on and on…
I really would like to be IN my body now – dancing, skiing, swimming, (playing with grandsons), etc – and I’d like to have a partner who will enjoy all that, as well… but that’s not who I am now… so WHO is Naida without Dance!?!

What “bad” habits or qualities do you have that you now accept or forgive in yourself (or in your partner)? (Or not!?)

Eat too much junk!

Not getting out of bed.

For someone who loves to read and writ, I still watch way too much TV.

Disorganization

chewing gum

overeating

Spreading myself too thinly across interests, family, friends. Not forgiven, just trying to continuously improve.

Letting stress make me irritable and annoying

I never really accept my bad habits and qualities (am I suppose to?)

overweight, don’t exercise enough, lousy housekeepers

A bourbon a day and wine with friends

Gonna call this a live wire… mic drop

Taking on too much – and I don’t forgive that. I keep re-learning the lesson.

Too many to list.

I’m striving to not have those “bad habits” anymore…being kind to myself and if eating peanut m&ms is “bad” then I pull out the dark chocolate almond ones and feel satisfied that I’m covering the basic food groups!<

Not working out EVERY day….

I’m just kind of obsessive. That. And my spouse is the complete and total and joyfully chaotic opposite. Bump! It’s just the way we are and are likely to stay! Margaret

Still needing to improve on relapsing into procrastination habits

I’m learning to be a better listener. Staying patient and non reactive when people around me are not.

The need to periodically withdraw to be alone with thoughts or feelings – I used to think that everything needed to be discussed and analysed between people.

Have you had any changes in your perspective regarding your parents (or “in-laws”) or children?

Accepting that my children need to forge their own paths despite my desire to “direct” them

Appreciate parents more, happy to see my kids enjoying their kids, grateful my kids have navigated to adulthood as good and reasonably happy people

When it comes to children, yes. I’ll leave it at that.

Appreciate their importance much more than I used to

Yes

Independence in children is not built by me doing

With three adult children home for at least part of the pandemic, and subject to the pandemic’s limitations, I have a much better sense of them as people, not just as my kids.

no (parents) and n/a (children)

My siblings and I used to make fun of our parents to one-another but we miss them terribly. It would be amazing if they were still here and we could all express our feelings.

one son is struggling a little, not sure why he lacks self-esteem. parents, not really any change in perspective exactly

Not really

Family seen only on video, zoom-funeral for an in-law. Still no children, with marginal substitute of a feral cat.

As I’m my 89 yr old mother’s primary caregiver… I’m still dancing

I appreciate more the difficulties my parents faced in their lives and accept the mistakes they made. With respect to my children, I accept that their lives will be different from mine as will their priorities.

It seems natural now to accept people as they are, can be or possibly wish to be, and to address them on that level, rather than as what I might wish them to be.

I so appreciate my parents (86 and 91) as my dad still works for me – he’s Director of Client Services and does all customer service calls for our business! I appreciate hearing his stories over and over as I know that one day he won’t be here to tell them. I also take time every day to talk to the folks – either on the phone or in person (they live only 10 min away). I’m here to pay their bills, “play Santa” when they say they’d like something (thanks to Amazon it’s delivered in a day or two!) As for my kids – I’m letting them LIVE THEIR LIVES – no giving advice unless asked for and when Grandma has the grands – once their parents are gone, my rules go…so breakfast for dinner is a YES!

Hell yes….parents don’t live forever and we all decline over time, unfortunately.

PArents long deceased. Children remain the center of my little world and probably will continue to, despite distance and adulting. MArgaret

Not especially, just want to spend as much time as possible with children and grandchild

Living a long life is not always a wonderful thing. Living a full life with a brain that functions well is. Seeing my parents lives get smaller is a window in to a future that I may need to face. One is always faced with unexpected change and learning how to adapt well is the challenge. For my children I’ve had to learn to let go and allow them to fully find their own voices and their own strengths without imposing my expectations for them that may not fit.

My mother, who died in 2008, just after turning 75, was difficult with me, specifically with me, and had very little awareness of, let alone respect for, “boundaries”. I have so much more compassion now for her hurt and her sadness, as well as for her lonliness, for which she was completely unprepared. I like to hope that were she still alive I could be as patient and kind to her in real life as I am in my head, now.

As the shutdowns first began, my primary thoughts were of relief that none of the really elderly and frail family members for whom I have been responsible was still alive, so I could focus my concern on my own childen and grandchildren. It was a tremendous relief once I was able to convince my very spry and healthy 89-year-old father to get out of his beloved Manhattan and into the country…

I am newly aware of how much my life has, even at almost 63, still remained focused on the needs of, or the expectations of others – my parents, my (then-) partners (I am in great solitude these days), and my children / grandchildren, siblings, etc… I am lonely, yet “unpresentable”, and struggling to find my own center… and my own focus… pretty late…