Update on Some Life Things

Hopping on here to say HEY, miss you, and figure I can give an update on some life things. Bare with me while I find my groove blogging again.

A lot has happened in the past year after getting back from my 10-month traveling stint. Mainly, a return to the workforce, a breakup, a pandemic, a company acquisition, and me trying to stay sane amidst it all. A mentally, emotionally wild year is an understatement.

The Gloom

I’ve been really up and down this year. Ask any of my friends or family members (thanks friends and family <3).

The emotional downturn started with my breakup last summer. I won’t be saying much about it. Sometimes, good things come to an end. There’s no one specific reason to point to, and that’s okay. I’ve formed new perspectives about relationships and learned plenty about myself in the past year. And I’m grateful for it all.

Things didn’t get any better due to the pandemic and the human rights violations spotlighted by George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, plus too many others. They just made me feel even more like a shitty human being.

I’m aware that I have the privilege to sit here and write about my feelings while there are people going through the reality of these nightmares. From it, at least, instilled the conviction to push myself and our government to do the right thing. I’m hopeful that we will see change. I’m unlearning and relearning and taking action where I can to be part of that change. Yet I’m still ashamed by the seemingly little effort that I’m putting in, and I can’t escape the helpless feeling.

When I get stuck in these bouts of hopelessness, I remind myself to zoom out and scale back my perspective. If each of us take one step at a time (or leaps, if you want) in the right direction, we will direct the larger body in that same direction soon enough. So keep stepping/leaping.

The Bloom

Things eventually stabilized in the last couple of months. I got a better grip of my emotions. The new normal felt normal ish.

I’ve connected more with my friends and family during this time. Probably because we can’t do anything else under quarantine besides hit each other up out of boredom and talk about our problems + world problems. I definitely appreciate the raw, charged conversations that often leave me feeling vulnerable but satisfied afterwards.

I also semi love the abundance of TIME that we now have. Although time feels stretched out under the Q and can make me a wee bit complacent, I’m glad that I’m getting time back in terms of what would’ve cost me in commute, idleness at work, unnecessary meetings, etc. I like that I can tend to personal things when there’s down time while working from home. So far, I’m reading more, I’m being more active…and hopefully I’ll be blogging more. The office remains closed for the rest of 2020. Now, when is the golden nugget business idea going to hit me?!

Another extremely positive outcome of shelter-in-place (SIP) has got to be my investment portfolio/ saving$. My total net worth pretty much doubled from beginning of SIP (mid-March) to present. And no, not from just $20 to $40; a sizable chunk personally! All the things that the pandemic disallowed us to do— eat out, enjoy entertainment, travel— in turn, lowered my spending and allowed my nest egg to grow. Plus the fact that I put money in the market when it was low. Low and behold, the market rises again. I would think that anyone who kept investing during this recent downturn saw substantial returns as well, so YAY.

Net worth tracked using Personal Capital

I use Personal Capital to track all my accounts, spending, budget, investments, etc. Have been using it for almost 5 years now and love it.

I’m a fan of all personal finance related topics. I strongly believe that people need to be more informed and educated about how to make sound money decisions and to not be intimidated by the wealth 😉 of information and tools available out there. Knowing is empowering. It can also make you some $$$.

Wrap Up

I miss traveling so much and can’t wait until the world opens up again. You can bet that I’ll jet off to someplace on my list once it does. In the meantime, I may post about previous travels to get things flowing and to feed my wanderlust. Will try to create more fun, useful content with all this time.

We can probably count on the rest of this year to be as unexpected as the first half, which spells out a-n-x-i-e-t-y. But let’s keep our heads up and do the best we can with the situation we’re in.

— T.