Undoubtedly, the determining event in 2020 was the still ongoing covid-19 pandemic and the response that the world gave: quarantine.
Like everyone on the planet to a greater or lesser extent, the pandemic has impacted us in ways we didn’t think possible a couple of years earlier.
That’s why we wanted to write this retrospective of what 2020 has been like for us.
We couldn’t travel
The first obvious consequence is that 2020 was the first year we didn’t travel. For inveterate travelers, this is a very strong lifestyle change.
There are a lot of articles all over the website and health authorities talking about the adverse effects on the psyche that this event has brought. We’re not going to lie saying that this didn’t affect us emotionally.
However, the power of resilience is amazing and we have even drawn valuable lessons from this situation, which we talked about a bit in Reflections in Quarantine.
Reorientation of our entrepreneurship
With all this time at home, we have been able to reevaluate our project, the basis of which has been this blog.
A couple of years ago we set out to carry out the project of achieving a livelihood that allows us to generate income remotely and that allows us to live from our passion that is to travel.
We believe that the time has come to emulate those digital nomads and travelers whose medium of expression is a blog and look for a means to obtain resources that allow us to sustain ourselves and, at the same time, continue traveling.
Such activities can enter a kind of circle or loop that feeds itself: trips, funded by our venture through the blog, produce new content for our blog to continue to grow.
Thus, in 2020 we embark on a training to restructure the orientation of our project, the initial details of which you can see here.
Planning a mega-trip
Yes, we are restless. So we couldn’t embark on a single project. 2020 will be remembered by us as “The Year of Projects”.
So we’re planning a minimum six-month mega-trip for 2022.
We’re dreaming of doing this for years. This would be the great adventure of our lives. We have read a lot of stories of travelers who embarked on epic journeys from six months to a year and this ended up changing their lives.
Some did not return to live in their country of destination. For others, the journey of months or a year became a nomadic way of life and they have been travelling for ten or more years.
This project fills us with enthusiasm and we will be sharing the details with you in future posts.
We value the immediate
It’s not that we want to get things right away. It’s that we value experiences now and in this place.
It seems like a small change, but in reality it is such a powerful paradigm shift that it can lead you to rethink your priorities and your way of seeing the world.
That has been the case with us. We started by visiting places in our city (Montreal), which we had overlooked but which concealed treasures.
We soon took that into our own lives and understood the words of the sages to live the “here and now”, which has been a jolt in our view of life.
Loving Ourselves
The inevitable isolation imposed by quarantine has brought us closer together as sisters and companions. We have already mentioned that.
But now we have also embarked on an integral cultivation of our body, mind and spirit arising from the love of ourselves and not out of vanity (well, maybe a little …).
we’re doing yoga online with a live instructor every day. This has led us to develop discipline and experience the defining benefits of yoga in our body (flexibility, endurance, lightness), mind (tolerance, equanimity, patience) and spirit (a sense of connection with the world and the awareness that we are all one).
Our diet has varied significantly: we start a liver detox and leave sugars and flours processed. The results in our performance, mental clarity and in our figure are beginning to be noticed.
The importance of close interaction
It’s become difficult to interact with people. On the street, masks and social distancing put a barrier to human interaction. This distance is compounded by fear.
We have been put in the situation of craving human contact. Now that most of our social interactions are through video platforms, we crave more than ever to share at the level of physical proximity with people.
We used to take that physical contact for granted and natural. But being deprived of it, we realize how much we need that ineffable quality of which eastern doctrines speak that can only be transmitted from one person to another in physical proximity, not through video or telephone.
You can not compensate with a video the experience of dancing tango in the milongas with a real partner, enjoying a meeting at home with your friends, going to college and enjoying the classes.
This has been as challenging for us as the impossibility of traveling.
More skilled
From inventing non-protein recipes to editing videos. From knowing and implementing marketing strategies (did you see the interaction in our Instagram article 10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Us?) to acquiring solid photographic notions for our website…
2020 was a year of acquiring skills and abilities. Some out of necessity, some out of passion.
With our challenge of a week of liver detoxification, we had to avoid protein for a week. We had to figure it out to make delicious, healthy meals, but without protein.
On the other hand, with our training to turn our project into a way of life, we have had to familiarize ourselves with digital tools and strategies.
All these challenges and obstacles have made us more competent in the areas in which we have developed and in new fields that we are discovering and that we are undoubtedly enjoying the road.
Conclusions
Looking back at what has been that year as unparalleled our generation as it was the one that just left, the feeling we have left is that 2020 was a severe and powerful master.
It has led us to challenge ourselves. It repeatedly and consistently took us out of our comfort zone. And this is the best strategy for improvement and growth as individuals.
But above all, it has taught us to look inside ourselves, where we have been able to discover areas that needed to be improved and unknown aspects in us that came to light thanks to that unprecedented event.
