Being More Engaged and Present in 2020

I hope you had a restful and relaxing Christmas vacation and started this new year of 2020 on the right foot.  My theme for the year and goal is to be more "engaged" in my life.

This has been an ongoing process and evolution for me over the past few years, as I returned to therapy and focused on how to be less disconnected from my life. my focus last year was on being "present."

While that can mean different things to different people, for me it meant feeling the hurt when things did and the joy when stuff went well.  I had developed a tendency to remove myself from feelings and act as more of a narrator of my own story instead of walking through the actual emotions and feelings I would come in contact with.

I do feel progress was made in that area, so as we were closing out 2019, I endeavored to figure out my focus area for 2020.

What kept coming to mind was taking that "presence" I had worked on developing and adding intentionality to do so repeatedly, and engage in things that further that process.

That means that for 2020, my son and I will not be using our phones on normal car rides.  It becomes so easy to do that as a way to pass time and then we miss the chance to talk, look around our world, or decompress from the constant stimuli.  That will be easier for me since I'm usually the driver, but it does mean at stoplights the urge to grab the phone will be fought.

It also meant that instead of staying put and perhaps doing a little more relaxing post-Christmas, we rented a car (turned out to be a truck) and along with my parents, headed to Disneyland via Las Vegas.

This was a great trip and good primer to my focus for the year, and though the phone was used a lot to manage FastPasses and watch wait times, the time together and memories made for my son with my parents was another big win.

It felt good to end the year and move into a new one with some quality time spent together.  Fewer distractions and some fun and lasting memories was a huge win, and kicks off the focus for 2020 in a very special way.