Is it cynical to find the silver lining, to instinctively seek it in the first place? One supposes it depends upon whom answers. Cynical could be read as pragmatic. 2020 was a vile year for so many around the globe, on so many facets. For those whom did not survive it, for their inner circles, there is, likely, no silver lining, and the only thing to write is sincerest condolences. What can one say, but, I'm sorry?

For those whom survived, we were afforded the opportunity of self-reflection and existential reexamination. The question is, did you self-reflect, did you examine the life you're living? Did you find yourself mostly content with your innermost truths? If affirmative, excellent! What a wonderful place to be; a good attitude is always a great starting block! Conversely, did you find yourself displeased with your status quo? If so, what did you do to change your status? For, if 2020 didn't slap you silly and teach us everything can change overnight, literally overnight - from shutdowns of fave pubs and restaurants, to travel and event cancellations, to wedding and bithday postponements, to school closures, and, most heinously, death -  then you failed to pay proper attention. However, a pandemic-paradigm shift doesn't have to be viewed solely with pessimism; it is possible to view also with optimism, taking advantage of a forced situation and busting through it victoriously, or at least thinner. Whilst the beginning of the pandemic was almost too freaky to comprehend, by April it was clear we were all homebody-noobies and, depending on your frame-of-mind, what a marvelous, unique opportunity, in the course of human history, to Seize the Upside, Seize the Day and Emerge Better. 

If you think on other pandemics and plagues throughout mankind's history (the Spanish Flu of 1918, the European Black Death of the mid-14thC, the San Francisco and Australian Plagues of 1900), there could not be a better time to be in lockdown. First and foremost, medical research and application the world over is, obviously, cutting-edge in 2020/2021. Yet, what other era has afforded us the beauty and utility of the Internet? Lockdown might mean your local bar is closed, your kids are now homeschooled (never a bad plan anyhoo, I thought) and you work from home now (also never a bad plan), but you have complete access to whatever you need/want/crave. Imagine having had Amazon and Instacart in 1915 Sydney or 1350 Vienna. Imagine all the YouTube tutorials and Ted Talks the quarantined, yet healthy, masses might have watched and implemented during the Spanish Flu or Black Plague? Like visiting New Orleans, Vegas, Paris or Amsterdam: if you're bored, you're just not trying. Got an itch? The world is in your hands. Use your technology to scratch that itch. Springtime is, quite naturally, the most organic time of year to come alive! What a wonderful time to clean out closets, kitchen cupboards, garages and all that pent-up, Winter funk from our psyches. As the flowers and trees bloom, so might your idealism. Get up and get summat done, kittens!

Language, exercise, film, fashion, literature, the Fine Arts, writing: all constants in my existence. Bettering my knowledge of these joys are habitually expected, of myself; ergo, filling quarantine time with these pursuits was easy and fun. Kicking up my language study, adding a new level of difficulty to my yoga practice, committing to more writing, more often, including learning new styles of long-form poetry, studying every Woody Allen film, including identifying specific jazz songs within each film, and expanding my education of European painting and sculpture are all movements I expected to enact, regardless of a lockdown. What I didn't expect were the pursuits that piggybacked on my elemental interests.

Similar to becoming proficient on a musical instrument, if you desire fluency in a second (or third, or fourth) language, you must nurture it, daily. If not, that's cool. Polyglotism isn't for everyone. I bet you're a lot better at math than I. Yet, if you are seeking fluency, simply because you learned a foreign language as a child, took it in high school, or even at advanced levels in college, doesn't mean you can let it flounder. If you return your attention to it, though, like an instrument (or a dying, neglected fern), it will pop back heartier and healthier than ever. Your long-term memory will push it all to the the front burner and off we go! Yet, to become proficient, one must #practicepracticepractice! Flms, websites, Insta accounts, TV series, Zooming & Skypeing with friends whom speak your language of pursuit, whatever it takes, wherever you find it, practice as much as you can, every day.

As lockdown began last March, I found a fab new app, Duolingo, to help me keep up my French and German. Whilst there, I thought it sage to add Italian, which I've been casually noshing on for about a decade. Then, because I'm bonkers for languages, I thought how fun to add a few more: Irish, Danish, Japanese, Klingon and Dutch. (Duolingo offers thirty-eight languages, including endangered languages like Hawaiian and Navajo. To boot, it's free and such fun! Yes, there are paid-subscription models, but the free version keeps one très occupée. Also, DYK, Ashton Kutcher was one of the early investors? Do yourself a fave and check on it! "The best new way to learn a language. Gamiification poured into every lesson!" Moi senses a future post devoted to Duolingo ... check back soon.)

So, of all the amuse-bouche languages I piled on my plate, what stuck was Dutch. Similar to Italain, I had been casually pursuing Dutch, if only for a couple of years, because of my love affair with The Netherlands and the Dutch. Ik houd van het Nederland en zijn mensen! Today, I am nearing my 365-day learning streak via Duolingo. (I believe today is something like day-349.) Thanks to Duolingo, plus following some Dutch-language Insta accounts (trying to translate captions and comments is xlnt for capturing colloquialisms), reading Dutch news-sites and watching the few Dutch-language films Netflix offers, my Dutch is - als ik het zelf mag zeggen - making wonderful progress. Now, if the Schengen zone reopens to American travellers, I'll be able to get back to my beloved Amsterdam and practice mijn Nederlands.

Now, it's true, languages come very easily to me. (Of course, it is at a brain-cost for math and map-reading. Ask me to find a fraction, a percentage, do subtraction involving 9s, or ask me to help navigate through the Irish countryside you will see a tearful, hopeless, sloppy pile of JennyPop.) Not all languages are my friends. I'm maintaining a tenuous hold on the basics of Irish. I might be able to politely request a menu, order some water, bread, wine and a sandwich, and, if I can work it into a conversation, point out to any passers-by on the Dingle coastline, "The seal eats a fish!" Itheann an séala iasc!. I don't ever expect to be fluent in Irish or Japanese (another one I'm working on, if only at learning the alphabet and characters thus far), and that's okay. Fluency, for me, will likely be relegated to French, German, Dutch and English. Maybe Italian, if I can just spend a few months in Venice and Rome. Maybe Danish, too. I am enjoying it immensely, it's starting to click and could come in handy on weekendds in Solvang, until I can get back to Copenhagen. However, overall in the realm of languages, I am not used to is failing. However, I failed this year, miserably. Failure, thy name is Klingon.

Doff my cap, I do, to anyone whom can speak it. Pronunciation, to be precise, is not my problem. Dutch and German have taught me well the hard, throaty Gs, Hs and Rs. It is the sentence structure, possessives and pronouns that stump me, well, stumped me: past-tense. You will rarely read, or hear, this from Moi, yet ... I quit. You win, Klingon. I'm tapping out for good. Not one to walk away empty-handed, I did learn one apropos, très useful phrase: Tu'HomI'raH SoH ‘e’ Sov wo’  "You are a thing notable for its uselessness; the Empire knows this." Ha! Well-played, Klingon. Too true.

The Greeks and Spartans believed it was not only vital to work the mind, but the body in equal measure. Agreed. Movement has been pivotal to my life since preschool and continues to this day: ballet, gymnastics, Polynesian dance (Hawaiian, Tahitian and Maori), Swedish ball and ribbon dancing (loved it!), track and cross-country (hated it!), field hockey (briefly and only because I loved the kilts), fencing, too many gym-memberships to count, and, as of the last fifteen years, yoga. The last six or so have been following Boho Beautiful Earth-angel: the quiet, gentle, beach-based, jet-setter, vegan and Audrey Hepburn-kind-of-elegant Juliana Spicoluk. (I don't respond to frenzied, high-energy, you-got-this-girl!, frantic, spin-class style of persuasion. Ick. Kittens licking my eyelids is a much better approach to coaxing summat from me.) In 2020, as I imagine many did, I added some meditation to my yoga practice. It was helpful on some days, notably in the earliest days of the pandemic, when nobody knew what the virus was, how it was transmitted and whether or not it was survivable. Like a Cloverfield monster out there somewhere, anxiety could creep in if one wasn't careful. Juliana's mellow meditations deftly calmed me when needed. However, I'm more of a stretchy than sitty kind of girl and, whilst I still do the occasional meditation, I like to move. Happily, thanks to Juliana's nurturing instruction, I achieved some poses this past year I never thought possible, for me: Flying Crow, Full Mermaid, Double Eagle and various arm-binds. Still woefully out of my grasp are Bird of Paradise, Lotus Headstand and Pistol Squat. They're the Klingon of yoga. (Look them up, they're bonkers advanced!) 

Of course, a girl can't live on all lavender water, plinky-plunky spa music and love and light. Sometimes she needs a Guinness, some raucous, Dropkick Murphys and to kick up her heels, literally. 2020 was the year of JennyPop's Irish step-dancing and, like Dutch, it has burrowed deep into my heart and soul and has stuck like hearty, steel-cut oatmeal. Irish dance feels like home. It is also bonkers-difficult, way too much fun and requires supa cute dance shoes and socks: hard-shoes are called Jigs, soft-shoes are called Ghillies and the fluffy, white, calf-height socks are called Poodles. Best of all, an hour of Star Jumps, Light Jigs, Rocks, Freezes, Leap-2-3s, Sevens and Hornpipes is, by far, the hardest, sweatiest, heart-thumpiest workout I've ever endured. Irish step-dancing: like a real sport, only much harder and wherein the weak are killed and eaten ... and washed down with a nice pint of Guinness. 

Oh, big whoop, JennyPop, the fair reader might comment here with exasperation and eye-rolls. You did some stuff. So what?  So this, fair reader ... my endeavours mean very little, if anything, to anyone other than Moi, and that is the point of 2020. This is not an advice column; I wouldn't dare be so confident or bold. Besides, you are too wise. As Ben Franklin sagely postured, Wise men don't need advice and fools don't take it.

Life can change very quickly and sans warning. Pursue your Best You because you want to, not because others wish it or want it for you or you think you're supposed to because of social pressure. If your Best You is a kick-ass cupcake baker, get on it. If your Best You is only a few credits shy of a degree, finish. If your Best You wants to lose weight, learn to knit, garden, cook, dance, write poetry, play soccer or paint, do it. Maybe, in the simplest terms, your Best You is, in fact, your Better You. It is possible for some the idea of dance and yoga and travel and new languages is just too much; what they really want is to be better at being themselves, as-is. What a glorious place to start. Anne Frank wrote, "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." Ditto for your own self, fair reader. Do it. Start tomorrow. Every day you awaken is a fresh start! (JennyPop's pal, author and retro business-owner Kirsten Pagacz and her Leaving the OCD Circus memoir might be the perfect read to help you on your journey to, if not your Best You, your Better You.) 

Whatever you choose, do it with gratitude, gratitude for this beautiful life you get to live. Life isn't a carousel; we don't get multiple go-rounds. As Mom said, when I dithered once about what to order at a Karl Strauss, "Don't worry about the calories, honey. Eat the macaroni and cheese. Maybe there won't be a next time to get it." (Full disclosure: I did not get it. Instead, I got the waterrnelon goat-cheese salad. Mommy passed away suddenly about two weeks later. She was right, I should've gotten the macaroni and cheese.)

Whatever 2020 brought, the intangible sentiment of humanity and friendship is what will last, for Moi anyhoo. The opportunity of a year shaken so violently, like a snow globe in the hands of an horrible toddler, has shined a spotlight on friendships. 2020 brought me closer to my dearest friends, it brought one back from a silly tiff and, for better or worse, it exposed a long-term friendship to be, sadly yet truthfully, nothing more than a façade: if it was easy, we were friends; the moment it took effort, we were not. A hard lesson to learn, but glad to know its depth. Where friends are the truest, not even a global pandemic can keep you apart; there are ways to keep connected, especially today. Where friends are fairweather, all it takes is a global pandemic to serve as the perfect excuse to break contact altogether. It's likely they're just not that into you, maybe never were. Sorry, but that's the short and sour truth of it, kittens. Move on to the folks whom appreciate the amazing unicorn you are. 

2021 has had a slow yet gentle and promising start. It's like driving a big sedan with a powerful, 390horsepower kind of engine. You don't bust off the stoplight like a flashy nutter, you very slowly pull away, giving those horsies a light kick. By the time you approach 30mph, you kick it up a tick. After that, you're just a smoky grey blur on PCH. It's almost April. I'm feeling about 45mph ... I can't wait to hit full speed. (Thinking it's time to take my violin out of its case. That would make Mommy happy. What do you think about green contact lenses? Or blue, like the original, German version of Snow White? Hmmm ... so much possibility, I love it.)

Abyssinia, kittens! Keep seeking your Best You!

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