I realized last Saturday night that I’ve entered a new flourishing phase of my life. This was significant in part because I never thought it would happen again. Here’s what I’ve experienced lately and made this pleasantly surprising revelation possible.
The 2020’s has been an incredibly hard decade for me thus far. While almost every year of it has been terrible for me, the worst by far was 2022 as it brought with it my dog Sawyer’s death. The first few years after that were my survival phase. For the first few months, I mostly laid on the couch and cried for the majority of each day. I struggled through major depression, grief, and hopelessness, all of which seemed to be endless. Working through most of that pain over about a year and a half drastically improved my mood and let me progress to the next phase: rebuilding.
Although the rebuilding phase began around early 2024, it took a quantum leap last year when I got my current day job. This phase mostly consisted of improving my financial situation and increasing my chances at a good future. As you might expect, both of those improved my mood, reduced fear of what would happen to me, and allowed me to enjoy life much more than I could before this phase. The extra money funded my meaningful trips to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, the Magic Kingdom, and Animal Kingdom last year. I’m glad I could have those experiences even though they all happened during the rebuilding phase. The additional financial and emotional progress I’ve made since then brings us to the current phase: flourishing.
Now that my emotional and financial situations are so much better than they’ve been since 2021, I enjoy life so much more. My work/life balance has improved tremendously since I started my current job over a year ago. With even more money now than I had for most of last year, I’ve already been able to enjoy a lovely two-part trip to EPCOT at the beginning and middle of this month. I’m also in the planning stage of a trip to visit a friend who lives a few states away later this year. I couldn’t imagine any of that until recently, and it’s amazing to see it unfolding before me.
This all sneaked up on me. Ever since 2018 (the best year of my life so far) ended, I never thought I’d have another year like it. My doubts increased exponentially when I was still drowning in sorrow after Sawyer died. While 2026 has been nowhere near as good as 2018 at this point, it has still been better than most years of this decade. Fitting that I realized all of this the weekend after the second of my two EPCOT trips. That weekend was also four days instead of my usual three-day weekend, each day of it was lovely and restful, and I did three hours of letting go on the final day. While the weekends around my EPCOT trip were more fun, this past weekend was much more restful and refreshing.
My best year so far was 2018, and the best I’ve ever felt was in September of 2021. It’s interesting to me that my highest emotional state was in a year that was quite painful while my best year still featured lots of emotional struggles. Though I doubt any other year will eclipse 2018, I do believe at this point that I’ll have many wonderful years over the remainder of my life. I also believe that letting go of guilt, shame, anger, and pride will allow me to access emotional states far beyond what I experienced in 2021. I’d love to see what happens when an incredible emotional state occurs within a wonderful year. I’ll let you know what that’s like when it happens, and I reckon it’ll happen sooner rather than later.