When pandemic hit in early 2020, most countries began enforcing lockdown and movement restrictions. Office workers are also asked to work from home whenever possible. Nevertheless we mostly spent our entire year at home.
As we didn’t go out much, we may feel not doing anything significant this year. And if you are someone who like making new year resolution, you may feel upset that not because you didn’t attain your goals (such as that exercising goal that keeps rewritten each year), but because you didn’t even get a chance to attain them.
What a wasteful year, isn’t it?
Well not really. If you were productive in the past year, your mind and body may have learned the pace and made you felt uneasy when you were forced to stay at home for a prolonged time. Try to remember what activities, no matter how trivial they seem, that you ended up doing. Even though they are not on your resolution list, they might contribute to your self growth and development or have an important role in life.
Perhaps you began calling and getting back in touch with old friends, or that neighbor that you had barely seen or talked to before the pandemic, which nurtures relationships.
Perhaps you dusted that old guitar and started practicing again, which develops your musical skill.
Perhaps you expressed yourself into writing by jotting down onto a journal or blog, which develops your writing skill and helps you understand more about yourself.
Perhaps you read and watched news everyday to know about recent developments of the pandemic, which you never did before, and in turn becoming more aware and knowledgeable of local affairs.
Perhaps you got infected by Covid-19 and won the battle against the Coronavirus, or had a relative who did, which gives you more appreciation for life and healthy living.
As for myself, the stock market crash due to the pandemic had caused me a panic to find ways to salvage my plummeting stock assets. And so did I make the very mistake a newbie investor does: selling stocks when they are on the bottom. With extra time and unused travel money given the lockdown, I then moved from being an investor into trader, thinking that I could make some bucks to reclaim the loss only to end up losing more and realizing how bad I did daily trading.
On the good side, I learned so much about the world of investing this year alone. From how trading and exchange work, to the diversity of investment instruments, to asset diversification and how rebalancing works, all learned first-hand. By the end of the year, I have much better grasp about my investment plan.
As the end of 2020 is coming, it may give you more power and motivation to look back and see how day by day you went by became a theme that grew you as a person. You may realize that this year is not as wasteful as you think.