The Year Of Commitment 

I'm frozen, my fingers hovering above my laptop keyboard and my eyes locked on to the screen. This is how it starts, slowly winding its way throughout my body and into my arms, neck, chest and head. The feeling of cold, uncontrollable, unstoppable fear. I become overwhelmed, I begin to lose the ever-present feeling of stability and my eyes lose focus. Suddenly, like a drum pounding inches from me, I can hear my heart beating, amplifying with each intense beat. Warmth fills me, all at once I'm sweating, dizzy, confused and filled with the overwhelming urge to run and hide. Without thinking I stand up from my desk and dash down the concrete stairs, past security, through the front gates and into the outside. I need air, I need space, I'm having a panic attack, I need to breathe, I tell myself to "breathe". I... Can't.... breathe... 

It seems crazy that our minds can overpower the very fundamentals of our body. That fear and panic can be such strong emotions that our very ability to function is undone. In my twenty-nine years of life, I am fortunate enough to have only experienced this feeling three times. The first was whilst working in my first office job at a news station, where a deranged colleague had made it her mission to damage my reputation. She spent countless hours accusing me of all sorts of falsehoods and outright lies. Eventually, after a year of torment, she was dismissed from the company and I was very happy to never have to see her again, but then I did. She was picking up her last pay cheque and I ran into her unexpectedly. At that moment panic hit me, everything she had done and said, her ruthless attacks all came back like a flood driving me into a panic. Eventually, I was all right and thankfully never did see her again but those feelings of being hit by the past stayed with me. My second ever attack was while on a tram, I'd just been told I had some minor health issues but for some reason that day I was convinced I was going to die. Every little heartbeat or muscle twitch to me seemed like a heart attack. I was petrified of the 'now' and frantically wondering 'what's happening to me!'. Luckily the answer was nothing, and after a while I adjusted and learned to live with my little health issues, and deal with my feelings in the present moment. My third panic attack was in the early part of this year and it was completely different from the others. It wasn't a fear of the past that had been unwillingly triggered, nor was it a fear of the present and what was happening to me at any given moment. I was afraid of what was coming, my biggest fear was in the future. At this point, Covid-19 was still a polite joke people were saying around the office, and despite the calmness around me I could feel the events that were ready to unfold. My years in the news business had shown me the difference between 'a good news story' and when you should be really afraid. The Coronavirus wasn't just a story it was coming, and on the day of my third ever panic attack, I felt like it was coming for me and no one else could see its ruthless approach.

Standing in the open air, I called my future wife for comfort. Holding tight to the skills I'd developed to manage panic attacks I started to finally breathe again. Working through my process I eventually was able to wander back to my office, grab my things, and notify my mangers that I might need a few days to deal with my anxiety they agreed to let me login from home. I took a week to work on my mental health and by the end of that week, a pandemic had arrived. The world had caught up with my thinking and I did not return to the office again for 8 months. Looking back on that moment of panic I cannot clearly pinpoint how I knew that the world was about to change. In my news days, I remember watching the coverage of the Ebola outbreak and kept a keen eye on the warning signs of what made a disaster. One of the side effects of the news business' emotional rape is that you can spot the difference between real danger and TV's fluff extremism. People would be surprised how often news crews can predict the future because they see everything going on, no matter how small. Unlike the public who see the news through the deliberate rose coloured glasses, as it’s made that way, it’s made to entertain not inform.

I always choose my yearly theme in advance and as I've mentioned in the past it's supposed to be a north star slowly guiding my life in the right direction to help "make" me, me. This year, 'The Year Of Commitment' is probably the first time where a theme has linked so perfectly with the world around me, without my knowing. I thought this theme would be about committing to the changes I'd made in past years around doing good, personal fitness, productivity, family and positivity. I thought this theme would be about defining the dedication it takes to get married and what that life long commitment to another person actually means. It wasn't, The Year Of Commitment turned out to be the commitment to my mental health, my relationship, when that's all you have, and to survival without fear. This year hasn't been easy on anyone and I would consider myself one of the lucky ones, committing to live in a time when the very thought of tomorrow brings with it a super-storm of the unknown is unbelievably difficult — but I did it.

Lock-down brought with it new challenges but the goal was simple, maintain a routine. My home became my ‘spaceship’ and I a passenger stuck in this vessel with nothing but space surrounding me, and to survive I required commitment and care. I set out five areas of focus 'Health,' 'Sleep,' 'relationship' and 'creativity/work'. Health required a minimum amount of physical activity, sleep required etiquette and consistent bedtimes, relationship was about tending to my partners needs and maintaining contact with outside friends and family. Creativity & work was mostly about 'keeping busy,' my office had lowered my full-time work down to one day per week and it was important that I remained engaged and creative, I took online classes and started new projects at home. These things got me most of the way through a very difficult year, however, no-one is immune from the unknown nature of 2020 and eventually all the plans came to a halt. My partner and I both fell in and out of days of depression, each helping the other back out of darkness on our bad days. I am unbelievably lucky to have my fiancee with me and my heart feels for those who had to do this alone, humans did not evolve to be separated from one another no matter how necessary.

It was in this part of winter that the world started to echo that powerful phrase once again. Black. Lives. Matter. I am a 29-year-old white male, I was raised in upper middle-class home and I cannot assume I know what life is like for the Australian Indigenous or what their needs may be. As a descendant of an original Australian convict & settler, I am the product of the generations before me. When this discussion came to the surface this year I once again repeated comments like "there is nothing I can do," "they have support already" and "give them whatever they want - I don't care". I now see how these comments are not fair and not right. Honouring the owners of the land I live on, the land I work on and the land my ancestors stole from a race of people should be something I care about. I now stand by and will forever echo new words. — "It is with unity and hope that I offer myself, to be of assistance if called upon, to learn if fortunate". 

Like the calm in the eye of a storm, in the worst part of Melbourne's pandemic, I found a feeling of clarity. I was living through a unique moment in history and I should look around and take it in, the sky's clear of planes, roads free of cars, a completely empty calendar and nights as quiet as they come. The following days I reunited with my routines while also finding hope in the small moments 'life in lockdown' offers. My partner and I fixed up our garden, started doing yoga together and even started a small business 'RawCauldron' for all your cleaning needs! By mid-October, we had passed over our original wedding date. We had decided to move the wedding months before in May, but there is something bizarre about sitting at home watching TV on the day your life is supposed to change and have been looking forward to for years. It feels like knowing you are forgetting something, or when you aren't where you're meant to be while also having nowhere to go. My family were kind enough to mark the non-occasion with little gifts and cakes, but it will forever be a strange day. 

Now, no longer in strict lockdown and as we enter the end of this true disaster of a year I'm looking back at all I have somehow achieved. The world threw crazy at us all and somehow I still made of it what I could, I did end up living a year of commitment. Commitment to being as good as life allows, to new projects, to my mental health and to my future wife. 

2020 is just the beginning and the decade ahead will be built with battles the world still has to face. The climate disaster is here and it will be the defining challenge of my generation and of this decade, this planet is suffering, our oceans are becoming toxic and as we all saw in January fires are raging unlike anything anyone has ever seen. But unlike the start of this year, I refuse to be afraid of these impossible odds. I will live the best life I can, I will fight for the future I believe in, and will be pushing on to 2021 in the year of hope.