We stood near the base of the Golden Gate Bridge, ready to join the throngs walking across the span and back. It was my second time taking this New Year’s Day stroll, billed by our organizer as a chance to walk with friends and with our intentions for the new year.

Before we began, we each shared a word we hoped would guide us in 2020, an idea I’d recently learned about and proposed to the group. Felicia chose “patience.” CJ vowed “courage.” Jeff’s focus would be “health.” My word was “learn.” The Bay Area skies were a brilliant blue as we walked north across the bridge, then the fog descended as we returned, so our timing was perfect. Of course we had no idea the murk that awaited us in 2020.

So what have I learned in 2020? I mainly chose “learn” as my word of the year because I was getting ready to travel to Mexico to earn my Teaching English as a Foreign Language certification. When class began in February, I learned I was the oldest in my cohort of seven people. (Another older student decided by the third day it wasn’t for him.) Day 3 was also the day we taught our first English class, and the next few weeks were packed with lesson planning, student teaching, grammar review, and piles of homework.

Beyond academics, I learned to make do with an apartment that, while fine in many ways, lacked a decent mattress and hot water for dishwashing. I turned the living room couch into an acceptable bed and was grateful to have adequate hot water for showers. I successfully used my limited Spanish to order food, talk with the corner laundry attendant, and buy a return bus ticket for a day trip to Lake Chapala. By the end of my Guadalajara stay, I had someone ask me for directions in Spanish and I was able to give them. I flew home to Seattle with my new teaching skill, a bit more Spanish, and a feeling of accomplishment. But 2020 was about to send us all back to school—except the kids and teens, who were coming home to learn.

My life has been blessedly simple during the pandemic. I live alone. My child is grown. My parents are long gone. I have no serious health conditions that keep me from venturing into public places, so I’ve gone out for groceries, laundry, and a few walks with friends.

Others’ lives are not so simple. Relatively few in my close circle have been directly affected by life-threatening bouts with COVID. But one friend has been navigating the needs of her mother, who has dementia and lives a thousand miles away. A cousin’s teenage daughter with a rare childhood disease had heart failure a few weeks ago and was flown to a hospital. She was able to come home for Christmas, but the future is unclear. Another cousin who has been battling cancer wound up back in the hospital on Christmas Eve. These people and their immediate families are truly doing the hard things in these hard times, and I feel humbled by their selflessness.

I’ve also learned humility in my work life—or perhaps this is less humility and more realism. As an older person who has only sporadically held staff positions in my career, I am unlikely to be hired as an employee in a historically tough job market. Still, I spent lots of time all spring and summer pursuing full-time work, grasping for some security in those most uncertain seasons. By fall, I had learned, once again, that I am meant to continue on the high wire of freelancing, but it is a life I chose long ago, and it is a life I like.

“Learn” was a very good word for 2020. Next week, I’ll write about my new word for 2021. Meanwhile, here are a few other things I learned in the past year: I learned that anti-racism is a lifelong practice. I learned to look for and trust in the next right thing. And I learned how I don’t always get to choose, but that’s OK.

Click here to read my post about picking “learn” as my word of the year for 2020, and here to read the Braver/Wiser post that inspired the exercise. Maybe you’d like to try it yourself in 2021–and if so, I’d love to know the word you choose to guide you through what is likely to be another trying yet oh-so-worth-it year.

Thanks for reading Surely Joy. I write for a living, so if you enjoy my work, feel free to hit the tip jar.