Introduction
In answer to Abundance tribe's biweekly question I will try to answer this for my personal situation. I was realizing a few things yesterday when I answered @ecotrain's question as well, and honestly, I love the fact that these questions often make me think really hard and discover answers that I often hadn't realized until I wrote the answers down. It's always good to do some self-reflection from time to time, so here we go!
I miss the festival years quite often
While it has been quite a few years already that I was enjoying festival after festival in my younger years, dancing the nights away, this is something that is still fresh in my memory. I enjoyed feeling free as a bird, being able to be part of 10k people that were being one with the music all night long. It gave such as sense of unity and freedom and often gave me goosebumps when experiencing this. I can totally relate to @trucklife-family's post when she says dancing makes her feel free. It's true, when you let the music slide through your veins and become one, this is the most amazing feeling in the world!
Becoming a mom, has been one of the reasons I've not visited a festival anymore, although I had a few chances to do so in the past. I didn't take them and then Covid arrived, making me wonder if we will ever be able to get back the true feeling of unity again once there will be a festival like we had in the past. I truly doubt that the music industry (festivals, concerts etc) will ever be the same. I kind of feel nostalgic about this and wonder if we were part of an era that the future generations will never experience and has become something of the past.
Having these nights out, to me, were the absolute best way to celebrate life. I love music, I love dancing, and I get touched by music often. I have tremendous respect for good artists, singers and DJ's that feel the crowd.
Music
To compensate the lack of going nights out, I often put on a headphone that gives the most amazing sound. I use my boyfriend's headphones because mine sucks lol. I go back in time by browsing through Youtube and finding those live sets from festivals / concerts I've visited, and often also those from after that period because the music industry hasn't been sitting still. I have a few favorite hardstyle festival sets that make me go back into time. It makes me feel nostalgic and the beats vibrate through my body. I can't sit still for long. It's not the same as being part of a festival, but it's a good replacement for something that can't be realized in this current time.
I truly can enjoy life to the fullest when having me time with headphones on and listening to the music that makes me feel happy and want to dance. It also motivates me to do some exercises while listening to a live set from a festival, as long as it has a good beat in it.
I would love to be able to go out dancing with my boyfriend for once for old time sake, just enjoying the music and having fun in a way we haven't had in years! But for now, this is not a reality (yet) until we can, I will keep enjoying the music at home.
Being grateful
I also enjoy life when I think about where we came from, we crawled back up from having nothing, to being where we are and I'm happy we aren't struggling anymore like we did some years ago. I'm happy that we aren't part of the many many families that have lost their jobs or maybe even houses due to the pandemic. I'm very grateful that even though the circumstances, we were able to see past the pandemic and kept seeing opportunities for us to grow and move forward in life. I believe that all the struggles from the past have made us so much stronger and able to move forward much easier than a couple of years ago. Back then, things felt much bigger compared to the current time. I truly believe that what didn't kill us back then, made us a hell of a lot stronger! I'm grateful for that as I also feel for those that aren't in such a fortunate situation..
When we are now driving around in our car (even though it's not in the best state lol), even going to a supermarket, I feel blessed when looking outside the window, that we are able to drive around in a car now rather than having to use public transport, limiting where we are going a lot. If it wasn't for crypto, this would have probably not happened anytime soon, because that has helped us moving forward a lot!
I can't wait for summertime
Currently, the weather is still a bit meh, and although there have been hot days already, right now it's a week full of rain. But soon, the summer will kick in for real, and that's when we will be able to truly enjoy our life with a car, as it's the first summer for us having one. We will be able to go out in nature more, and do some field trips for the homeschooling of our daughter.
I've already made a list of things to do, and some things will be open in some weeks, thinking about these days ahead makes me happy! This will really upgrade our lives so much, because many of these things aren't even connected by public transport.
I can't wait for the first day that we are having a day trip as a family and enjoy the good life!
I have a sort of bucket list
As we decided to move next year the latest and close the book of our adventure here, I really hope we can visit as many things as possible that we haven't been able to in the past years. I know we will probably be limited due to the vaccination policy at first, but in a month or so, I hope we have an immunity certificate so that we can visit all these things on our bucket list any way.
We plan on making the most out of this summer, even though there may still be restrictions, we will find a way to make sure we can do as many things as possible anyway so all three of us have the best summer in years!
Conclusion
Celebrating life does look different since the pandemic arrived, but I can't say it's always worse. It made me realize a lot of things while being not able to go out to enjoy life as we normally would. Therefore I did a lot of self reflection and started to appreciate some things I took for granted as well. I do miss a lot of things about the life before the pandemic, but if I was completely honest, I didn't make the most out of my life back then either. Once the option is taken away from you to do so, you start to realize that you should celebrate life more, as you never know what tomorrow will bring. I plan on being more pro active in making sure our bucket list is all done by the time we will leave, or at least try to make this happen.. Who knows what the fall/winter will look like, I plan on sniffing up as much natural Vitamin D as possible these months! :)