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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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My 2020 Ta-Da and To-Don’t Lists

Sep 18 Leave a Comment

2020: The year our to-do lists died a fiery death. I’m still living by my to-do list, of course—I couldn’t survive a global pandemic without one. But the items look a lot different than I thought they would, they’re getting checked off slower (much, much s-l-o-w-e-r), and some things have been removed altogether.

Gretchen Rubin (author, researcher, and happiness extraordinaire) often talks about a happiness habit she calls the “Ta-Da List.” Rather than putting so much pressure on ourselves to keep up with our long to-do lists, or beating ourselves up over all the items we didn’t get done, she recommends creating a list of all the things we did get done. Ta-da!

But behind every ta-da list is a healthy to-don’t list. To make space for every single thing I did, there are a thousand unseen things I didn’t do. As the wisdom goes, you have to say no to some things in order to say yes to the things that matter most.

I think we all need a bit more ta-da in our lives right now, as well as a bit more transparency with our to-don’ts. So in that spirit, I offer you my lists. I hope these will remind you that nobody is doing it all, and that in a season where it feels like we’re living each day over and over again, spinning in place rather than moving forward, you actually have done something.

You cooked and cared and loved and hugged and surely placed at least 72 grocery pick-up orders.

You kept people alive.

You grew.

You lived.

My 2020 Ta-Da List

  1. I’ve survived a global pandemic for 6 months and counting.
  2. I parented two small humans while working full-time from home without childcare for 5 months and then helped them make the transition to a new daycare. (PRAISE THE LORD.)
  3. I launched my first book! (As stated above, without childcare, during a global pandemic.)
  4. I started running again, just to feel free for a few minutes each week, and I adopted a “do a little bit each day” approach to working out.
  5. I enjoyed my reserves of “the good stuff”: the good shampoo, the good soap, the good coffee, the good candles.
  6. I (we) ate dinner outside every time we had the opportunity.
  7. I thought outside the box and embraced partial solutions like this Enneagram 1 never has before.
  8. I ordered a lot of takeout. (Like, a lot.)
  9. I tried my best to stay in discomfort in conversations and reading.
  10. I let myself dream small, and it felt really good.

2020 To-Don’t List

  1. I don’t wear real pants. Like, ever. Some people say you should dress for your job even if you’re working at home, and I wonder if those people take sick pleasure the feeling of a waistband digging into their mom flesh. I sure don’t. On days I’m feeling fancy, I put on my nice yoga pants. On days I can’t think about even one more thing, I wear my pajamas all day and then go to bed in them again that night.
  2. I don’t tell myself to enjoy this time or look for any kind of mythical silver lining. I’m in one of the most privileged positions in all this, and it still sucks.
  3. I don’t keep up with photos like I used to. I used to have a monthly routine where I purged phone photos, edited and exported all Lightroom photos, backed everything up to the cloud and my external hard drive, and selected pictures to include in our yearly photo book. I haven’t done that since April. (I also haven’t made the 2019 photo book yet.)
  4. I don’t bathe my kids enough. Though I am getting better about that now that they’re in school.
  5. I don’t do anything productive after the kids’ bedtime. This has always been true for me—I’m braindead by 8 p.m.—but it’s more important now than ever before. It’s the one time in the day when I’m not beholden to anything, and I need it to stay that way, even when the to-do list piles up.
  6. I don’t watch (much) TV. Occasionally I’ll watch an episode of The Babysitters Club if I’m between books. But that time between putting the kids to bed and falling asleep on the couch an hour later is so precious that I use it to read because that’s what fills me up. (Okay, and I sometimes Dan and I watch our favorite songs from Hamilton.)
  7. I don’t clean my house. I tidy, yes. But I rarely clean. I have a monthly cleaning service, and I try to keep up with counters, but my floors are disgusting between visits, as are my bathrooms.
  8. I don’t do any extras. I know most of us aren’t going anywhere right now, but somehow there is still a lot happening? I’m not doing extra Zoom calls, meet-ups, or hangouts. I’m not learning Reels. (God help us, can they please go away now?) I’m focusing on a very narrow set of priorities right now, and everything else is getting cut.

The Enneagram 1 in me hates that I couldn’t make this list go all the way to 10, but we’ll just end this here and call it an act of grace and self-compassion, okay?

I’d love to hear from you: What’s the highlight of your 2020 ta-da list? What belongs firmly on your to-don’t list?
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in this series “Make A List.”

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Filed Under: Creativity, Intentional Living Tagged With: creativity, expectations, intention, mental health, ta-da list, to-do list

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
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✔️ Kamala mug 
✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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