December and my Ca-ladder - the Musings of Moko Bi
Hi. You may call me Moko Bi. These are my musings.
First off, HAPPY DECEMBER! - I start this muse on this first day of December, 2021.
December is busy in many ways - the obvious being seasonal celebratory reasons - Many global media platforms already have their “Best of 2021” lists blasting everywhere. Of course retail spaces in GH have very much caught onto the frenzy of beginning seasonal December trappings as early as November. This seems like a new phenomena of recent times.
December is at the junction of an immediate past and a beckoning future. A figurative milestone, marking the split between what has actually happened and the hopes of what can happen. December has this quality of being ephemeral - with a contradictory feeling that there is a lot to get done before the year concludes - yet this is in conflict with the malaise of nothing really gets done in December.
Perhaps the holiday nature of the month creates an inertia against all the well laid intentions of finishing the year strong. In many ways, December is the Friday of the year. They both elicit transient emotions of what has been and what is to be.
It’s now post Farmer’s day - a national holiday in #GH - it feels like the aforementioned frenzy-meets-malaise of December is upon us. Seasonal human and automobile traffic is beginning to build atop the everyday busyness. Institutions are racing to finish their year end processes - financial, inventory, reporting etc - individuals are executing their remaining goals for the year, and planning their season shopping.
For a very fleeting moment, I caught a whiff of the Harmattan - a distinct characteristic of Decembers of a seemingly by gone period - yet still a very powerful trigger of familiarity and memories of youth.
I am not sure why, but my imaginative representation of the calendar year is depicted by a standing ladder, with January on the highest rang. As the year progresses, I slowly descend through the months until I reach the bottom, which is December - as the last rang of my imaginative ca-ladder.
So for me, every December feels like I have finished the journey to the bottom of a hill, and preparing to be flung right back to the January - of the coming year.
So here we are, December 2021. A chance to take stock of what has happened in 2021, and perhaps yearn for the promise of 2022.
The promise 2021 was very much one of TEPID HOPE. A reeling pandemic world that had now been offered a way out through multiple vaccine choices or none at all - The human struggles and hopes in the ongoing pandemic is complicated to say the least, and I leave that to better able people to tackle.
I have never been really good with setting firm resolutions as seems to be the norm in transitioning from one year to another. 2021 was no different. I was entering 2021 from grieving in a pandemic year. I don’t know if my loss and the pandemic were trigger events for an existing OCD condition - Heck I don’t even know what OCD means beyond the words Obsessive Compulsive Disorders. What I do know is I am in a mental battle between intellectual and social pragmatism. I am not sure I even understand what I just wrote - 🤨
There is a disconnect between what my mind knows I should be able to do, and what I am physically able to do. Without extreme close examination, I am sure I pass as the typical next person everywhere. I would argue that we are all OCD, functioning on different scales of pragmatism. So I describe myself as Functional OCD. Meaning I could get by in this existing human social construct if I need to. One might ask …. ”so what are your obsessives and compulsions?” - I really don’t know!
Some would say I am pensive, others would say I am an introvert, and yet another would say I am a germaphobe AND… I would say… “Heeeey….what’s with the name calling? 🙂”
“The point is… I don’t think it’s as simple as fitting a person in neatly defined boxes. I could be extroverted as I need to be, or function in ante-germaphobe situations if I had the need. Necessity after all, is the mother who invented many stuff. 🤓”
What I do know is, 2021, like the prior 2020 has been a real struggle for me. I am mentally, physically and socially exhausted.
These days, to do these things - be extroverted, not be germaphobic - is not without costs. I have effectively lost most sense of spontaneity. It’s now a battle between - a rapid just doing it vs. a long drawn doodle (in the name of pre-planning) before getting things done.
That which broke in 2020 did not get fixed in 2021 - So then, what’s the promise of 2022?
Well that’s a whole other muse! 🤓