The best thing about a tough year
You get up in the morning. You make yourself a nice cup of coffee. You sit down to catch up on some news before starting your day. And the wave hits you like a freight train… Wildfires. Covid. Riots. Lockdown. Covid. Riots. LOCKDOWN! COVID! AAAAAAAH...
It has been a crazy year. We are finally at the end, but things seem to look just as grim as they did when it started.
That is… If you see the world as the news outlets try to paint it to be…
Well… I disagree. This has been one of the best years of my life. Probably the best one. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the waves of bad news that are breaking on our shores every single day, but you would be surprised if you just try to focus on the positive things happening around you.
Let me tell you what I saw when I just took a look around...
Family time
When the pandemic hit and the whole world switched to “Working from home” mode, we got a curious statistic that divorces are at an all-time high. I admit that got me worried a bit… I love my wife very much, but we do tend to drive each other crazy when we stick in the same room for too long. And now we were looking at a year, at least, of being in that state. Oh… Did I mention we have a newborn as well?
Yep. This was going to be a challenge…
But lo and behold. It’s been almost a year and we haven’t killed each other :D And I’m going to go even further than that. It has been the best year of our relationship so far. Sure, an argument here, a squabble there, but all of that became irrelevant when we got to be together for the first word of our daughter. It was “mama”, by the way... Everything took the backseat when we saw her first steps… And there were so many more “firsts” that we got to be there for. The first dance, first tooth, first feeding on her own, first potty success, and more, and more... We watched how her embodiment of “Cutie McPretty“ became “The little terror“ :D And I wouldn’t change it for the world.
I can’t help but think what the alternative was. Working away at the office for nearly half the day? Very high chance to miss all the small little things?
I did the math…
Our daughter got to see 2000 hours* more of us than she would have if it was a “normal” year...
Probably more if we take into account the usual week away on business travel per month… So, thank you Covid!
We also got to revive our family tradition of discovering something new in our country every weekend. And we got to include our daughter in that.
We had the best summer vacation in Greece ever, despite travel restrictions. Sure, the PCR test felt like a nose lobotomy, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
All in all, I can definitely say that this has been one of the best years for our family so far. And we’re not the exception. Take a look around.
* Assuming I’m away for 10 hours a day with the commute. We’ve been working from home since the 15th of March. We had 40 working weeks since then, Which is 200 working days, give or take.
And it’s not just in the personal aspect…
Professional development
A lot of people seem to have problems working from home. They miss the social aspect of the work process or they have trouble focusing on working tasks and are easily distracted with household chores. Unless you are an introvert, you usually identify with similar problems as well.
I admit. At times it is indeed a bit hard to balance things out. I tend to work a bit more when the boundaries between office and home blur out. It’s tempting to answer “just one more email” after hours, when your laptop is just an arms reach away. And man would I rather deliver a 4 hour workshop from a meeting room in the office rather than sitting in our bedroom…
One way ore another we find ways to adjust to this reality and press on. There are hundreds of articles out there on how to handle these particular issues and I won’t enforce my coping strategies, but after working exclusively from home for nearly a year and trying out different things, I can say I feel a lot more productive. I am able to focus on specific tasks and am rarely distracted by the occasional “do you have a minute to look at this”. Despite not being able to talk face to face our team found a way to collaborate and move forward. We addressed the lack of personal contact by organising get-togethers, both virtual and in real life.
And all of that helped me challenge myself.
I took ownership of critical customer cases, and got the ball rolling towards a resolution.
I delivered 9 new and original online webinars that were extremely helpful to our customers and partners.
I got certified as a Demo Delivery Expert.
And despite the tough financial landscape our team managed to achieve nearly 100% on our target for the year!
I want to take the time and thank Progress for all the little touches they did in order to make us feel safe and confident that we can go through this together.
But let’s take a wider look past the personal achievements.
World around
With all the focus on negativity we forget to look at the positive aspects of life in crisis.
Here are seven of the highlights I really find positive this year (and these are hard to find… Just google top good news of 2020 and see how many you can find):
We sent astronauts to the IIS with a new spacecraft for the first time in decades. The story.
We have a second case of cured HIV. Link.
A man had his lung removed, cleaned from cancerous tumors, and implanted back in. Here is the story.
Oxytocin can be used to cure degenerative brain diseases. Source.
Lab-bred mosquitoes can be “weaponized” to wipe out malaria and other tropical diseases. Check out the story.
We have a number of Covid vaccines approved. Whatever your opinion on them is, it signifies the beginning of the end for this whole thing…
And my personal favorite…
We got to see a redemption story arc for a generation's beloved lightsaber-wielding hero. Luke Skywalker whined like he never did on the screen before in The Mandalorian season finale!
All in all, while 2020 was hard and unpredictable, you just have to look through the cracks in the wall of negativity to see the light shining through. I had one of the best experiences of my life this year. Many of you probably did as well. Let's turn our sight away from pessimism and step into 2021 with a bit more positive view on our worlds.
