A year ago today I went to the office building I work in for the last time before going into lockdown. On Thursday afternoon, March 12th, we were all glued to a TV screen at work, watching breaking news announcing that the country had to go into lockdown. Even then I don’t think we were completely aware of how serious all of this was for all of us but we very soon learned. I went in to the office on Friday morning (Friday the 13th!) for an hour or two because I had an appointment to explain to two colleagues how to work in Microsoft Teams, already learning to do so by keeping a little distance between them and me (how important that software would become, starting on the Monday after lockdown started!). The office was already virtually deserted that day. I went home again for lunch and haven’t been back there since.
At the time I couldn’t imagine that being in lockdown would last a year! I was going to write a whole retrospective on observations and lessons learned but I had a bit of a difficult day yesterday and I find I can’t bring myself to do more looking back today. All I can say is that I’m glad I didn’t know then that this would last so long because I don’t know how I would have survived such a prospect. I do know that now with vaccines rolling out all over the world I have hope that we can hug people again in the forseeable future, that we can go out to restaurants, cinemas, theatres, concerts and museums again, that we can travel again and live life instead of just making do and existing. I hope that by March 13th 2022 this period in time will all be a memory, that we will never lose anyone due to this horrible virus again, that we can recalibrate and change the things we now realize we need to change and protect the things we missed most during this lockdown year (and a half?). The end is in sight, I hope.
