The year that became 2020 began ominously.
I spent New Year’s Eve alone in an Auckland Air B&B watching coverage of Australia’s bushfire crisis on Al Jazeera and blogging about my travel highlights of the year.
I felt guilty. Horrible devastation was unfolding across huge sections of my country. People were trapped in fear of their lives as fire closed in. Our unique native animals were dying by the tens of thousands. Tourism businesses, including some I knew well, were destroyed. And there was I wrapping up my third overseas holiday for the year.
At midnight I went outside to watch the fireworks from Sky Tower as a luxury Cunard ocean liner welcomed the new year by sounding its foghorn across the harbour. Perhaps I missed an omen and it was really blasting a warning of what was to come.
I spent the first day of 2020 hanging out on the Auckland waterfront and visiting a Danish design exhibition before sipping G and Ts all the way home in a Qantas business class suite. For me in that moment life was pretty damn good.
I was looking forward to what lay ahead in 2020. I was turning 50 and planning to embrace it. I was dreaming of a trip to the Raffles Hotel to knock back Singapore Slings in the Long Bar on my birthday. I was heading to Europe in June to follow Paul McCartney’s tour to Lyon, Naples and Barcelona. I was going to see the Great Barrier Reef for the first time. I was slowly growing my travel writing business. Then COVID-19 changed everything.
As the virus spread across the globe in January and February, it became obvious it would soon be here, and it was. Towards the end of March I was sent home from work as we transitioned to operating remotely. I expected to work away from the office for around six weeks. I still haven’t gone back.
Lockdown one closed the gyms, the shops and the cinemas – all places I spent a lot of time. Events were cancelled en masse. Visits to family and friends were banned. Australia’s border was closed and my European summer disappeared. So did the football and the winter film festivals.
After a brief reprieve in June, a second wave in Melbourne saw a new lockdown stretch all the way to November. For my birthday Singapore Slings at the Long Bar became Singapore Slings at the kitchen table. It was strangely lovely. Disappointment became part of the landscape in 2020 and disappointment can be defeated. After all, I have remained healthy and kept my job. I’m way better off than many.
During that long Melbourne lockdown I followed a simple daily routine organised around masking-up for my one-hour permitted walk and tuning in to the Premier’s daily presser for the latest numbers. It was stressful and it was depressing. There was a lot of time to think and to reflect on what actually matters. I learned two important lessons about myself in that time – I have too much and I do too much.
Before the pandemic, going to the shops was a pleasant distraction, a way to kill some time that almost inevitably involved buying something I didn’t need. How many pairs of gym tights do I really have to have? Seventeen according the drawer I keep them in.
My home is cluttered with unnecessary trinkets and souvenirs, my wardrobe stuffed with forgotten clothes I haven’t worn in ages. Lockdown made me stop buying things for the sake of it. I learned I don’t need half the stuff I have and I certainly don’t need more. The year has helped me become less materialistic and I think that’s a good thing.
If we have collectively learned anything in 2020 it is that health must come first. There is no economic prosperity without widespread good health. There is no work without good health. There is nothing more important than good health. I am among the lucky ones in this pandemic. I have not been sick. But I have been tired.
Before the pandemic forced me to slow down, on a typical day I would rush from work, to the gym then home to study or finish a freelance commission. Into the small time spaces that remained I jammed language classes, writing courses and pitching for freelance work, sometimes going weeks without a real day off.
Suddenly I had to stop. Having little to do and nowhere to go for months forced me to slow right down. I knitted, I built LEGO and did jigsaw puzzles. I chilled and I had time. I soon realised I’ve been exhausted for years. I need to do much less and will try to make more time to slow down.
The year that was 2020 has ended ominously. Many parts of the world are in lockdown and new COVID cases have sprung up in Melbourne after a two-month COVID-free run. The border is still closed. Yet there is hope that 2021 will be better thanks to a COVID-19 vaccination.
I’ll be spending New Year at home this year. There’ll be no fireworks or champagne. The year that will become 2021 will begin quietly.