2020

January 1, 2021

The year that started in March. ⊕The idea for this post came while reading this The Economist’s piece about Christmas newsletters. There have been many metaphors to describe these past nine months. The one I found most fitting (heard at some point on a Zoom call, a landmark of the pandemic) is that this all felt to me like I had been forced into a long-haul flight, with all the limitations, lack of comfort, and dislike that comes with flying; but somehow I was thrown on business class, while many people found themeselves in economy, or in some new, worse (under-)class.

Privilege is a word that has resonated a lot and stayed with me over this year. Part of it is the extremely uneven nature of the pandemic, where front workers and some parts of society are living the biggest disruption to life since WWII, while many of us can barely “do our part” and stay home, wash our hands and wear a mask. Part is also the exposure, laid bare a bit more this year, of much longer-standing inequalities in society and my position/role in each of them. The first step to action is acknowledgement, and 2020 has provided plenty of “nudge” in that direction. I have started to re-evaluate my role and position of power in many of these contexts and I hope I can do more in 2021.

Such an unusual year has made me miss many things. At the risk of sounding obvious, “social distancing” has put distance between people. Visiting family, hugging friends, interacting with students, and direct exchanges with colleagues are all things we have had to “do” through the mediation of a screen this year. For someone who pays close attention to cities as a job, I have found both fascinating and terrifying how the pandemic has turned urban spaces upside down, Here was my (failed) speculative take on what cities would become during the pandemic. and how the “core tech” that makes cities one of our best inventions –bringing people together– was disabled on purpose during most of this year. Although it has been formative to discover how much modern technology allows (the equivalent in the 1918 flu pandemic sure was less fun!), I can’t wait to go back to a world where that is an option rather than the only one.

I have also missed travelling a lot. My travel was so full just before the pandemic that the first weeks docked home felt good, very good. The fantastic weather the UK saw this spring and the back garden (privilege, again) that let us get a patch of greenery to read in also helped inmensely. But, as the days passed, I started remembering everything I like about travelling, missing the places I was meant to visit again, and the new ones I would have discovered. As the year progressed, I found myself even missing early rises to catch a 6am train on my way to London just for the day, the rush and adrenaline of having somewhere to go, and someone to meet. If there is a silverlining in all this is that we miss what we love, and some of these aspects were probably too taken for granted to be fully appreciated. Maybe the new year will mean a “reset” that’ll make me live more fully in the future.

But 2020 was not entirely lost. There has been some good out of this forced change of routines. Less trains, planes and trips has meant a bit more time in Liverpool, and lockdowns made sure that was spent mostly laying around the house. One of the most consistently rewarding ways I have found to fill that space and time has been through narrative. One could argue I read for a living, but this year I have read for fun more than I thought I’d be able. Here is a list with a few picks. And it’s been great.

Less work travel has also allowed me to have a bit more space to think and be less reactive about how I plan my work. I have worked hard on two big projectsOne is a book and the other one a big “endeavour”. that I don’t think I’d have been able to find the time and mindspace to focus on in the way I have this year. And on the topic of work, I can’t wait to see what happens to all this tech and practices we have rolled out to keep universities, teaching and research going, while distributed and remote. Back in March, we joked with colleagues that, had the University announced in January a plan to move teaching delivery to 80%-100% online in the next two years, we would have all thought it was a pipe dream; yet, two months later, we all silently made it happen pretty much in two weeks… Once it’s not the only option, I think a lot of good will come from having proven it can work.

Taken altogether , this has been quite the year. The most unusual and unprecedented in many ways, yet the most boring in others. As we have just stepped into a 2021 full of promises and hope, what do I want to take with me from 2020? As a major fan of the rule of three, I’ll take that many. The first is the liberating sense of resilience I felt when both collectively as a society and individually as myself, we were able to “reinvent” ourselves and continue doing things that either needed to be done or we wanted to do, just in slightly different ways. The second is the power of habit. When you don’t have to go anywhere and your commute takes the distance that connects your kitchen to the living room, there’s the risk that you’re fooled to believe you have “all the time there is”. Finding a good routine and sticking to it have proven extremely valuable. And finally, perhaps the most obvious one, the pandemic has taught me to take as little for granted as possible, because it almost never is. From being able to ride the whole thing with E, to family, friends and work colleagues, this year has made even clearer how lucky I am, how grateful I should be, and how much good I should work to put back into the world. And, if I can take even just a little bit of that with me into 2021, then maybe it has not been that terrible of a year.