| So, let’s stop pretending someone is going to give us a ‘get out of jail free’ card. I swear if the ‘old roaring 20’s’ people snivelled at much as we are doing now, they’d likely never have gotten out of their great depression. I’m here with stories and unsolicited advice, as per yush’ Since the start of the post-pandemic era, I somewhat uncharacteristically dropped my introvert persona and got busy chatting. They were not ‘sales calls’ or even entirely to do with business. It was a lot of friends, clients, family; that bled into podcast guests, friends of podcast guests, and eventually, random humans on the interwebs. I’d say I had a 100 conversations in the first month alone. A lot more since, many with the same people. Though the intensity reduced some on the number of calls per month. Very, very uncharacteristic. If you asked me, then, why I did it, I’d have summarized it as follows: 1. I was a little scared, and I talk when I’m scared. 2. Everybody I knew was scared and wanted to talk because they were scared. 3. I was curious. If you asked me to summarize now, I’d say I was doing market research. And in my completely unscientific, if statistically viable, research I found a few patterns. (Methodology overview here, because it may be unscientific, but it’s not daft. The people I spoke to were a mix of entrepreneurs and those employed in companies. A small handful are in the educational system. An even smaller handful are stay at home moms. All my calls were done in my capacity as ‘work Susan’. Even the ones with my friends that I’m counting in this assessment, were in my work avatar.) 1. The PTSD is strong. Pretty much everyone feels like they are ‘dropping all the balls’. 2. Almost no one is absorbing fully that this may well be the way of life for a year or more. 3. And a vast majority think that 2020 is a write off. “Can we all start over and have a proper, planned year in 2021 please?” It’s not going to happen, folks. I’m rarely the soothsayer of doom, but I can read a mean set of clues. Life as you know it, is kaput. Work as you know it, is kaput. It is officially August 2020. Let that sink in for a minute. For several of us, the first half of the year was a surreal speed blur. What will we do now? Employ steely resolve in making sure we’re NOT writing off a whole effing year just because global disease said ‘boo’? Gosh I hope so. In my lifetime I have never seen this much change in 4 months. |
- People are saving lives and manufacturing personal hygiene supplies at the speed of light.
- Digital transformation jumped forward a decade.
- And the word ‘PIVOT’ has become a joke because we’re done with the dizzy change and have learned to focus.
- Parents have learned to enjoy their children. (Legit)
- We’ll either have:
- a bunch of divorces, and the death of the institution of marriage sooner than we expected it. (Although bumble launched a stellar campaign around “You can tell your kids you met when it was illegal to kiss.)
- or a whole massive generation of ‘quarantennials’.
| ANYTHING is possible. What is on your list? What feels like your unscalable Everest for 2020? What keeps YOU up at night? I’ve likely established I’m good with convos. Hit reply if you’d like to tell me. Peace. Susan |
