Goodbye 2021: you won't be missed

What's to celebrate about 2021? In others' lives ... maybe something. In mine, it's slim pickings (mostly a handful of hard-won lessons which I'd have just as soon preferred not to learn).

For me, 2021 is a year of finally buying a new COVID-19 facemask (after my first batch of handmade masks ... made by my ex-girlfriend ... had way outlived both the 'few months' we'd all thought the COVID pandemic would last and their own frayed elastics).

In terms of love, this was a year of 'close but no cigar' on four different occasions. Totally different women, totally different reasons for breaking up, but the end result - wistful memories and tears and disappointment - still remarkably alike each time.

Professionally, if 2021 had a label it would be "Let's do all the things we improvised in 2020 while working from home and livestreaming everything ... and try do it a little bit better and more professionally this time around." It was a year of incremental improvements, increasingly frayed nerves, more staff resignations, more e-mails starting with "I'm sorry but..."

I know I'm not alone in this. I've seen a news story just today about a survey where the majority of participants agreed that 2021 was a terrible year for them not only personally but professionally as well. So I guess I'll draw some comfort from not being alone in the experience, even if I am still alone physically (not least a sensible 2m away from everyone - thanks again, COVID-19).

For the sake of posterity I should probably note that at the time of writing this, it looks like we've survived South Africa's fourth wave of COVID-19 infections. I personally got the Delta infection in July this year (and survived without hospitalisation - although I felt sick and had to get medicine for the symptoms), and got the two shots of the Pfizer vaccine. Next year I get to look forward to the third booster shot.

I'm sorry if I sound so pessimistic. There is hope as well. Hope in the improving statistics surrounding survivability and transmission, as vaccination rates in the country steadily increase. Hope in the reduction of stories around people's loved ones and friends dying. Hope in the continued low lockdown level and its ever-reduced curfew hours (currently 23:00-04:00 if I've got it right ... I can't be bothered to check).

What will all of this mean fifty years in the future? Will I remember it? Or will these magical words and phrases be lost to time. If they are, it will be no loss. COVID-19 might have helped so many of us work from home, and forced our employers to digitize their operations in ways we could never have imagined less than two years ago. I used to personally generate reams of paperwork which had to be printed out, signed and scanned back in dutifully ... and digital signatures of PDFs have eliminated all of that. While some people are still close friends of a printer, I'm happy to say that I'm no longer.

How will I remember 2021? I will remember this as the year of falling in love with a woman I had to eventually file a formal missing person's case for through the SAPS (not a recommended experience). That case is still open. Like so much else in 2021, closure is hard to come by.

This year I also passed my firearm competency testing and applied for my competency certificate with the SAPS. Our beloved SAPS (the Southern African Police Services - god forbid I forget that) are taking a mere 12 months to process the application, so 2022 should allow me to purchase a handgun and apply for a firearm licence ... which will take another 12 months to process. Something to look forward to in 2023, I guess: the ability to defend myself.

Let me not forget the noteworthy deaths of this year. Closest to home: my uncle Peter. There's a lot I could say about that, but not much of that which I wish to put to (digital) paper. I flew down to Cape Town to attend the memorial service, and it was extremely emotional (overlapping as it did with the latest chapter of the 'falling in love' saga mentioned above). A bit further but still close: the marketing manager for my client, Marius. Further out yet ... Desmond Tutu. And that woman from Egoli. And FW de Klerk. And ... *sighs* 

This has been a year where I think 'tried my best' summarises it. I've given my all to 2021. Absolutely every last shred of myself. There have been successes along the way. There have been the highest highs. I am not mentioning all of them here, but ... not enough.

And that's the sticky part, isn't it? After 2020 and surviving the first year of our very first pandemic, AND the most painful breakup of my life, I know I'd had high hopes for 2021. I don't know now if I didn't deliver on those hopes, or if they're all just slow-burn works-in-progress. 

I've worked more on my personal website and plan to promote it some more this December holiday. I bought a laptop for myself (after getting frustrated at wasting all my money on women who were no longer in my life). I'm writing this article on this new laptop now, sitting at a Mugg n Bean, about to go to the next door cinema soon and watch Spiderman's 'No way home' in IMAX 3D. It's a small step in the direction I want to be heading in, and right now at this very moment, god knows I'll accept any small step in the right direction I can get.

So 2021 ... sleep well. RIP. Farewell. Thank you for some things. Fuck you very much for others. 

2022: hello baby. Where've you been all my life? I've been waiting for you. Let's make some magic together.

The old new normal

I don't know why it is, but around once a year these days I think of this blog and think "Hmm, I should probably share something." My last post, I wrote as lockdown was announced in 2020 for COVID-19 ... now, here we are in August 2021, still under lockdown.

This thing we were all hoping would be over in a few months, more are saying will be with us for the rest of our lives. The thought of that is so terrible, it's hard to describe. So collectively we just don't think about it anymore.

But before I talk about the future, let's document the past year. A year of changing lockdown levels to keep track of every few months: curfew times (CURFEW - in my mind that was always associated with war time), how many people can be in a building, whether or not you can buy alcohol or cigarettes.

The one constant throughout: wearing facemasks in public places, and sanitising our hands before entering any store. Businesses closed down during lockdown, restaurants in particular. I was one of the lucky ones, able to work non-stop from home for my employer, an advertising agency.

South Africans used to shake hands everywhere ... now we generally don't even try the awkward elbow bump we tried doing for the first few months. Behind masks, 2m apart from each other, not touching: this is not the future I signed up for. Now I joke whenever I see a girl take off her mask how rare it is to see a nose or lips ... and although it's an old joke, it's just becoming truer all the time.

We spoke in 2020 about the "new normal" of getting used to video-conferencing and staying clean. Then going into 2021, I heard a radio DJ talking about how this is not the new normal anymore, this is just normal. And that was inescapable in January, and equally so now in August.

Two things have changed for the better: you can actually BUY sanitizer anywhere and everywhere (I currently have a bottle of 80% alcohol with tea-tree oil for softening my skin in my car), not like in the early panic-buying days where sanitizer was snapped up like it was holy water; and the long-anticipated COVID-19 vaccines that we just heard about for months being rolled out in the UK and US and other organised countries have finally arrived in South Africa in a big way and are publicly accessible (I'm actually booked for my first of two vaccination shots next weekend).

It's also worth mentioning I've survived COVID-19 myself. Twice, I think. Last year I think I got it but I never went to the doctors because there was a stigma about getting it and everyone knew the doctors couldn't really do anything about it. Besides, that time I didn't cough or heat up or get anything worse than really bad muscle aches and headaches. In July this year, however, I got the new-and-improved Delta variant of COVID-19, which is something like two or three times more infectious than the regular old kind, and this variant is killing young and healthy people left and right ... but like I said, I survived with nothing worse than just bad flu-like symptoms and a regular cocktail of prescription antibiotics and vitamins.

It feels weird sharing these little details now, but I'm almost doing it in the hope that one day all of this "too common to mention" detail will all seem barely-remembered and strange. Can you remember the times the hospitals, even the private hospitals, were so full that you basically couldn't get into one unless you were dying, and even then it was a struggle (with news articles about people dying in ambulances outside of full hospitals - until the newspapers got tired of the same stories)?

Can you remember where we used to have our temperature measured religiously? All I know is my average temperature on the skin is 36.5. AND that when I got COVID-19, one of those scanners never even blinked a digital eye at me, so the whole saga is just ritual to help us feel that The Powers are doing something, when in fact we're all just helpless in the face of this virus. Mass vaccination and herd immunity should help ... in a few decades.

And I reckon that's enough about COVID-19, don't you? I pray for all of us, every single one, that we get through this, and find a way to adjust to life even under these conditions. We're getting there. By next year I think this will feel like plain old normal life, for real. And yes, that's sad. And no, I can't do anything about it.

In other news, this month marks the second year of my divorce. I'd like to say I got my life together, despite COVID-19, but I honestly don't. I've been working longer hours than ever this year, the girl I felt sure was the real love of my life broke my heart and my finger (THAT is a story I'll leave to my memory), and I'm moving into a new apartment next week. The most 'exciting' personal news I have is that I've completed my proficiency training for a pistol last month, and applied for my firearm competency through the police (a process that is expected to take months), and when THAT is done I get to buy a gun (not a cheap exercise) and submit a license application and then just maybe in a few more months I can eventually walk home with a gun concealed in my waistband.

That's not a decision I took lightly, or a decision I ever expected to take. But there were a few factors this year that made me realise I needed to be able to defend myself. And that I'm all I can rely on. And the bad guys have guns, and they're merciless. And all of that was BEFORE the riots and looting of a few days in July, triggered by former president Zuma going into jail.

So here I am. COVID-19 survivor. Alone. Tired. Over-indebted. Sad. Hopeful for a better future. And very much aware we all feel this way. We're in trench warfare together, against an enemy we can't see, with no way to fight it except to stay away from each other. 

That was my last year. This is my present. And how about my future? What will that hold? Honestly all I want is love. It's all I've ever wanted. COVID-19 hasn't taken that part of me away, nor will I let it. Tune in in 2022, I guess. I hope I've got something more positive to share then.