2020 – the year that lasted forever

The last weeks of the year are here and, as always, I try to put together a reflection. But this time I don't really know what's spinning in my head or what to start jotting down. First of all; my God! What a hell of a year! Can't we just cross a line over this? Fast forward? Or skip it completely? Well...

What actually happens to us as human beings when our everyday lives change so drastically in an instant? When we stroke along the shelves at the grocery store to avoid getting too close to the others in the aisle? When our social relations are minimized and once we have defied the raw winter slightly too many times to get to hang out with others and freeze at an outdoor barbecue somewhere in the forest? I am honestly somewhat sad about the lack of human interactions and my patience has run out by now. At the beginning of the pandemic, I thought it was horrible, then for a short while, a little pleased to be at home, to have a smoother life with the children and the family, to now at the end feel that the walls are closing in on me at my own house. I miss other people so much that it aches in my entire body. Pandemics are not meant for us extroverts! When I thought it couldn't get any worse, the restrictions tightened up even a little bit more. And the walls immediately closed in on me by another meter. I have had to re-prioritize and re-evaluate a lot in myself during the year and as we at work have gone through the biggest crisis we will hopefully experience, many of my own values and thoughts have found new paths. In retrospect, it has been very useful and a year of personal growth. In the middle of the storm, I simply just wanted to escape. Fast as hell.

In April, I experienced that famous CEO anxiety for the first time. I had heard of it and waited for it to appear at some point. After all, what I thought we were going to implement this year quickly had to be thrown aside to find new ways and methods. And when the children were sick in batches and we had to make two visits to the hospital in a week which then followed by the youngest son cracking his chin and we had to go back to the emergency room to patch him up, I always had my thoughts on the next step and on how we're going to cope with the situation to continue to be relevant on the market we operate at. I was equal parts mom and CEO with half my body in every role. When I sat and sketched on a new organizational structure at 2 am, creativity had lost its grip on circadian rhythms and my physical creation went on gasoline steams. At the same time, I paralleled this with liquidating up kids and giving antipyretics in batches. But you can do anything if you really have to! The primordial power of man really has no limit when we have to bite the bullet, get our act together, and focus. Despite the fact that everything around us is total chaos, we still manage to be the ones who lead the way if we just have to.

The great win of this crisis is the solidarity and the community we have suddenly shown with all of humanity. It doesn't matter what country, culture, life, or everyday life we have, we are all in the same situation. And here in Sweden, we have had a little better situation. As most of the time. Frankly, our everyday life is pretty damned good even during a pandemic. My kids have been to school all the time and their life has not changed at all. My foreign contacts, however, balanced jobs, lockdown, and shopping one hour a week according to schedule with homeschooling of multiple children and no opportunities to go outdoors. For us, everyday life has still been manageable. Kind of. And the understanding of each other's chaos and the situation has never been greater than this year. I have had meetings on all sorts of digital platforms with contact’s children, cats, and even spouses present. Why not? Nothing is business as usual anymore. We have become so comfortable with working from our living rooms that one contact even went to the toilet during the meeting. With the door open. And the mic on.

And all these video calls. And the digital after works. To toast with the team, friends, with the family, the book circle. That grandma learned to use video calls and the kids wanting to video talk to everyone instead of old fashioned phone calling. My neighbors got creative and played hide and seek via the iPad with their grandchildren in Germany. We are damn innovative! And we seek solutions to our situations no matter what they look like.

Yet life has seemed to continue on as usual. I was able to take a course last spring and became a certified gym instructor – all at Zoom. I have celebrated my sister-in-law's 50th birthday outdoors in the darkest October evening in thermal clothes and with heaters in the back. I have also felt like a criminal when seeing friends, even if it has been outdoors. And we have been able to work pretty much as usual, with a little modification. I have also realized that friends with antibodies have a pretty high value for me right now and when my mother-in-law came here after recovering from Corona and I got a hug, I never wanted to let go.

My greatest insight is the importance of people to me and most of all those closest to my heart. I have also seen mental illness up close when one of my friends living alone suddenly stood without any social interaction at all when he was forced to sit at home and quickly became so cut off from the outside world that his journey back to some kind of normality took almost four months. Even couples who go their separate ways after spending too many hours together at home and couples finding new paths to each other when time instead meant the opposite. We are so interdependent in different ways and in times of crisis we are given space to value things in new ways.

Back to the CEO anxiety. I would never have made it through this year if my team hadn't been as much a team as they've been. At its worst, everyone re-invented themselves and their work came together as a team and instead of being met with negative energy, the air was uploaded with fighting fervor and their horns grew out.

As my leadership faltered in favor of focusing on emergency actions, the team's sense of responsibility and solution focus grew. We have never been hierarchical, but after this year we are more equal than ever before. I have never been so proud to represent any work or colleagues that I am of the people I work with today. Damn, they rock! My whole world sometimes!

In the end... Are we going to cross a line over this year? I don't think we should. There are many lessons learned from what has been and although the world may be completely upside down and we have no idea what happens next, we have overcome something that rearranged the map for all of us. I can only hope that we stick to our new lessons and insights and that we do not fall too quickly into old footsteps. That we appreciate the solidarity and hug each other a lot to never let go as the possibility to predict what's next to come has proven to be beyond impossible. And that we avoid patting pangolins.