A good COVID-19 moment and reflection on change for the better!

I was thinking this morning over breakfast what I was doing this time last year and I recalled not too surprisingly that I was travelling. I had a personal “good COVID-19 moment and reflection” I will share. The memory search reminded me of those strange misguided behaviours I had fallen into in recent years because of the supposed importance of maintaining some kind of frequent flyer status with your preferred airline and club. For me it was Senator status with Swiss and Star Alliance Partners. Somehow despite all my air travel I would struggle to make the 100,000 miles needed by 31 December to obtain that important status renewal. And you would read some kind of message in October that you still had 32,000 miles to go.

This club system would encourage longer journeys and journeys with more legs to include club partner flights and miles. And it even started encouraging designing journeys to increase those miles sufficiently to reach the important miles goal to maintain the status. So a year ago I might have been in some airport hotel on a longer journey than needed just to keep that status flying a business class fare we could afford the next morning. More travel time to tire me out. And I was damaging the planet even more with more travel! In the end all that status got was the privilege to sit on some couch in a crowded lounge eating those little ageing savoury snacks while working on my laptop before boarding a plane to do the same. I could have just been sitting in my own garden, a much nicer place to be.

That October flying memory seems like history to me now of a previous life with such craziness I have left behind. “Flying life” has now changed, as it has for many of you, and now we have more “Life at home”. I am not wasting any of my time this year doing the above! And who really cares about a frequent flyer card for next year :)!? But it is more transformative that I will just never think in that way again. I will work more effectively from home and local office with infrequent travel when needed. And I will compensate for my contribution to global warming and make amends with new actions.

So, thank you SARS-COV-2 virus, for bringing a significant improvement into my life! 

And for your help with some inputs and inspirations on the challenge and fight we take on in tackling global warming issues!