Girded loins

This time last year I wrote a blog post called “How would you rate 2019?” I was sooooo naive. But then, we all were.

I noted – as bushfires raged through NSW and a pall of smoke hung in the air – that I had lost my spirit during a challenging 12 months and was hoping to get it back in 2020.

I wrote: “2019 was not my favourite year. DD asked me to rate it out of 10 as we were toasting the New Year and I pegged it at a 6. It was arduous on many fronts, emotionally, health-wise and financially.

Upon reflection, 2019 was pretty peachy. I was invited to lots of fancy events through my job – from whisky tasting on the QE2 to private dinners at some of Sydney’s top restaurants; I took the kids on holidays to Lennox Head and we headed to Bluesfest to marvel at the joyous energy of Iggy Pop; I watched the youngest skip her way to being 13-year-old Australian Champion and the eldest win the People’s Choice Award at the local art competition; I had a fabulous few days in Perth with DD on a business trip, and a sensational week with him in New Zealand.

It seems a bit ungrateful in retrospect to have only given the year six out of 10.

I ended the post by saying “let’s see what 2020 throws at me … my loins are girded and I’m getting ready for the fray.”

I was definitely not ready for the fray.

I had absolutely no idea a pandemic would sweep the world back then. I’d just booked a trip to Canada for the World Skipping Championships, including an AirBnB apartment in Hawaii for a week-long stopover on the way back.

Instead, I spent most of the year at home in sports leggings due to various lockdowns and COVID restrictions, taught someone to do my job so I could finally have a quick holiday in Northern NSW in September, got “retrenched” two weeks afterwards, and gradually drained my bank account to zero during the final months of 2020. Then, just to top things off, COVID escaped from quarantine into my boyfriend’s neck of the woods and he got locked down for Christmas and New Year. Blah. Very, very blah.

I wasn’t the only one who read the tea leaves wrong. YouTube’s head of fashion & beauty, Derek Blasberg, reshared the Tweet above that he posted on January 1, 2020.

I don’t think any of us are brave enough to make predictions about 2021. And we definitely won’t be game to make travel plans, with trigger happy Premiers shutting their borders every five seconds.

I remain beyond stunned that innocent Victorians have been denied entry to their own state and can’t even get through to a helpline for advice on what to do. Many have legitimate reasons why they couldn’t get home on such short notice. It’s a shocker. I feel so sorry for them and even sorrier for the Australian tourism industry.