Hello everyone! It's been so bloody long since I actually sat down in front of this blog, almost 5 years to the day, actually, looking at a draft I started on the 16th of March 2016.
What has changed? Quite a lot. What has stayed the same? Me.
Let's start with the easy part: me.
After graduating in London I searched high and low for a job in my field of study. As it happens for most people my age, my search was completely fruitless. The inability of being able to afford internships and still live in London was a big setback, but it also meant I ended up doing something completely different with my life, something I hadn't expected at all when I stepped off my flight now almost eight years ago.
I ended up moving out of the city, to Hertfordshire, working in a visitor attraction first as front of house and now back of house. Yes, it isn't the job I wished I had when I was growing up and, yes, it's not where I see myself forever but it pays the bills and allows me to enjoy things outside of work.
I, myself, haven't changed much. 30 is just the number I use to reply to "how old are you?", but inside I am still the silly, joke-loving, bad-humoured person that moved here after finishing my Triennale at Roma3.
The most drastic change I have endured in the past few years (ignoring the worldwide change of the global pandemic) is the fact that I now live in Stevenage, in my own house (with a lot of help from family, because who the hell can afford property in this day and age?), I have a car, I have a cat, I have a Jack. I have completed my census with time to spare and I get excited at the ide of getting a new sofa. Basically, I am an old lady and I love it.
People have come and gone, my surroundings have changed and I have found myself in a more "British" way of life. I also gifted the government a good £1300 to get a citizenship (AH! You can't get rid of me even if you try) and have found myself having a lot more English friends than I ever imagined I would.
Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with British people, or at least most!, but when you're in London you tend to be surrounded by people from a heap of different cultures and rarely the locals.
I believe I have integrated quite well and I do love it here (not Stevenage in particular) . It's my home now and I think I wouldn't change much if I had the opportunity to go back in time. Sure, I don't feel as accomplished as I thought I would be by age 30, but I guess it's a feeling most people in my age bracket have.
Now, onto the matter at hand. What has really changed for everyone since 2020? The dreaded P-word.
I remember looking at what was happening in Italy in disbelief. This can't be real, I thought. It can't be that bad. I remember telling my mum I still planned on flying in April if I were allowed to.
In hindsight, I was being really naïve. I was believing that, maybe, we would be lucky. Yes, the situation was bad but it wouldn't take too long to get out of it.
Then March 2020 arrived. The visitor attraction I work at decided to close the doors early on, before the government had realised that the herd immunity wasn't going to work. Then my place of work closed. I remember thinking it won't be that long, we'll be out of this soon.
Then the furlough. If there's anything I can praise the UK government for is the JRS, or Job retention scheme, where the government decided to help companies in the UK to pay for staff who couldn't work from home.
During this period, Jack and I only left the house for shopping and for walks. The "novelty" of it rubbed off for me quite early on. It was nice to be able to say you were doing your part when you were spending most of your time at home watching Netflix, playing games or just sunbathing in the garden; but then the days became weeks, and the weeks months. There seemed to be no end in sight.
The wonders of technology, being able to talk to people far away through video calls and being able to still have your "social sessions" soon ran out too. I started to have enough and I was aching to get out of the house.
I only did so when I was called back to work and I kind of haven't stopped since. Working, I mean. Luckily we've survived a lot of ups and downs, with opening and closing, and opening and closing again. Today marks a year since I sat down on my sofa and thought "damn, no work tomorrow" and it seemed fitting for me to try and express what it felt like to live the pandemic, for anyone who wanted to listen.
Most people that know me know I am not a Tory by any extension of the meaning. I don't agree with their policies, I don't agree with the way they have handled the pandemic and I personally never liked Conservative parties. So, naturally, my impression of the way the Government reacted to the pandemic left me quite baffled.
I watched, confused, as Dominic Cummings made his public apology (if we can call it that!); I watched in horror as the poor NHS, one of the best British inventions, was overrun, underpaid and sent to fight a virus with insufficient and unsuitable PPE; I lived through the Brexit deal being still concluded even with slightly more important things going on in the world; I watched, confused, as the British public clapped for carers instead of doing something more meaningful, like donating money to the NHS, volunteering or simply just staying the fuck at home.
I wonder if anyone who has lived through major historic events has felt as powerless as all of us during this pandemic; I wonder how doctors, nurses and people who have lost loved ones feel during this year. I wish I could have done more, I wish I had done more.
In addition to the Pandemic, this year has been a year of unrest. And a year of discovery. With the BLM movement and, more recently, the women rights vigils happening in the country. If I can take anything positive from 2020 is that firstly, I am safe, my family are safe and my friends are safe; then I liked having the opportunity to reflect on my own actions and how they affect, directly or not, the wellbeing of others. It's been a great year for working on the way I use language, or the way I address people, or the way my innate prejudices affect my way of being.
All in all, 2020 has been horrible, in many ways, but I wish people actually started using it to take a good look at their lives and work on becoming their best selves.
This feels like a really long rant, so thanks if you've stuck up with it till the bitter end. It's good to be back.
PS. It's been a year, put your nose in that bloody mask.
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