Its getting personal …

Last year was a difficult by any standards as I have previously recounted.  I entered 2020 on a pathway to recovery from various physical and mental assaults but with the frustration of waiting to be allowed to drive again.  Friends ensured I got some walking in but I had the added tension of the lease on my old car expiring and a new car ordered.  Finally in early March I was released and I booked a cottage for a week in Snowdonia from the 14th of March as all hell was breaking loose around me.   I got to the cottage early as the Wales v Scotland match was canceled at the last moment and then, after a wonderful week of getting back into the hills, my final night in a pub near Cadair Idris was disrupted by the UK Government close down for CORVID-19 and I had to live with room service and one final day on the hills before returning home to settle in for the duration.

I’ve had plenty of time since for reflection and despite prostate cancer scares, torn calf muscles and trepanning the biggest regret I will have is the betrayal by two people I counted as close friends and consequent wasted time and money on legal action.  I still hope that both individuals will return and while I don’t think I could bring myself to kill a fatted calf I think I might manage a chicken or two if they did.  A real crisis makes you realise just how much loyalty and friendship count.  I suspect they are in their own legal traps over their actions but …

Since COVID-19 hit I’ve been working 18 hour days to create a range of offerings around learning and innovation during a crisis.  This is something that I will blog about tomorrow with links.  I’ve stayed sane by taking the bike our for 50 km most days followed by a hot bath reading a novel.   If you get up at 0500 most days and start cooking a meal at 2030 (today’s pattern) you need a break.   The initiative for this post was today’s 55 km ride where I was thinking about resource management for a range of emerging projects and realised that I couldn’t call on those two former friends.  if there was ever a time to work together this is it.

I’ve never been so busy on so many important projects.  But at the same time, I’m dealing with managing the home during isolation.  My wife got the letter from the Government confining her to home for twelve weeks (she has a compromised immune system) so we are facing a very real threat.  At the same time, I am working on a set of Health-related projects which include the phrase “home to palliate” which translated means we won’t treat you we will send you home to die.  After I finish writing this post and get some food into me I have to look at a set of requests on the deployment of SenseMaker® to understand the irreconcilable conflicts of medical decisions in the context of a crisis.  There are many things that I know rationally and objectively that I do now want to know in a personal context.   The Gaping Void cartoon well summarises it – there is a lot to do but I am so tired I am trying to find ways to wake up.

But overall all I have hope, this crisis is a chance to rethink our society and the nature of our interactions.  Simply rehashing the management platitudes of the last three decades is no longer enough.  We need to think about gifting not money, about shared purpose not selfish desire, about our responsibility to the planet not just to the short term needs of the elite of a selfish species.

To all those working to make life better post the pandemic I salute you, to all those putting economics over people or personal exploitative value over the needs of the community; there isn’t a place in Hell I wouldn’t happily condemn you.   We are in purgatory with a hope of salvation and we need to seize the day.  We cannot go on as we did before.

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