Chapter 5 - Hair of the dog

It´s the beginning of November 2020 and we are heading back into lockdowns with some regional variation due to Coronavirus. It is irritating but not really at all surprising.

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Looking forward, we have the presidential elections in the USA bearing down on us on Tuesday (fingers crossed), some sort of Brexit due to happen on the 1st January 2021 (numbed but still furious) and communal/regional elections here in Hesse approaching in March 2021. The last point is exciting/intriguing for me because I managed to get on the candidate list for one of the major parties and could well end up getting involved! We shall see!

Looking back, it has been an interesting time since I started this blog. I have managed to change my work-life balance a lot and the family seems to have benefitted significantly. Work is heading towards more of a patchwork arrangement with three main foci. This is more difficult to organise but, to be honest, feels more satisfying. I can still be a medic, do some common-good-economics analysis and get into politics. This feels right at the moment and good.

So why a new chapter? Well, the Coronavirus pandemic is going to go on for quite a while longer and will certainly provide room for several chapters. The first chapter was to do with getting to know new realities and adapting to these. This next period November 2020 until March 2021 is going to be tough. I don´t think that we have a chance to really get out of restrictions until spring 2021, that is about 5 months. During this time I think that we will see various faltering areas of business stumble, schooling will move to and fro between in-school and home-school, many small businesses could suffer. I think it will be a time in which thoughts and ideas from the spring lockdown will come up again:

how can we restructure industry and business with a greater focus on resilience?
how can we maintain or improve equality despite the foreseeable restrictions in daily life?
what priority will we give to health and what are we willing to pay for it?
how can we restructure mobility with respect to climate change?
how much support does the culture sector need to survive the lockdowns to come?

The world will be a bit different in spring 2021 whether we like it or not and now seems to be a good time to start thinking about how it should be.