Letters to grandma - December 2020

As is often customary for this time of year, I thought it would cathartic to sit down and compose some of my thoughts and reflections upon the year that was 2020. The year, that many will wish to forget, but are likely to keep repeating for years to come. In many ways, I feel that 2020 will become the focal point of many, as yet unwritten, history books. The year that Mr. Johnson bungled the exit of the mighty British empire from the tyranny of the ill-defined continental boogeyman. The year that Mr. Trump said that 72 million voters couldn’t be wrong, whilst totally ignoring that the other guy got 7 million more. The year that ultimately showed that no matter how sophisticated our systems and cultural hierarchy have become, we are still at the mercy of the smallest things that nature can throw at us.

To summarize, in one word, I think 2020 could be described as “exhausting” at best, and decidedly “toxic” at worst.

If nothing else, I think 2020 has successfully highlighted to myself just how fortunate and privileged I truly am. Given everything that has happened my actually life has suffered little more than minor aggravations.

I recall in musings from around a decade ago just how hard I felt I was working, with little to show for the effort. Having spent nearly a third of my then lifespan in higher education, I felt that I really had little to show for it. I recall taking a photograph the night before I flew to Israel - leaving my life in the UK behind - that my whole life compressed down to a suitcase and a rucksack.

Of course, what I realize how is that the PhD gave me so much… just in completely intangible ways. Ways that I couldn’t have possibly recognized at the time.

Being slapped in the face, day-after-day with abject failure, only to be kicked on the floor felt like entirely masochist at the time. Now I realize that no matter how hard the situation, you dust yourself off, you keep your head down, and you keep working your tail off. After all, if hard work were easy, everybody would do it.

No one is coming to save you. There is no shallow end of the pool. There are no adults. There is only the work you put in to change the world around you.

All that ultimately matters are the connections you make along the way. Friends, lovers, brothers-in-arms.

It’s funny, in the last week I have chatted with 4 different friends across 3 continents from my academic career, and for the most part have picked up conversations as if I had only seen them yesterday. We may have a little less hair, with a few more miles on the tyres and perhaps have a few kids in tow - but fundamentally nothing has changed and they will be friends for life.

As I have too put a few more miles on the tyres, I find that my values are only solidifying. Honesty, integrity and a passion for something in life, are what I hold dear. I just do not have the patience to suffer those who dither and dally, those who cannot keep their word or even those that can see a problem and just walk on by.

I started the year, returning to Montreal - a new city, not knowing what was in store. The weather was everything one could expect from Canada - bitterly cold, frequent downpours of snow and isolating. Work at Boeing was difficult and frustrating, and was suffering all of the overwhelm associated with a new position.

Eventually an opportunity came across my path that was too good to ignore and I bid adieu to Boeing in March. I smiled a silly grin to myself when I handed my notice in on the Friday and then the share price tanked on the Monday morning at market open.

My first day with IVADO Labs was due to be March 16th. Interestingly, when I had interviewed with them I knew that they were moving to new offices - and my start date was to be one of the first weeks in the new location. However, March 16th happened to be the first day of the covid-19 lockdown here in Montreal - so I did not get to see the office. Instead, I started my new position from the spare bedroom come home office.

In the first week, there was an odd moment where I had to meet up with one of the business operations folks at a coffeeshop to pick up a laptop. However, due to the lockdown restrictions we could not actually go into the coffeeshop. So I had to lurk outside of a coffeeshop in the code, to meet a man I had only talked to over the phone, in the middle of a confusing time where nobody knew how dangerous the disease was. Which led to something resembling a dead-drop from a spy novel.

“Are you the man I’m looking for?”

“I could be…”

Both men open their respective bags to exchange “the goods”.

Both men hurriedly leave the area.

I’m now 9-months into my new workplace, finishing my second assignment with a client - having started as an engineer on the first and running the second as a team leader. And after all this time, I’ve still never spent a day in the office, and never met my team in person. The whole situation is rather bizarre. But the whole thing points to just how fortunate we really are. The company has not skipped a beat during the pandemic, if anything it has picked up the pace as several covid-related projects came in to assist key infrastructure across Quebec and Canada.

That isn’t to say that it has been all sunshine and roses. During early April, with the height of the lockdown and I found a new appreciation for childcare services. With the daycares and schools closed, we were forced into trying to keep a 3-year old entertained all day, whilst trying to maintain the work schedules of 2 workaholics and being unable to leave the house.

That isn’t to say that was not anything less than an amazing kid throughout the whole ordeal, but toddlers get bored quickly and there are only so many hours of daytime television one can watch a day.

From our window, we watched day turn into night. Night into day. Slowly the days ticked off the calendar, and still the snow lingered. I wasn’t prepared for how long the winter would feel in the interior. When we were getting to the end of April, 6-months since the first snow fell, and still no signs of spring were yet to emerge - the feeling that we had perhaps made a terrible mistake started to kick in.

Slowly, the snows melted and the covid restrictions started to ease a little. Enough for to return to daycare, and enough for us to walk a little around the parks of the city. However, everyone we had talked to had told us that the best part of Montreal is how alive the city becomes during the summer, with music festivals, pop-up markets, neighbourhood fares, outdoor theatre and the like. Sadly, 2020 was not the year that we were going to be able to explore the city. It would be July before we got outside and got to swim in a lake for the first time.

All my love, and best wishes for the new year Morgan