Q2 2020 Review
Welcome to this review of Q2, or as it will henceforth doubtless be known: the lockdown quarter. It has been three months where life and society have turned on their heads, and, as if to illustrate this perfectly, I write this on a storm-ravaged July day as I recall an April heatwave. In the last three months, the ground has shifted, forever, beneath our feet. We are here at the beginning of the most significant civil rights movement in history; we see the wilful negligence of governments to protect their people. We understand, more than we did at the end of Q1, that there is no normal to get back to.
When I set the intention to write these reviews at the beginning of the year, I didn’t think the opening paragraphs would scan like the synopsis of a disaster movie. It feels trite to write about what happened in my business this quarter, although that is a slippery slope that leads to saying nothing about anything because it’s all so futile. The rhythm of marking time has been one thing that holds everything together in these endless days and weeks, where March feels both days and years ago. The noticing and marking of new weeks, months, quarters have become like a net, bulging with all the pieces of life, keeping everything somewhat together. And so, here I am, still writing this review.
April was, actually, a reasonably happy month here. The furloughs and bailouts confirmed by the government, we settled into the novelty of isolation. It didn’t rain for five weeks, the kind of weather that makes you feel like there’s no way there could ever be anything but sun again, where you delete your weather app because it’s just sunny forever. I’d put the podcast on hiatus, my coaching clients took a break to wait for more certainty, and I found myself, well, free. I dragged an old wicker sofa onto the lawn and settled myself there for a month, with books I’d meant to read and with my laptop to write.
April had those markers of time that provided a sort of structure. It was Easter, then my birthday, and at the end of the month, I was gifted a free place on a Do Lectures course by Jane. The course provided a daily structure, a place to be every day for two weeks, and some outside connection and food for thought. I’d written about how lowering my expectations of the business and myself had freed me up to understand what I want. The course provided prompts to take this reflection and apply it in practical ways – i.e., to work out how my business was going to facilitate the changes.
From May, things get a little bit more blurry. Structure dissolved with the novelty of lockdown; I began to habitually sleep in, even later than usual, because there was nothing especially to wake up for. I was working on The Trail behind the scenes, which I’ve already written about at length (here, here, here and here) so I don’t want rehash old ground, but May was an introspective month in which I quietly chipped away at new ideas and felt the sliding of life’s reins through my fingers.
Then, another marker in time, one which our grandchildren will ask us about when they study its effect on the course of history: the murder of George Floyd. The white world roused from our 400-year slumber of ignorance, for many reasons but not least, in my opinion, because of the pause and slowing down of life that acted as convenient distraction and misdirection. We watched, we listened, we diversified feeds, we read, we talked, we thought. I wanted to make sure my own house was in order; I realised that I had left it up to Black people and people of colour to assume that this was a safe space for them, an assumption that could be dangerous for them. I wanted to make sure that everyone knew they were safe here. I published the first draft of my Diversity & Inclusion Policy – a way of holding myself and others I work with accountable to racial justice and how marginalised communities could see that they were explicitly welcome. I say the first draft because I am welcoming to correction on this policy’s contents and expect it to evolve as I continue to learn and unlearn.
Whether it was the change in energy online or a personal line in the sand, I began to try to claw back some structure. The Ordnance Survey map that had so far only been used as a photo prop was dusted off and studied – I identified the bridleways that crisscrossed the hills above my house and began walking them a few times a week. After two months shuttling between the house and Tesco, the tiny discoveries of decrepit barns, dusty sheep tracks, and wide views was exhilarating. I was cracking through my reading list, too, finding that daily page targets was motivating enough to plough through the non-fiction that had lingered unread for years. I was writing and publishing blog posts that I was proud of, that felt aligned and freeing in their truthfulness. All this reading and writing also got me picking up my book proposal again, starting anew, and taking it seriously.
Q2 was both no time at all, and endlessly long; both depressingly samey and cataclysmically eventful. When we look back on the last three months, whether at the end of this year or in decades to come, we will doubtless remember them as a period in which our tiny lives were whipped up in the tornado of social change. We will remember who showed themselves to be on the wrong side of history; we will remember platitudes from governments but extraordinary triumphs by individuals. We will remember that tens of millions signed petitions that bent organisations to their will; we will remember that at the beginning of July, they still have not arrested the cops that killed Breonna Taylor [link to official petition].
I do not know what my introduction will synopsise in three months’ time, none of us are taking bets anymore. There is a feeling of helplessness, of being out of control – yet we have more agency than we give ourselves credit. If we all keep signing the petitions, using our voices, making reparations, writing the letters, following Black leadership, the chances are that we will get to see the beginnings of genuine, systematic change. For all of us, as business owners and as humans, that is the legacy to aim for.
