One of my main worries is that my generation has become the ‘worry’ generation. We’re all middle aged now so the lockdown has been the time we worried about. Our elderly relatives are not taking the Pandemic seriously enough and we worried about our grown-up kids taking to the streets and the beaches far too soon, and far too close to each other when they did. We are worrying about the underlying health issues that we have all developed now that we’re not as young as we used to be, or the effect the economic slowdown will have on our pensions, investments and businesses. Sometimes, if we (unusually) have nothing to worry about we start to worry that we must have forgotten something.
It’s a time for everyone to of course be concerned, but our generation seems to be taking it to another level. We will get through this…I just wish sometimes there were ways to give my contemporaries a collective, socially distanced, pat on the back. You are doing a great job.
The lockdown has been a mental strain on a lot of people (young and old) and many have complained about the too-similar daily routine causing real disorientation. I have found the restrictions hard to deal with, but I consider myself to be very lucky. My friends and family have stayed safe and my business has continued to thrive with all our staff working remotely.
We have had some challenges, but I think we have risen to them well. And with the ‘Return to Work’ toolkit I believe that our team has excelled. I do not miss the commuting and travelling, but I really miss collaborating with our staff and meeting clients and potential customers face to face.
Normally, people of my age express our dissatisfaction to the older and younger generations about them leaving us to run/pay for pretty much everything by:
- Being rubbish at dancing (especially at weddings)
- Believing that Doom was the best game ever
- Telling awful jokes and laughing loudly at them ourselves
- Shouting ‘bollocks’ at politicians on the TV
- Not letting anyone else near the thermostat
- Not trimming our nose and ear hairs
Unfortunately, a lot of these activities have had to be limited to our immediate households and Zoom has been no great help. I look forward to July when we can ‘bring it’ with our pent-up grumpiness and show the world what it has been missing. What’s that you say? Football is a pale shadow of what it used to be and all comedians under 30 are unfunny whiners? Let me buy you a pint my friend, we have much to discuss.