There are often some hundred times, a thousand times, before you can really see it for the first time.

Christian Morgenstern

What a year! I know quite well how 2020 started for me: New Year’s celebration at the Rhine’s promenade, a New Year’s brunch with old colleagues, an amazing skiing holiday, a new job and then probably the worst you could’ve imagined for a long time: The outbreak of a global pandemic… COVID19.

Each one of us had to face many challenges this special year, both privately and professionally. This new reality has demanded an extraordinary amount of flexibility and commitment from us.

Before the pandemic, I was grateful to be able to be in home office and work in a peaceful and quiet environment, without constant calls and incidents (sorry colleagues :P). But now, after spending what feels like the whole last year in home office, I yearn for a regular everyday of work-life again; the way to the office, the conversations in the coffee kitchen and the inside jokes of the team. Oh, how I miss to sit with friends in a restaurant on a Friday evening, let the week come to an end and nibble from a shared starter platter without knowing where the evening would lead.

Currently I’m so used to the video calls that I’ve nearly developed a fear of contact.

I miss being able to hug my friends tightly and to eat out of a crisps’ bag at movie night.

These are trivial things, but they make life richer and happier.

What are your trivialities?

Although the whole 2020 being the most exhausting, sad and challenging year in a long time, we can look back on the little things that we’ve always taken for granted and that we especially have missed this year. We should be thankful that we’ve been able to experience them at all and will certainly experience them again.

I wish you all a happy new year 2021, lots of strength and energy for the upcoming months as well as new enchanting trivialities.

Valentina