Resume

One of my New Years resolutions was to write 366 stories.  The plan was to write one story every day and compile an annual mosaic of my thoughts.  I started well, started and kept writing every day, for the first few weeks, and then I became complacent and stopped.  It was the everyday routine, tiredness, and little bit of laziness that made me skip a day and then another and then another, and now it is past mid-August and I have very little to show for.  

The funniest part is that this year was the one that everyone wants to remember that they wanted to forget, and the events of this year are worth remembering.

For me and my family, this has been a year of years.  How I wish I had kept a diary of all the events that took place.   Not just because there are memorable family events, but also because the world went mad and I need to remember how I survived it.  

The year started with the inheritance of a sick mother-in-law that kept experiencing her body deteriorating and failing her.  She was being cared for by her husband, an also not-fully-capable retired man that found too difficult to face his own problems.  Even more now, it has become impossible to comprehend that he would need to care for someone else.

My cousin Akis lost the battle with cancer and passed away at the age of 53, and left his very ill mother in tears and in emotional pain far beyond understanding.  The family suffered another blow, following my uncles death, my aunt’s illness, my cousin’s illness, my cousin’s husband back injury and the long years of suppression and difficult lives.  The twins are heading for sainthood, at least in my book, since they developed their spirituality and Christian faith at a level where they can endure their pain and become inspirational to their peers.

The new viral threat reaches our lives by introducing panic, fear, lack of reasoning, and social isolation.  Schools and businesses close and everyone that can work from home Is instructed to do so.  We stopped going to the office and we spend our days at home in virtual meetings, we started home-schooling and we started enjoying the peace and quiet by running in the golf club and taking long walks in the nature.  We stopped seeing people, we stopped using our cars and we started queuing by distancing ourselves from other people.  Meanwhile, the media are offering the grim death toll globally and locally, and countries started comparing themselves in order to compete and justify any political decisions that have been taken.  As time passes on, people are growing weary and start to seek the social co panic ship that separates them from some animals.  The news are always disheartening and fear becomes part of us at least until someone saves us!

My job is going from bad to worst and it has been becoming obvious that the end of my employment at Microsoft is approaching.  No matter how much I try it seems impossible to make changes significantly positive to change the way I am being viewed in the team.  The role has changed, the manager has changed and the team is quite new, which means that last year’s support has been lost.  My new manager is not going to help me in my role and I  have been expecting the worst, that surely arrived a bit later.  I had to resign before I got fired and started preparing my next step, in a COVID-19 post-Brexit economy.

Meanwhile somewhere in Somerset, our landlord was planning an economic gain by selling our house.  Following the panic that these news caused, we tried to explore our buying strengths and options, which were close to zero.  Taking our loses, we started accepting the fact that we would eventually need to move to anew house, and although I tried to simplify or complicate things by looking for work in different countries, the house-hunting process was quite slow.

While we were considering how feasible and wise it would be to go to Greece for a few weeks, my mother in law died.  Suddenly, one day, she was gone.  That forced our hand and we needed to urgently travel to Greece and attend the funeral and other ceremonies.  Being jobless helped since we had almost no constraints about how long we would stay.  I was interviewing remotely and Yiota was working remotely.  So we booked tickets and flew to Greece via Larnaca, and reached Greece just as planned and in time for the funeral.  We attended the funeral, the 9-day service, and the 40-day service.   We spent time at the beach, socialised with very few selected relatives and friends and we tried to heal the wounds. 

The news of our house being sold came a bit later, and they were followed by a mid-November deadline to leave the house.  At this point, we were quite casual about it.  No drama, no anger. Just acceptance and the realisation that we need to move forward in order to heal.  And we will.

The job hunting process is still going on without conclusions,  but with options both in the UK and Switzerland.  The conclusion of this part will guide our next steps around the house.  One day at a time.

This passage is my attempt to resume my 366 stories.  Maybe in a more condensed form, or a version with a lot of gaps.  The truth is that I need to write and the small bites of a daily commitment looks ideal.  So I will hit the Record button and will resume moving my train of thoughts forward.  The events that I mentioned above can provide enough material for a lot more stories than just 366.  They  are the beginning of of the rest of our lives.