The good:

• Baby-F started learning the violin, and seems to have taken well to it, despite all his griping before the fact. In fact, he is surprisingly keen and diligent. Even though he’s always cheeky and tries to avoid practicing, once he starts a practice session, he’s willing to go through all the steps because at 4 years old, he’s still very process oriented.
• Baby-O (really should be Big-Boy-O, since he is 7!!) is another year older, and things are going mostly swimmingly well with him: he continues to progress in violin, continues with his Chinese learning, aces all his academic work at school – although we do get the occasional calls / emails / meetings from teacher and principal for his cheeky behaviour at school (and let’s just face it, any call / email / meeting is never good). He’s at the school’s lower primary chess club (I think for 6-8 year olds) and apparently beats all the kids, so no one wants to play with him, and he has also started playing Chinese chess (象棋) a little bit with his nanny and myself. Generally he’s quite precocious, picks things up quickly and gets skilled / ‘advanced’ quite quickly in most activities he picks up (and this is recognised by all his various teachers / adults)… the main issue is that he’s definitely cheeky and often pushes boundaries (I’m quite a relaxed mum and quite tolerant of some level of cheekiness, but even I have limits… and he often doesn’t ‘read’ the limits. And the Boy is even stricter / has a shorter fuse than I do. And sometimes he oversteps boundaries at school with friends and teachers, which is when we get all the calls / emails / requests for meetings), and I also sometimes him quite show-offy (at least he is with me, e.g. when we play chess together, even though he still loses despite his semi trash-talking). Having said that, he’s fundamentally a kind and good kid, and very sensitive (poor boy, he gets that from me…), and can have moments of real maturity and compassion (e.g. when I’m struggling to memorise a Suzuki violin piece, and I tell him he’s so much better than me, and ask for his advice on how he does it so well, and wonder why I do so poorly… he first shares his memorisation tips, and then says: “You can’t remember the song so well because you are very busy with other things and are very stressed at work”, bless!!)
• Given lockdown and general travel restrictions, we spent a lot of this year walking to and visiting lots of new parts of London that we’ve never visited before. It was a golden opportunity to discover and engage more intimately with our town. This included visiting:
  i) a number of cemeteries (I love visiting cemeteries): Willesden New Cemetery, Paddington Old Cemetery, Highgate Cemetery, Abney Park, Nunhead Cemetery, Manor Park Cemetery, St John’s Wood Church Gardens Local Cemetery…
  ii) a number of new parks: Gladstone Park, Roundwood Park, Golders Hill Park, Brockwell Park, Horsenden Hill, Highgate Wood, Queen’s Park, Little Wormwood Scrubs, Gunnersbury Park, Fryent Country Park, Perivale Park, Brent Valley Park, Queen’s Wood, Finsbury Park, Clissold Park, Hackney Downs Park, London Fields, Haggerston Park, Wanstead Flats and Heath, Leyton Flats, Highams Park, Epping Forest, Burgess Park, Southwark Park, Brockwell Park, Sydenham Hill Wood, Dulwich Wood, Horniman Gardens, Stanmore Country Park
  iii) a number of new areas in Greater London: Harrow, Dulwich, Hackney, Perivale…
• Despite travel restriction, we still managed to get a little bit of travelling done:
  i) Visited France 3x… last Christmas (early Jan), this Christmas (late Dec), Toulouse (summer)
  ii) Visited Madeira… technically part of Portugal, so we don’t add a country, but it still felt somewhat exotic, the weather was balmy… and it was a much, MUCH needed and welcome break from cabin fever in London
• We did manage to eat out a little bit:
  i) Le Puits Saint Jacques (**) during our Toulouse trip in July, which which a roll-up of our birthdays (the Boy’s and mine) and our anniversary
  ii) The Clove Club (*), a return visit
  iii) Pidgin (*) in Hackney, with the kids!
• The Boy found a new job, which is an upgrade and in line with his original intentions / ambitions, and it was a real stroke of luck that he managed to find this new role in the midst of COVID!
• Overall, despite my bitching and moaning, there were bright spots in my work too:
  i) delivering a high profile project in a specialised area, sharing my recommendations to the division CEO, who then called out the initiative as one of the fastest moving, if not the fastest moving initiative in that space in a Top 100 leadership forum (h00t!) – it was especially meaningful because I had ‘opened’ up the area, and our team and myself lacked credibility initially, both because the division is a bit specialised, and the specific project topic was also a bit specialised, with a local stakeholder who was initially slightly hostile. It being the first project in the space, it was important to start with a bang to establish credibility. And we managed to do that, while working mostly decent hours – the local stakeholder, group stakeholder and CEO went from ‘detractors’ / ‘neutrals’ into the ‘promoter’ camp (and got great feedback from team too… double win)
  ii) also did good work in a different – generally painful – area, with a stakeholder who is famously known for being tricky, but ‘loves’ me
  iii) had fun doing side of desk work with ‘JB’, who we were hoping to get a big role in an area we wanted to go into. Despite a very short / limited interaction and work, I also got positive unprompted feedback from him
  iv) I did get a raise
• I started exercising, and lost ~6kg, and am almost back to my 18 year old weight. 1 kg to go!!
• Spending time with kids and helping out with elements of homeschooling (mostly Baby-F’s art work), can be considered a blessing, to have had this unusual and unexpected opportunity, I suppose… even though I don’t think I appreciated it as much as I could have
• Other minors benefits from home working include:
  i) Reduced commuting time (reinvested into exercising)
  ii) Healthier eating, generally (mostly Nutribullet juices for lunch, albeit with generous helpings of chorizo or frankfurters / bratwurst whenever I feel hungry, lol)
  iii) Playing at being a domestic goddess, which was mildly enjoyable for a very brief period, before I was over it (when the kids were homeschooled, I had to cook 3 meals a day…)

The bad, and the ugly:

• The Boy was unemployed for ~6 months this year, which was a psychologically uncomfortable position to be in, especially given COVID, even though: i) we were not at serious financial risk, ii) he felt confident he would find something and told me not to worry, and iii) him not working during the kids’ homeschooling period was a real life-saver – I don’t know how we would have managed otherwise if both of us had been working full-time. For context, he had been given notice in December 2019, pre-COVID, as part of a restructuring at his firm. And then COVID struck, and the general economic uncertainty, Brexit turmoil etc. is really an unhelpful environment for jobs. He eventually found a job and started informally in May, but he didn’t get any paperwork or any payment until July, when he got paid for 2 months with a random invoice. And he eventually only received a formal contract in September. So there was a long period of uncertainty, which is just not psychologically comfortable place to be in, with 2 kids in private school with school fees & expenses. It felt even worse that we were paying full school fees (net of bursary) when we were homeschooling and on a single income!
• I was really really unhappy about work for several reasons:
  i) I didn’t get promoted at the end of 2019 and then in 2020, despite ex-ante expressions of confidence (pre-hire) by my boss, and him pulling every lever available to him (there was a general promotion freeze across the COO org)
  ii) I was ‘valued’ the same as a couple of my peers, an unfairness that I felt very very keenly, because in some cases, we should not even be in the same league, given prior work experience, performance, attitude, sense of responsibility, judgement, leadership attributes. And therefore I particularly regret my prior career decisions / moves, and have been particularly angry at my boss / his boss / the firm… although I can maybe understand / justify how and why their hands may have been tied by bureaucracy. But all that doesn’t matter because a number is a number is a number. And from an external, bargaining perspective, in comparison to some peers, my number effectively says I am the same as them, even though they have less work experience, in less demanding contexts, and should not be in the same league at all (!!)
  iii) Additionally, I also felt very keenly the comp unfairness within our team, e.g. large discrepancies in comp out of proportion to relevant experience and skill – a guy with not many years experience and very average attitude was being paid heaps for his level of experience and skill, the fact that a contractor was being paid way more than I was, and had been receiving this disproportionate pay for many years. Technically, the higher comp is meant to reflect the relative precariousness of position (not permanent member of staff) and would theoretically be the first to be jettisoned in a downturn like our current situation, but in fact, because of the firm’s (or maybe individuals’) rather irrational niceness, long term contractors are often treated as quasi-perms, and get converted to perm at the first opportunity, which means they get heaps of money in the good times, and get protected by quasi-perm status in bad times anyway.
  iv) The above-mentioned peer of mine (referred to in (ii)), kept bitching and moaning to me about the unfairness of life and his comp, and progression etc, in relation to others in the team and the firm, given his relative contribution vs. their relative contribution. While I may sympathise with his views in some instances… it was all a lot worse for me. Because everything that he felt, I felt doubly, given my age / experience etc. And while he viewed everything through the lens of racism, I have a double whammy… I have the race card and the gender card. And, even though I 100% don’t think strict quotas are the right thing to do, or that we should promote based on race or gender. I do think it is harder for minorities, and that so if he’s complaining that his weaker position is because he’s an ethnic minority, then my rejoinder would be: “You and I are paid the same, and I’m 7 years older than you, worked way more hours in much more demanding industries for more years than you. And I’m both an ethnic minority and a woman, so just fucking shut the fuck up already. I am the wrong person for you to be crying to. Because if you think life is unfair for you. Think about me! How entitled can you be??” And him crying to me, when we were on a single income most of the year, and seriously have bigger problems to worry about, is really not helpful either)
  iv) Dealing with and leading entitled juniors / team. The level of entitlement differs. But there’s a bunch of over-entitled people in there, who are angling for promotions, leadership opportunities, etc. (I am self-aware enough to realise that my boss probably thinks the same of me from time to time) and sometimes doing all sorts of politics, which is not focussed on the ‘client’ work, when in a down market, internal ‘client’ demand is what saves our jobs. And what especially frustrates me is when their politics impact me negatively. If you are not going help me, in what I am meant to do as a leader (i.e. help save the broader team’s jobs, even though I don’t believe in it… because I think there is a lot of dead wood in the broader team. But that is what I have been tasked with, as part of my leadership role), then at least, stay out of my way! Arggghhh!!
  v) Finally, while part of me is upset at the context, the people etc, I also assign the blame to myself. I’m often angry at myself for making perhaps the “wrong” career choice(s) in the past, e.g. in leaving M&A (timing and next steps), making the wrong choice between M&A and Consulting, not leaving Consulting early enough, etc. But at the end of the day…. the alternative is unknowable, I don’t know if I would have been a happier in an alternative scenario / job. And as the Boy says, I seem to be unhappy and cry in every job anyway. And this is the best job I’ve had so far (although I’ve also been very depressed this year), and corporates are just a different beast from professional services.
• Cabin fever…. 10 months of lockdown and not seeing people is way too much for me. While I’m introverted and not very outgoing… one person has said I come across as “transactional”… I still miss human interaction. Maybe it’s precisely because I am so introverted and don’t make the extra effort to speak to people over Zoom without a very clear reason to (e.g. project-related), that I particularly suffer without the serendipitous water cooler chats, and without the ambient buzz and exposure to humanity in an office environment.
• We haven’t been to the movies (IRL) even once this year! I know it’s a really minor point in the grand scheme of things… but I went from weekly movie nights pre-kids, to rare movie occasions… to zero in 2020…!
• My personal fog and confusion, in part caused by my angst at work (perhaps in large part… but I’m struggling to attribute a % contribution), likely exacerbated by cabin fever.

Overall, 2020 has been an exceptional, unprecedented year for most (at least for me, it has been one of the most unexpected years in my life)… some liken it to war-time (and I rather agree, even though I supposed for many others who have enjoyed paid time off with furlough, it might have felt quite fun)… and for me, it has been a more difficult and angst-ridden year than I’ve had in a very very long time.

More on some of the above elements in due course.

In the meanwhile, here’s to hoping for a better 2021.