Everybody is reflecting on the last year. And thus I thought I could also. Why? Because it was definitely a memorable year. Our small son Robert was born. He brought light and meaning to all our days, he managed that when girls come home from school, their first reaction is very often smile instead of frowning. He made us to learn to share even more, created a schedule for days and nights, taught us how to be more effective when we are given any free time. It is impossible to be angry when seeing those happy eyes watching you, smiling to you with his four teeth. And on top, every day bringing some new features, some new skills, which provides you with the best theatre you can wish for. Right after when Robert was born (just in time that Jan could be by delivery before covid restrictions started), Jan's mum was coming for a week, which was a truly pleasant week full of trips, her help and nice talks.
Oh, yeah, there were things in this year. Masks, covid, closed schools, lockdown...but to be honest, I was not minding them much in the spring as they brought somehow more positive than negative things to my life :).
In the spring, I was so proud of my life, writing to my diary every day happy statements about how grateful I am for the situation. That I am happy I could try homeschooling, that it is now way easier to switch the kid as we are both on home office so we can just both nicely care for the little guy. Also taking part in meetings was now so easy as they started to happen mainly online. Well, also teaching was like that. Anyway, it would be all great, if it would not happen for a bad reason. I did not need to travel abroad with a newborn and I made myself so busy that I had no idea how people can think that their lifes are calm and do not know what to do. I was full time teacher, mother, partner, worker...days were really too short.
Then some rest was more than needed and we enjoyed some really nice time in the summer in Slovakia, Corsica and especially on the bikes going with all the kids to Berlin, which worked out way better than expected. But this is not, what I want to write about. I wanted to say why my autumn sadness came and how I would answer my friend question: "If you could give yourself an advice in the beginning of the year, what would it be?"
And there would be two advices for myself:
1. Buy house in Černošice with garden in May. It was a great offer and we would be living in there already in the autumn, which would be great and would help us to overcome the hard autumn months when lockdown came again and kids stayed again at home, showing how small is our place when we are all at home the whole day. Also it would give much more meaning to our days and more projects to work on outside with kids.
2.Do not take part in writing a proposal for EU project or cancel other projects. First half a year of Robert life was easy as I expected, with him sleeping a lot and giving me a lot of time to work - the best is working on the computer when having a kid in manduca - and there was so much energy in me, which I was investing in all those night shifts. I loved to work on the EU proposal, it gave me a lot of new skills and it was truly interesting experience although very time demanding. The thing is, that because I worked so hard (even when I truly enjoyed it), I made myself use all my energy and I had to postpone many other projects, which were impossible to fulfill later as Robert got bigger.
So why was autumn so much more difficult than spring?
I do not like late autumn and winter in Prague. I always (especially with small kids) wanted to be away, go to some sunny destination because I get depressed from lack of sun and also I cannot happily stay outside with them, reading my book as my fingers are freezing and small baby cannot stay outside in the cold weather too long. So you are a lot inside, on one pile, not able to work outside, not getting positive mood from sun and that brings way more tension between people and in your head.
Second, there was no rest as kids are the whole day at home. No time for being alone. I find this part really crucial. Being for a while alone.
Third, kids also got tired of this online homeschooling - it is not really homeschooling, it is more caring for kids at home providing them all the support, but having small impact on how they study as they are provided all the tasks from school. Not that much fun. Knowing the prospect how it will be, I might take them fully on homeschooling and cancel my projects and just enjoy the time with them, providing them real attention.
Fourth, fortunately we like walking and running and skating and cycling, but as it is cold and wet outside, you are left basically only with walking and even for me, it gets boring not to go anytime to any indoor activity (skating, sports, swimming pool, theatre,...). True, we would not do much of it anyway as we have a little baby, so I am not that hurt as others, but it still has an impact.
Fifth, unpredictability, inability to really plan. I love my plans. I like to plan some trip, give the whole night to planning and then enjoying the week somewhere or the next day outside. I do not like when I spend a day (or more) with planning, prepare my mind for a nice trip (as I did with vacations in Jizerky mountains for Christmas) and then all this is just cancelled and all the invested time is wasted. I cannot imagine how bad it has to be for those who plan sport events, festivals, run restaurants, etc.
Sixth, as I worked in the spring on EU proposal and other things, I postponed a lot of work, which I had to now still finish and it was not that enjoyable as I would wish.
Seventh, as days short and you have nowhere to hide in the cold (accommodation,restaurant,info centre,...), you are very restricted in where to travel with a baby. Traveling there and back every day for 2hours for 3hours trips is really annoying...
Eight and the most important, I could not stand anymore the stupidity of decisions. I accepted in the spring the decisions. Because we did not fully know what we are dealing with. So it was acceptable to be careful. I could not accept the same decisions in the autumn. I do not agree that we should restrict our lifes and especially future of our kids (including fully closed universities, no sports, etc.) so much for a virus which is not that dangerous. I think that every restriction is bringing more opportunity for searching for ways how to go around it. Which is stupid and brings us back to communism where everybody was stealing and lying behind backs. That is what I hate. That people started to search for the ways how to avoid the restrictions instead of removing the restrictions. The politics found the way how to restrict everybody by playing on the "safety" note. I think we should let elderly people decide if they are scared, enabling teachers to stay at home for full salary if they are worried and in the risk group, we should appeal on everybody to be responsible. But we cannot restrict outside sports (it will have terrible consequences), we cannot close apartments where people would be alone, not meeting anybody, spending whole time on a fresh air... What is the difference between the paid apartment and the own apartment in mountains? It makes me sad that there are only either people who are screaming that they are against any restrictions (including all those recommendations which make sense) or those, who are scared not to infect anybody. We should live, we should not be scared, we should let other people live. Life is too valuable to be spend in stress and fear.
There are many more points, autumn is really challenging. But I am really grateful, that all those restrictions actually have very low impact on how we are spending our time. Apart of the fact that we would go two or three times more to mountains, we basically lived our lives in 2020 as normally. Only Jan could not meet really his family as they are all abroad and it was so difficult to travel. But we still visited everybody in the beginning of the year 2020 on Jan's cousin wedding, then Jan's mother came for a week and we twice spend nice couple of days with Jan's sister. All of these restrictions also motivated us to for the first time spend Christmas with my parents, which was actually very nice experience.
There were apart of Robert coming to our lifes also other super great things - I started to listen to podcasts (particularly enjoying the one about Nonviolent communication and Making Sense from Sam Harris), wrote first articles for Medium, lead for the first time EU project proposal (sometimes sitting on the ground in front of the toilet as all the rooms were occupied by kids having online meetings), I learned how to build a straw bale houses and got really motivated to do so one day (when we find a good plot and have a bit less kids under 1 year old), we found finally a house in Radotin, and so on.
So it was actually a really nice year, full of babies smiles. I think we were more restricted by growing teeth, running nose and by the fact that Robert is still waking up so often during the night than by anything else.
Let's see what next year brings. I hope there will be a lot of sun, smiles and full nights of sleep. That would be really great!
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