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Tomorrow will mark 6 months since I last posted on definitelymaybe. Like others, I have found the groundhog day experience of this pandemic somewhat distracting. Being “stuck” – in the proverbial and the literal sense – does often feel like you have to reinvent the way you not only go about your daily work/life routines, but also how you source and manage your energy flows.

For some people, I know this new norm hasn’t been as challenging as it has for others. During this last year, I think, whatever our persuasion, we’ve all had the chance to imagine new norms and new realities. Some days this newness has an appeal, and some days it provokes a more panicked sense about the future. The very visceral, physical dawning reality that many of your closest friends and family will remain available only via zoom calls, doesn’t sit well in the conscience or the stomach.

Until, perhaps, you place that reality into the mix of things more generally, more globally, and are reminded about the realities of others – those fleeing countries, or caught up in genocidal regimes, those trafficked for money, those unable to go to school. Etc.

Albeit a predictable way to find perspective in a muddled world, it always remains powerful to imagine your anxieties within a wider context. I understand why this can feel like an artificial exercise. It is also unrealistic to strut about pontificating evangelically about the plight of others, whilst simultaneously expecting to retain any friendly acquaintances who won’t, after a period of time, feel the compulsion to knock you over the head with a blunt instrument.

As vaccines roll out, and 2022 comes into a sharper focus with the passing of another day, and soon, the second month of another year, it is through the mediums of art, music, and sport, through the familiar past-times of newly curated interaction and camaraderie, that many of us, fortunate to be healthy and active and employed, seek refuge.

As I buy street-food here in Saigon, I wonder to what extent the foundations of day-to-day existence have really altered for the vendor who sells to me? In Vietnam, the virus has been kept out, and in such an effective way that it has had minimal impact on the local population. The government decisions on response, from the outset, were transformative in spite of appearing quite the opposite to any onlooker, including myself.

I hope attention to these efforts, to how a country such such as Vietnam has curated its own reinvention, doesn’t go unnoticed.