There has been great loss these past twelve months both in terms of freedoms and our hopes for the year, as well as people we hold dear. As we look back on last year’s event with clearer eyes, let’s try to remember everything we’ve lost, loved and learned.
It has been hard to keep track of all the things that have – and haven’t – happened in 2020. It has been wild. We have certainly filled out more of our apocalypse bingo cards than we were expecting. Maybe, looking back, things will be a little clearer. If nothing else, hindsight is 20:20…
Video calls
If you saw the pandemic coming, then you might have imagined a world where Skype was the main way we could still see the faces of our friends, family and colleagues. But even though Skype comes pre-installed on every Windows device, Zoom doubled its share price in a year, and went from 57,000 downloads a day in January to 1.7 million a day in February.
Takeaways
If you’re anything like me, food has provided a lot of comfort this year, and there’s only one thing better than food, and it’s getting someone else to cook your food for you. With lots of places closed to the public, restaurants have really delivered this year – literally. Even some fine dining is delivered now; limitation is the mother of creativity after all.
Baking
Oddly enough, the only thing better than getting someone else to cook your food for you is baking food you’d typically buy somewhere else. Baking isn’t for everyone but there is a certain sense of satisfaction you get from making a loaf of bread with a broken set of scales and a wine bottle for a rolling pin.
Exercise
In our attempts to balance out our new eating habits, anyone who could was upping the exercise in their life. From jogging and walks to Wii Sports, sales of exercise equipment skyrocketed this year as people tried to counteract their new-found sedentary lifestyle.
I even bought myself a bike!
Sex Toys
Let’s not beat around the bush on this one, lockdown has led to some long and lonely nights for a lot of people. And, as you may have known, sex toy sales have seen an impressively large growth as a result. Alongside this impressive rise, content creators (arguably entrepreneurs themselves) on OnlyFans have nearly tripled in the last nine months. So far, the platform has paid its creators more than $2 Billion.
How to cut my own hair
There’s never been a better time to cut your own hair or try out that haircut you’ve been thinking about. After all, you can’t feel self-conscious if you can’t leave your place. Unsurprisingly, haircutting advice dominated the “How to” searches of many countries that experienced lockdown this year.
Gaming
Video gaming was already one of the fastest-growing industries before anyone on the news was talking about Coronavirus. And with lockdowns announced around the world, the number of gamers shot up almost overnight. Game sales increased dramatically, and gaming platforms saw record numbers of gamers online at once. At the moment, the amount of people playing video games is rapidly approaching three billion, almost 40% of the entire world.
Hindsight is 20:20
Looking back on the year things feel a little more in focus, but what use is hindsight if you don’t learn from it?
For millions of people, the idea of working from home is now a reality, which opens up multitudes of opportunities for those with disabilities. We finally recognise the value of people who work in supermarkets, deliver our food and care for us when we’re sick. We’ve learned that cutting our own hair with an elaborate series of mirrors is probably a mistake. The point is: there is always something to be learned.
