Do we really want to read a year in review about 2021? For almost everyone on the planet, it probably wasn’t their most exciting and positive year! For us, it was plainly depressing, with a lot of doom and gloom, but yet with some surprising silver linings. Do you want to know why? Then read on!
In a nutshell:
January 2021: Neither the Dutch nor the South African government gave any financial support this year 2021. Not for us as a family, and also not for any of our businesses. And that while all our financial reserves had been used up already in 2020 😬! Now at the beginning of 2021, our family was relying for 100% on donations, which we luckily got regularly. And not only from family and direct friends! Admittedly, it was kinda weird and embarrassing to receive monetary gifts from ex-interns, classmates from primary school, some clients that had been on a safari with us a decade ago, etc. All people we lost touch with many years ago already, but that now somehoe learned about our situation and came to help. And admittedly, their donations were a total financial lifesaver! So, I am not complaining, just very grateful! But yeah, let’s say that the feeling of severe financial stress was quite dominating and permanent this year…
February 2021: The only company still generating some money sometimes was our horse safaris, as some months of the year South African tourists at least pulled in and made bookings. But because it was also the company with the highest running costs, by February 2021 we had to sell our family car to pay for the salaries of the remaining staff. As the owners, we had to do what we had to do right? Only to find out that two of the most trusted staff at the horses had been scheming together for 6 months already! They had been stealing very large amounts of money by funneling cash bookings and commission into their own pockets and then changing the books. It was clearly not enough that they were amongst the only ones in St. Lucia that had retained their job during the pandemic and were still receiving their already generous salaries… Greed shows no limits apparently, so even though we were giving up our family car to pay them, they decided to betray us. Did Dante’s Inferno not read: “The 9th, most horrible layer of Hell, is reserved for traitors.” Well, Dante got that spot on, as Freya and I were emotionally gutted and kinda lost faith in the entirety of humankind, or at least in our ability to read and trust people…
April 2021: My physical health started to take a knock, as I started having back and shoulder problems. Maybe it was an injury, maybe stress-related, or maybe I am just getting old, but it was getting progressively worse. I used to run and gym a lot, but couldn’t any longer. To the point, I needed to find money to go see a physiotherapist. The sessions there, and the exercises given, helped quite a bit, but before too long I had run out of money again to continue seeing the physio and had to accept to suck it up, just do the exercises given and learn to live with whatever complaints I kept having.
July 2021: Normally these months are our busiest, with hundreds of people traveling. But this year, just like in 2020, we had no one. But that didn’t mean I had nothing to do, on the contrary! Having lost almost all staff, but still having to deal with the same number of clients (postpone their tours), meant that I had to juggle way too many balls than I could handle. But there was no other way. I had no money to pay anyone, no one wants to work for free (well admittedly, one of my remaining staff offered to work for half her salary, for which I am super grateful), so a ton of work necessarily ended up on my plate. Not that I got paid for it, but the buck stops with me, right? I can’t just ignore all these clients? Again, I had to do what I had to do… Anyway, while in the past I used to love my job, creating great holidays for people and having those people then rave about how well we did things and how great their holiday was, by now all joy had been sucked out of my work. My days were filled dealing with clients that begrudgingly postponed their tour again, or wanted their money back. Day in and day out, from early morning till evening, I was fighting battles, excusing myself for late replies or why things were not possible. And no matter how hard I tried, no one was ever happy, everyone felt disappointed or mistreated. Was my work a source of pride before the pandemic, trust me, there is absolutely no joy to be had in continuously failing and disappointing everyone (clients, friends, family alike) while you’re actually trying the hardest you can to do things right.
In fact, I guess I should admit that maybe 2021 was the year that even got me, the eternal optimist, down. Was 2020 the year I lost pretty much all my belongings of value, 2021 was the year I lost myself and my soul… My days were filled with working like a madman, yet they were all shit jobs for which I didn’t get paid, it was never good enough and usually completely misunderstood. I even started hating waking up in the morning, immediately wishing for it to be evening. And so I turned into some kind of a zombie and stopped ‘feeling’ or ‘wanting’ anything. There was just no point. Working 24/7, for free, while never succeeding in anything. All feelings were negative, and the insane workload naturally resulted in having zero time to do anything I would actually like to do. No time at all for myself, not enough time for quality time with family or friends. And the whole year I felt really, really, really alone. But the show had to go on, I couldn’t give up now, 1.5 years into the pandemic. We put all our life savings into saving our companies, and they still have so much potential for once the pandemic is over. So, I dug in my heels and carried on. But on a personal level, halfway into 2021, I stopped looking people in the eyes to avoid people seeing what was really going on.
And that in itself resulted into another internal conflict. Because a part of me felt very strongly that I ‘shouldn’t be’ depressed. I kept on trying to find perspective. My situation wasn’t ‘that bad’. I mean, I could have been a woman in Afghanistan, I could have a terminal illness, I could have lost loved ones due to Covid-19. Those are reasons to become depressed! And besides, really, I have a great, healthy, and loving family, I still live in a beautiful place surrounded by nature, and thanks to continuous and generous donations, my financial stress was kinda manageable. Despite trying to find perspective this way, I failed to uplift my mentality and change my ‘feelings’.
August 2021: Something positive at long last! Having not seen our parents for almost 2 years now, our families made it financially possible for us to fly to The Netherlands, and the (grand) grandparents, aunties and uncles could enjoy seeing how much our kids had grown and developed. Freya and the kid stayed for a little over 5 weeks, I had to return to South Africa after 2.5 weeks to work, but we had such a good time! Some great videos from our time in The Netherlands, showcasing the sheer joy of all of us, you can view on our video channel.
September 2021: I lost count of how many ventures to find alternative income I tried in the last year and a half, pretty much all failing. I tried selling solar panels, started on a project creating ‘healthcare tours’ instead of normal safaris, and even looked into getting retrained as an insurance broker. As you can see, I was so desperate I was willing to sell my soul to the devil haha! But by September one of them, my www.southerncrossphoto.com started to take off at least a tiny little bit, where I did commercial photoshoots of events or guesthouses, and family photoshoots. I didn’t make much money at all, but something is better than nothing, and it was great to at least be able to contribute ‘something’ to the donations that kept my family going.
October 2021: More great family time! Freya’s parents came to South Africa for about 4 weeks. While I was still very busy with work, we did manage to get some good quality family time around the dinners and the weekends.
November: Things were looking good! We slowly got some bookings, and it looked like tourism was coming back in earnest and we could start rebuilding! And then the Omicron variant came and destroyed everything. In one weekend, all bookings got canceled again… WTF, how many punches can one take? But maybe on a metaphorical level, I am Rocky in Round 14… This stupid pandemic will not, under no circumstance, get me to give up!
December 2021: Omicron wasn’t that bad, and South Africans couldn’t give a shit anymore about the pandemic. So, they all came on holiday to St. Lucia, allowing us to finally make some bucks again with the horse safaris. What a feeling, earning some money ourselves again!
January 2022: Things are looking up, we’re getting inquiries again, some are converting into bookings, and I like to believe the end of the pandemic is really in sight now. It has given me a renewed drive to start rebuilding the companies!
And on a personal level too. I realized that the world doesn’t care about my depressed state. No one is going to get me out of my mental dungeon, but myself. Everyone has something to be depressed about, I am not special. But the only thing that is going to get me out of my depressed state, is a decision I have to make myself: “Whatever the world throws at me, now and in the future, I AM GOING TO HAVE A GOOD TIME!” It’d be stupid to wait for others to solve my problems (because they won’t), or the world to become a better place (because it won’t). Let me take responsibility myself and I choose to believe that for me, the difference between a depressed or happy life, is a choice. A choice of how to look at the things that happened to you in life. One can choose to suffer from Victimitis Excusitis, believing to be a victim of life’s negatives, and use that as an excuse to not take action oneself. Or one can choose to be a warrior that takes punches on the nose, doesn’t linger on those, but instead still goes forward and focuses on the positive effect his punches have on life. Call my worldview simplistic, but really, we can’t change the past, and the world just ‘is’, it is not going to dance to my or anyone’s music. Let’s better accept that. The only thing we have control over and can change is ourselves and our ‘psychology’. In the second half of 2021, I let myself slip into a negative state of mind, but I am out of that state now, by choice. Onwards to a better 2022!
And in closing, I want to apologize… to all family and friends when it appeared that I wasn’t there for them or showed no interest in their lives the last year. I am aware I haven’t maintained contact. But it wasn’t on purpose or that I really had no interest. I guess that once one has sunk so deep in depression, in combination with being overwhelmed & overworked, one gets tunnel vision, stops looking ‘outside’, and then simply fails to see what’s going on in the lives of friends and loved ones. And is, therefore, unable to be part of both their moments of joy or their moments of sorrow.
On a positive note though, I also really need to say a big, massive thank you to all the people that supported us financially for the last two years. You all know who you are, and I want you to know that you all rock! For the second year in a row, the only reason my kids can go to school, I can pay the rent and put food on the table, is because of your donations. Yes, I do hope that soon I will be able to rebuild our businesses to such a point I can cover our own expenses again, but in the meantime, know that I am forever grateful! And is an intense feeling of gratitude not a beautiful silver lining of such a crap year? For me it definitely is!
Nick
PS: Perhaps the below image sums up what a pandemic can do to someone… 😉
Ariel & Amber, wild & free 