{"id":6872,"date":"2021-04-09T18:37:45","date_gmt":"2021-04-09T16:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/?p=6872"},"modified":"2021-04-09T18:37:54","modified_gmt":"2021-04-09T16:37:54","slug":"a-year-without-handshakes-and-hugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/a-year-without-handshakes-and-hugs\/","title":{"rendered":"A Year Without Handshakes and Hugs"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

We are over a year into the pandemic that I wrote about for the first one hundred days, and stopped writing about because I thought that the Swiss Government was getting close to eradicating the disease, or at least getting it down to 0 new cases per day. Do you remember June 2020, when we actually thought the pandemic could be over by August? Unfortunately we’re no in April of 2021 and the pandemic is nowhere near over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, upon news that a royal individual died, and upon realising that the Social media landscape and British media would be filled with this news I decided to take a twitter break, while morbid twitter marked the passing of this individual. I may seem apathetic and cold, uncaring, or even unsympathetic because I do not want to mark this event but I’d like to bring something to people’s attention. I’m between work contracts. I haven’t hugged or shaken hands with adults in over a year. If I was to grieve a stranger who had a full life, and lived to a good age, then how should I feel about my own life, and my own age? If I was to feel empathy, then I would destroy my own ability to cope with pandemic solitude. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A year with hardly a meal with others, with hardly an evening drink with others, a year without a single climbing trip, with no hiking trip with strangers, with no activities. The pandemic is not over, and neither is the solitude. We are still a year away from a normal summer, if we’re being optimistic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Normally I would have spent the last three or four weekends going hiking and climbing with people, but this year I have done none of those things. I have walked in solitude, in loops of 10-15 kilometres where I live and in the process I have seen interesting things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today I saw a sign that gave the distance between Geneva and Lausanne in terms of Lieues (leagues). I walked down to the lake because I thought the high wind would give nice waves but no such luck. It’s funny to see the distance measured in such units. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A post shared by Richard Azia (@richardazia)<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n