A letter to 2020.
Nothing went to plan really, did it?
I think many of us would like to forget 2020, and with good reason. Lots of us saw our business close or reach the brink of closure. We lost family, friends and members of our communities to a terrible illness. Over the holiday season, many of us won’t be able to spend time with our families or enjoy our usual holiday parties and traditions. Too many of us have suffered great losses and pain this year and been unable to cope or even talk about the secret battles we’ve been grappling with.
For my personal view of 2020 looks like this: It started with making a short film I’m incredibly proud of, followed by the huge disappointment of missing out on funding that could have given my company a big push forward to help it grow. It’s fair to say 2020 got off to an uneven start, but what followed was catastrophic.
With lockdown, all work stopped, and all income came to a halt too.
Like so many small business owners, the initial funding grants dried up, and we were left to fend for ourselves through lockdowns and tier systems. Our industry was (and is) full of employees who were sick or anxious about working again, film productions that needed a whole new approach and funders who were struggling with adapting to an ever-changing system.
The struggle to survive has been relentless and exhausting, and now, as we wind down for the Christmas break, I find myself asking how we managed to get through it all.
Though I’ve not been on this earth too long, I have experienced trauma and found myself in challenging times. It is in the darkest of dark days that I have found the beautiful resilience of humankind, and our ability to bring joy and hope to people who feel like they have none. These people are all around us. They are my neighbour, who wheeled her keyboard into the street and started playing tunes one afternoon in April - she sang loud and joyfully. My sister Marguerite, who keeps organising family zoom calls - we’re all over the world, it’s a huge logistical operation. All my friends, who hosted virtual birthday parties and BBQs. The filmmakers I work with, each of whom has supported my new project Above The Line and have kept creating and writing despite trying to grapple with the strange events taking place across the world. C&B’s commercial clients, who are finding new and creative ways to keep going. Last, my cousins along with the many activists in Malta, who continue to fight for justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Martin Luther King Jr once said, ‘We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.’ I don’t like making new year resolutions, and I have never looked at January 1st of any year as ‘a new start’. I know 2021 will have problems of its own and that the hardships of 2020 will not have suddenly disappeared - in fact, they will surely carry over into the new year.
In the past, it was my own self-belief and ambition that drove me forward. I now have another reason to keep going and to persevere despite the disappointments and setbacks. It’s all of you. Every one of you has inspired me to keep trying, to keep working, and to keep going. 2020 will be a year I look back on and remember how in awe I was of the people around me. I will remember how that, even when the chips are down and the deck is stacked against them, they found a way.
So, as the challenges of 2020 continue into the new year, as will our determination. That is something I can celebrate and look forward to.