What 2020 all went well!
The Corona year 2020, which is now coming to an end, also had its good sides. The bad aspects have been sufficiently covered by the media that I don't want to say another word here.
All of a sudden it's on: Teams, Webex, Zoom and Google Meets and what they're all called. 500 kilometers there, 2 hours of meetings and 500 kilometers back? We do that a couple of times a day now.
Virtual business council meetings? I could take almost any topic. Whether it was digitization, hydrogen technology, discussions with politicians, scientists and entrepreneurs, I was also able to move virtually throughout Germany, only the appetizers and the glass of wine or beer were missing.
Through various networks such as Space2motion, Space2health, Hybrid3d, HyEcon and many more, we exchanged ideas with new, potential business partners and tackled exciting topics.
And privately?
I bought a lawn tractor for my garden and set a new record with lawn mowing. The lawn in the garden has never been so clean and short cut. Cool thing, a little slow, but I save the lawn for the race track.
I already reached my running goal of 500 km at the beginning of November and now stand at 624.9 km ... and the year is still long! Well, we are in Christmas week....
In June, my partner and I were with the camper in Croatia, always in front directly on the beach, hardly any guests. In the best restaurant in Korčula, where you usually have to book weeks in advance, we ate twice in a row. An appointment was not a problem. The food was perfect, it does not get any better.
Only on the way home, so in Austria and Germany, it was really crowded. But that was only for 1-2 nights.
England and Scotland in August were a dream. Together with my son we took my daughter from her student asylum in Uxbridge and went hiking together. A moorland in Danby, the world heritage site of a dilapidated abbey in Rievaux, virtually all to ourselves.
On the return trip by ferry from England to France we waited less than 10 minutes instead of the usual 2 hours and we never had so much space.
We have made good ends meet with the company and are writing a good black result.
My share prices have almost doubled in 2020.
We have made good ends meet with the company and are posting a good black result.
My share prices almost doubled in 2020.
The restaurants where we normally go to eat regularly are all still there. They've all found ways to survive.
And there are fewer cases of flu worldwide than there have been in decades. (https://apps.who.int/flumart/Default?ReportNo=10, when selecting a time period of several years for comparison, select Jan. 1, 2017 to Dec. 31, 2020, for example).
My record for clicking away from Karl Lauterbach is about 0.1 seconds... on average I think. I have never watched less news and only skimmed the main pages of the daily newspaper looking for the sports section.
An old willow in the garden was bent by the storm in the spring. It was rotten from the inside out. I took the stump to my house and started to carve away all the rotten and wormy wood. Lo and behold, something beautiful is coming to light. Not quite finished yet, but it will be (see video 1).
Maybe that's a good metaphor: Everything will be fine, seemingly bad things aren't so bad, and every crisis is both a risk and an opportunity. You just have to recognize and seize the opportunities. That's why I became an entrepreneur and have a team that couldn't be better. Nothing is more important than the people around you. Whether in the family or at work.
But there is one small downer: our society is becoming increasingly divided, and I don't think that's a good thing. I can understand both sides. Those who are afraid of dying from the virus and those who are afraid of losing their livelihood, income or freedom.
What I accuse incompetent politicians and chaos media of: profiling addiction and profiteering with fear. I have no understanding for that. Here I am with Franz Josef Strauß, who said:
"Whoever confuses people, whoever puts them in uncertainty, agitation and fear without reason, is doing the work of the devil."
People deserve trust. Not everything has to be regulated down to the last detail (just think of the rules for eating ice cream in the summer) and there are definitely different views, each of which has its right to exist.
Let's talk more with each other again, not about what divides us, but about what unites us. We all want to be right, but fear blinds us. Whether it is the fear of losing what we are used to or of the virus.
In this spirit, I wish us all a powerful, courageous and above all tolerant New Year 2021.
Your Stefan Merkle
