one year has passed since January 2020. In one month, I went to Zurich, Bruxel, and Tromsø. It happens I wake up at night and I think – ohh so nice there is no taxi waiting for me to take me to the 06.00 flight to Amsterdam. My private life is going well. In private life, I like more and more to read and swim, to take care of the dog and the plants. and not least the family. I miss Pisa and the family there, but I have not been living in Pisa since 1989 and I am used to be far away.

The real trouble is the work. While I read about people enjoying the home (or cottage) office, I get all warm inside me. Do not misunderstand me, I also enjoy to wake up a bit later without a taxi waiting for me at 04.20, but where I am supposed to take inspiration from? As I told to a friend who was positively speaking about digital meetings and the nice colored post it notes that you can move around in miro or other tools – does it mean that all our travels, our struggling with jet leg, our struggling to get grants which should finance our travels, our meetings, our conferences were not useful? Because if we are saying that home office and zoom, and some post it notes, are doing the same effect as our travels, our meetings, our international flights, then we have really lost a lot of time, a lot of energy and a lot of CO2.

Personally I feel like the three Good Fairies in Sleeping Beauty, without travelling, without meeting all the smart people, I feel I have lost my magic.

Nobody knows about the future. Somebody says “I live day by day”. In my work I cannot live day by day. A course lasts 15 weeks and I do not know when we will meet the students. A project lasts typically 3 years. The money that should have financed travels to the different continents and from different countries to Norway are in the accounts. A former department head told me that unused money is undone work. I ask my self what we are doing, if we are working or if we are at staying at home.

What is sure that tomorrow I will go to my office. Let us try to find some magic…