Positive people are so annoying. I know that because I am one. And after last year, I definitely learnt that being positive always, all the time, isn’t manageable. I was fortunate to have to rethink about what I was doing, and so my 2020 involves some random adventures. But most importantly, it made me have conversations that I hadn’t had in a very long time.  

So come join me as I take you through what 2020 was to me. We start in January, where after six years of living in the thick smoke of Sydney, I landed my dream job—I work in sport—and I ended up at the AFL. Sport in 2020, not sure if you followed it, was a bit random. But I packed up my car with—my Holden Astra Hatchback—with all my belongings.  

Six years of belongings in my car. There was no room for anyone to join me, so I went solo on this road trip. And I remember driving towards Melbourne and the sky was smoke. Full of smoke. If you opened a window, you’d just suck it all in, because there were some devastating bushfires on the border of Victoria. And that was where I was driving towards. And I really hoped that wasn’t an omen of my year.  

But then I got to Melbourne, and I was fortunate because I moved in with an old colleague—-he worked at the Grand Prix—and so there was these two sporty girls living in a townhouse in the urban oasis of a suburb I couldn’t pronounce. Pr-a-n? Pr-ar-n? Something like that. So I changed my lifestyle. 

I went from my coastal walks in Coogee, in Sydney, to walking in sandals and getting rained on without an umbrella—didn’t learn the first time, didn’t learn the second time, never learnt. Instead of walking down to see a beach, I was walking past a line of people who were, and this is like at 6:30 in the morning mind you, who were going to Love Machine.  

Which I’m not sure if anyone’s been to, but it’s a 24 hour club on Chapel Street in Prahran. So while I was on my way to work, they were just starting their night. So it was a very short stint. Especially once the word corona came into play. And I actually weirdly learnt about it in early Jan, because the first project that AFL gave me was to market a game in Shanghai.  

I know. AFL in China. Every week we had these long arse meetings that went in circles and had no answer but to say that, ‘we’re waiting for an update from the World Health Organisation.’ There was a virus, but we weren’t sure what it was. But we knew it was spreading in China. So that was mid-January. By mid-February, we cancelled the Shanghai game. 

And then, what really hit home, or when Corona really kind of became full front in my mind, was the week of the Grand Prix. So my poor housemate Sammy had been working long hours. If you’ve never heard of the Melbourne Grand Prix, if you don’t even care about Formula 1, watch the Netflix “Drive to Survive”. Even if you hate cars, you will love this—it’s very dramatic. 

But the Melbourne Grand Prix is built from nothing. It’s like building a grandstand and a function room at Lake Monger or the Swan River—it’s just a running track. So it’s not just a weak build in, it’s a huge year, month billed lead up. On the Wednesday of the week, she kindly invited me to an event called Glamour on the Grid, which was great for people watching. 

But that was… I remember… it had been quite a… like almost a people grieving event, it was actually quite a sad atmosphere. And I remember Sammy just left in tears, saying that, ‘ this is the only time that we’re ever going to use this space.’ By Friday, the Grand Prix was cancelled and all that money: down the drain.   

That same Friday, work told us that we were working from home indefinitely. So I’d just moved to Melbourne, had probably just started to get to know people in the office, they’d started to get my sense of humour; get my dad jokes. I finally found my coffee shop. But yeah. We’re working from home indefinitely.  Then, the following week, we found out that [inaudible words].  

All my marketing activity was pulled. And then that Wednesday, March 15, I remember waking up and I knew I had to leave Melbourne. One o’clock, I booked my flight. Five o’clock, I got my little carry-on, left my room as it was, drove my little Holden Astra to my friend Fran’s parent-in-law’s house in Coburg, which I’m embarrassed to say is still there, and flew back to Perth. 

So after six years of hustle and bustle in Sydney, then two months in Melbourne—blink and you’ll miss it—I was back at my parents’ house in Balcatta. And then, by the end of April, I got the call that, because the season had stopped, there was no sport. I was one of 80% that were considered non-essential. And so, I had no work, and that was the first time in a very long time. So I’m back in my hometown; I have all this time. What do I do? Well, I started walking with my dad around Lake Gwelup. I think we did about 100 laps, from memory. Embarrassingly though, the only time I’d ever been to Lake Gwelup was last year, and it’s about five minutes down the road from their house.  

Another thing that I did was—I had all this time—was go on some trips. Going to Monkey Mia, or climbed up Bluff Knoll with my friend Kiara. And it became a running joke of when are you going back to Melbourne? And I’d be like, ‘May!’. Then I’d be like, ‘June!’ Then it was July and then they went into lockdown and obviously I never went back. 

And then, in June, I remember sitting with my friend Carly, having some champagne and cheese as one does around her dining table, and she asked me a very simple question: ‘what do you do for work?’ I remember thinking about it and going, oh, well, I work in marketing, but it’s not like a teacher or a firefighter. It’s hard to explain sometimes what I do. 

And so my answer was, ‘I tell stories. I tell stories so that I can convince people to do what I want them to do.’ And then she gave me this gift. She said, ‘well, could you write my story?’ And so, every Wednesday, I came over with either a banh mi or a continental roll from Re Store. There’d always be dessert. And we’d sit at this table and we’d have these conversations.  

And you’ve got to remember, I was away for six years. And so the conversations we had were very fleeting; It’d always been in a group. This one-on-one time I didn’t have in a very long time. And one of the conversations that came up was: positive people are so annoying. And it was because of her experience—she had been in a freak accident and she had to go through some rehab.  

And she remembers what people would say to her. They’d try to give her perspective and they’d try to spin shit into rainbows and butterflies, which is what I usually do for work and in my life. But she gave me permission to feel what I was feeling. And that loss of control, and not working where work had consumed a lot of my life. 

To the point where, here I would say I’m so passionate about writing, but I’d never picked up a pen once in my six years in Sydney. And so each week I started writing and yesterday it was about her. But then it made me realise that it was okay that I did feel like it was a bit out of control.  

Another conversation that I really loved was we talked about strangers that you never thought you’d meet. And then I think back on my 2020, and I’m not going to lie, a leopard doesn’t change its spots. Though I used to be more busy in my life in Sydney, I still had a couple side hustles in this non-work period—I started to help a friend in their environmental social enterprise. 

Plastic recycling. Learnt a lot about that. Because you don’t learn that much about that in sport. And then through there I met this incredible human being, who I’m still friends with to this day. I ended up getting a report from the AFL going, ‘oh, Rita, look! We’re going to bring the AFL to WA! We’re going to do these hubs!’  

So I hired an assistant, my dad, and we drove around Perth. Picking up faba beans from Coles, because that’s what the players like to eat, getting all the gym equipment—so apologies if you couldn’t get any dumbbells or kettlebells. The AFL bought them all. Don’t look in my garage! And we’re just driving around and I sometimes thought to myself: I wonder what my dad’s thinking of how I’m using my university degree right now.  

And then beyond that, from 2020, something that really hit home, Carly asked me what I missed about my Sydney life. And something that really sparked was: I missed seeing my culture around me. I’m Lebanese, and when I lived in Sydney, something that I would do when I was missing my family was I would cook. I’d cook something that my mum had taught me.  

I cheated. Like, the hummus, I used tin cans. And if you asked me how many times I’d made hummus since I’d been back to Perth, it’s zero. She makes it from the real stuff. But I would cook, and so that’s how I felt close to my culture. And when you’d go to Western Sydney, you’d see Lebanese food everywhere and Lebanese sweets.  

And then in 2018, coincidentally, friends that I made in Sydney went to Lebanon. And I was asked to join them. So I went with them to Lebanon and my family—some are busy today—is the only other person in my family who’s met my aunty in 40 years. And I got to see a Lebanon that I probably had never understood before.  

There was these progressive areas like Mar Mikhael and Gemmayzeh and there the food, and the people, and the careers that I never thought existed there. Because when my parents left it, they left because of war. But then the Lebanese explosion happened in Beirut, and the areas that I just mentioned were the ones that were most affected.   

And I remember this feeling, this sense of such sadness and disappointment, and I can’t even imagine what their COVID experience is like. 2020 had so many lessons for me. And when I look back at where I am now—I moved out of the parents’ house into a backyard where I host dinner parties, which is what I did in Sydney, except I was in a small shoebox apartment with fifteen people, and when it was 30 degrees, it was like 50 in there.   

I have made new friends and have learnt about different experiences that I thought didn’t exist in Perth. Because when I left, that was probably one of the reasons. Instead of running around going from event to event, and feeling that gap and void where my friends and family were, I now just hang out with them.    

And if 2020 teaches you anything, it’s what’s more important. So as much as I love my job, and as much as I love spending time being busy doing different activities, nothing beats being around people that you love. So in 2020, I finally came home. Thank you.