OCTOBER 2020
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| JAMES (Victoria – Australia) “The world was completely open to me; I was free to travel wherever I wanted, whenever I want. Now thanks to Coronavirus, I live alone in my Nana’s old house, in a small regional town in Victoria, away from family and friends.“ *UPDATED July 25th 2021* |
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| JIM (Edinburgh – Scotland) “Maybe I’m getting old ‘n’ grumpy, but I prefer a world that wasn’t so ‘smart’.” |
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| LEA (Melbourne – Australia) “Life will never be the same again, every day it changes. We lose something and we gain something every day. We learn to adapt, to be flexible, to draw on our strengths, to build resilience to survive and even through adversity to thrive. I truly believe there’s light at the end of this tunnel.” |
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| LEANNE (England) “For me, this is a multi-layered shitshow. The Covid situation has plunged the world into recession and mass-unemployment, unnecessary suffering and untold deaths, but in the UK, we also have the Brexit fallout to contend with.” *UPDATED November 18th* |
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| GORDON (Melbourne – Australia) “So take that slow-boil of existential terror, marinate it in an ever-increasing level of restlessness, and then add in the fact that I was neck-deep in online dating at the time, and you’ve got a perfect mix for some shenanigans. I went god damn crazy.” |
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| PHIL (Warsaw – Poland) “Gender pay gaps, coal, and taking the piss out of yourself: Phil’s 5 years in Poland.“ |
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| ROSS (Sydney – Australia) “I hate that I don’t have the energy or capacity to repay all the kindness that’s been given to me this year. I hate that this year has been terrible to everyone. I just hate this year.” |
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| WHITNEY (Victoria – Australia) “Being alive right now means all of us are unified in a global experience of having life adjusted. We are all feeling something. And that in itself is important” |
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| JESS (London – UK) “We have a huge amount of burnout and illness among the team, and a seemingly endless roll call of team members needing to isolate and be tested following a cough or a fever.” |
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| KYLE (Melbourne – Australia) “She came to my job site and said with a smile on her face, “I’m pregnant!”. Sweet relief. As if the weight of the world of the last 3 years had been lifted off my shoulders.” |
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| COURTNEY (Aix-en-Provence – France) “I remember thinking ‘someone would physically have to come and drag me to the airport to make me get on a flight home’.“ |
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| JACK (Melbourne – Australia) “The big moments are gonna come you can’t help that. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. That’s when you find out who you are.” |
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| KRISTY (Victoria – Australia) “Having your heart in so many places of the world is simultaneously magnificent and heart breaking, because you’re always saying goodbye to some of the greatest friends you’ll ever know.” |
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| MITCH (Melbourne – Australia) “I never realised the benefit just a day or two away doing something you love actually has. It keeps you going longer than you think.“ |
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| MELINDA (Kent – United Kingdom) “It’s safe to say that I’d be happy to never do an online quiz again” *Updated 24th March 2021* |
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| HOLLY (Melbourne – Australia) “Stay safe, stay sane and remember to say Fuck a few times a day and have a wine occasionally, it helps!” |
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| ROSS (The Republic of Georgia) “Every day during the lockdown, I told myself how lucky we were. If I had still been in Brisbane I would have really struggled” |
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| OLIVER (New York City – USA) “How do I fight for social justice, show solidarity with those I care deeply about, and demand serious reform in my country when I can’t even be outside? I was stuck in a Catch-22.“ |
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| ESTHER (Melbourne – Australia) “Taking precautions which includes not travelling is hard, but knowing its for the greater good makes it easier to cope with being stuck.” |
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| LIAM (Bristol – England) “For some of the people shielding, the volunteers would be the only people they would see that day“ |
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| GAVIN (Toronto – Canada) “We’ve been put into a moral dilemma between supporting local businesses, and keeping people safe.” |
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| KRISTIE (Auckland – New Zealand) “I made it to the top of the headland and looked back at the beach and the lake, I thought to myself ‘Why the hell have I never come here?’” |
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| CASSIE (Victoria – Australia) “You know what else sucks? I’m an extrovert. Just like superman gets his powers from the sun, I get mine from being around people” |
NOVEMBER 2020
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| RYAN (Chicago – USA) “You gotta know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, know when to run“ |
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| ASH & RYAN (Gold Coast – Australia) “We were both so naive, there was NO WAY they would cancel Coachella. I mean its COACHELLA RIGHT!!!!” |
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| MONIQUE (Chilliwack – Canada) “At least we won’t be clutching at straws, because those are being phased out in BC to save ocean critters.” *Updated March 30th 2021* |
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| RANDIV (Colombo – Sri Lanka) “Remembering curfew in Sri Lanka was a hard lock down. We were not allowed to go to the supermarket even or leave our front gate if you are caught there are severe punishments such as prison, assets been taken from you such as cars.“ |
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| COURTNEY (The Maldives) “If you’re reading this thinking you wish you were in Maldives during lockdown – the reality of it is paradise can still feel like prison too if you aren’t careful.” |
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| SARAH (Galway – Ireland) “I had six friends in a group where we would work out together everyday. They were in Canada, Hawaii, Switzerland, Australia and London. This was a massive help to my mental state.” |
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| JAKE (Guangzhou – China) “Out of all the countries to live in, I chose the one with an epidemic.“ |
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| ALLYSSIA (The Netherlands) “Friday I discovered that I was part of the second wave. I was part of the number of infected people with Covid. The number was 7272 on Friday. I was one of them.“ *UPDATED December 20th* |
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| MELISSA (Panama) “We had about 6 months of full lock down where you were only allowed to go out on the day that corresponds to the first digit of your ID, three times a week for 2 hours“ |
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| PETER (Wurzen – Germany) “Overnight, I became a health advisor and spent every spare minute on google researching as much as I could, so I could inform people and give basic hygiene advice” |
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| MYKE (Mornington Peninsula – Australia) “Well actually Lockdown was a blessing. The world stopped! It was like the clocks stopped! The wheels came off the world … and not me for once!” |
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| NICK (Victoria – Australia) “It was Disneyland. Punctuated with exclamations, ciggy breaks, drink spillages and oven-baked frozen snacks, it was like being a child at a sleepover every week.” |
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| ANNA (Savusavu – Fiji) “As unemployment became rampant due to the suspension of flights and inbound tourists to Fiji, many resident of my village found life in cities and town very expensive.“ |
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| ANJA (Novo Mesto – Slovenia) “If a plan A doesn’t work, use a plan B. If that doesn’t work go with plan C, D, E … if even that doesn’t work change the alphabet.“ |
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| TARA (Dresden – Germany) “It’s mind boggling to be able to say that in a global pandemic, we were able to reinvent our lives twice, on opposite sides of the planet“ |
DECEMBER 2020
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| PAULO (The Philippines) “…I had to undergo a 14 day strict self-quarantine in my room. I was not used to it. It felt like it was the end of humanity.” |
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| MICHELLE (Queenstown – New Zealand) “If everyone had a best friend like that wee legend we’d all be doing more than alright.“ |
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| JAIME (Minnesota – USA) “I’m still scared of getting sick, or my friends and family getting sick (so far at least 20 people I know have contracted covid, and a couple have died)“ |
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| JOE (Vermont – USA) “I look forward to living and paying taxes in a country where its people unite against this pandemic instead of calling it a hoax“ |
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| ADAM (California – USA) “I was on the season of Survivor airing in the US at the time, and I remember hesitating before going out to watch the episode that aired on March 11. We did end up going out that night, and that was the last time I have been in a group like that.” |
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| OSCAR (Sweden) “The death rates are worse than ever. We have (today) the 9th highest death rate in the world. And Stockholm is the deadliest of all cities.“ |
JANUARY 2021
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| CARSTEN (Ticehurst – England) ““Finding the motivation to do something when you’re not allowed to do anything, was the most difficult challenge I have faced so far!“ |
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| RYAN (Ontario – Canada) “we were told that the next set of passengers would not be boarding, we (the crew) would not be getting off, and we would be left adrift off the East coast of the United States for 30 days” |
FEBRUARY 2021
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| MISS C (Melbourne – Australia) “My anxiety levels were high as I sat at my dining room table from 8:00am to 7:00pm each day. Working through my list of things to do, which felt like it kept getting longer by the minute” |
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| MELISSA (Spain) “At one point people were being told a flight to Australia from Europe would cost about AUD$17,000 and then you need to add another AUD$3000 for quarantine.” *Story Update March 31st 2021 |
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| JESSICA (Aarburg – Switzerland) “Let me start with an unpopular opinion: 2020 wasn’t that bad after all. It was one of the saddest years of my life, I grant, but at the same time the best in so many ways.” |
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| MARINA (Málaga – Spain) “If we were aware that our life could end at any moment, we would stop wasting time“ |
MARCH 2021
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| MIA (Whistler – Canada) “Soon after, the lockdown was swift and brutal. The once loud, bustling village became a ghost town.“ |
APRIL 2021
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| NICOLE (Toronto – Canada) “It has been such a hard year but I feel as though I have finally figured out who I am and what I stand for throughout it.“ |
MAY 2021
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| KENNY (Denver – USA) “Suddenly, I felt like that 12 year old boy who had always been lost in the world, was turned into the 26 year old fully confident man. A man who was content with the uncertainties of life, but someone who had the uttermost lust to discover all that he could.” |