No BS: Normal is dead. Get over it.

No B.S Friday: Stop pining for the past and get ready for the future.

You know, I don’t think things are ever going back to normal.

I feel like a lot of us are in a mode of just “riding it out.”

We’ve just got our heads down, waiting to get through Covid, get through the next election, get through the climate crisis and the next flood or the next fire.

Get through the polarisation of society. Get through government lockdowns or get through all the conspiracies.

Get through super-low interest rates. Get through money printing. Get through the explosion in asset prices and the devaluation of everything else.

If we can just ‘get through it’, then on the other side, “normal” is waiting for us.

We’ll be able to go back to understanding how our phones worked and watching the Simpsons on TV.

But I don’t think it’s happening.

First, I think normal is an illusion. The pace of change might have been slower back in the good old days, but 1980 was a million miles from 1940.

Change is the only constant.

And we’re not going backwards because time doesn’t go backwards. Things don’t ‘unchange’.

Social media is not going away. Covid’s not going away. The reality that we are part of a complex society with a million different agendas at play – that’s not going away either.

And so I don’t think we have a choice here.

I don’t think we can resist change. I don’t think we can hold out for things to go back to a state of being we can understand.

No. I think we have to be a friend to the new.

We have to accept that radical change is just the price of entry to the 21st century.

We have to learn to ride the new and the unknown.

And that means rolling with change and rolling with uncertainty. It means learning how to act on limited information.

It means being comfortable to roll the dice and go with our gut or go with our best guesses.

Because what’s in store for us in 2022?

I don’t know. I’ve got no idea. Nobody does.

Seriously, right now, it feels like anything could happen.

The way things are going, I’m expecting an AI-apocalypse any day now.

All we can do is show up. Just find a way to make change our natural habitat.

And roll with it the best we can.

I’ve got a couple more blogs for you next week, but this is my sign off for the year.

Thanks for sticking it out this year. It was a wild ride.

And I’m sure 2022 is going to be no different.

But let’s just lean into the change, lean into the chaos, and carve it up the best we can.

Let’s choose to be friends to the new.

Because the new year is coming whether we like it or not.

JG.