If you could go back to 2018 .....

[AutumnAlmanack]

Knowing what was to come in 2020, what would you make sure you did? For me, it would be not putting off that fabulous holiday which I have always wanted to do, but just wanted to save a little bit more money .....

I would give anything to go back to those days of carefree things!

I would have gone to Mexico when I had the chance, not moved house, and bought more loungewear!

I'd have gone to Mexico too.

Mmm nothing really for which I feel profoundly grateful.

More holidays

If I could go back to 2018, I wouldn't. It was the year my DM started dying. She was immunosuppressed so (ironically) my family spent the year sanitising our hands, stocking up on face masks and isolating any time one of us had a virus. Myself and my siblings were aged 16-32 so had never needed the flu vaccine before but had to have it then purely to protect our DM. What great preparation eh?!

Wouldn't change anything

I'd have left teaching and got a job where I could work from home.

I began planning a move abroad and eventually did so in 2019. I would still do the planning and leave the job I left but I wouldn't have gone abroad. Instead I would have taken the money, retired to the countryside and had a nice little holiday.
As it was, I went overseas and ended up coming back again early 2020 because of the pandemic. And it used up all my cash. I still can't work out whether the experience was worth what it cost....

Invested in bitcoin. Money makes things easier and it's been a tougher two years than most years are.

Not 2018, but I would have changed job at the end of 2019 so that I didn’t have to be there during the pandemic when it got hideously stressful and colleagues started behaving really badly. I couldn’t have known without hindsight though.

Also created a home office and stocked up on antibac.

I would put less effort into my wider family. Covid gave them a good excuse to still make no effort. In 2018 I had a 4yo, a 2yo and a baby, and I was still the one travelling cross country to visit parents and siblings. Covid taught me my little family and I are just fine on our own.

Place a large bet on a pandemic hitting in 2020. Would probably have got pretty good odds.
Investment in zoom was a good shout from pp.
There's not much else I could have done really.

Stocked up on marmite.

Bought a house in Scotland and returned home. We were trapped and it was awful

Got a trampoline

I wish we hadn't got rid of ours. The kids barely used it ...but then lock down happened and it would have been something to do

@VaguelyInteresting

Move abroad. Probably Spain.

Spain was in far more serious lockdown than us. I had a friend who wasn't allowed to leave her apartment - not even to walk around the block - for weeks, except for a once weekly food shop.

God there's no way I'd go back to then. My dad has died, my marriage broke down and my cat was diagnosed with terminal kidney disease. It was shit! Ironically, by the start of 2020 things were looking really good

Gone on holiday.

I've never been on holiday - me and DH often talked about planning one. The logistics now seem like such an expensive pain in the arse, plus I'm CV so not sure how that would affect it all.

One day!

@secretbookcase

They were - my friend is in Barcelona- but they’ve also come out of it & are in a much much better position now. And tbh I’d rather be locked down in a country taking it seriously for a shorter time, than this endless tension and anxiety, veering between “freedom day” and pushing blame onto the populace such as we have here.

Plus with Brexit moving there for permanent residence is now infinitely harder. In fact I wish I’d gone when I had the chance in 2015 - regardless of how strict their lockdown was.