Steve Price: How 2020 forced us to find some good among the bad

Time Magazine calls 2020 the worst year ever. It’s been a challenge but has forced many of us to try to find some good, writes Steve Price.

Time magazine this week published its front cover for 2020 with a big cross through the year declaring it the worst year ever.

That’s a stretch – although if you live in one of the COVID-19 ravaged US cities like New York or one of the places constantly overrun by protesters burning and looting – you might agree.

Donald Trump supporters who came down with the virus might also have reason to want to forget 2020, but oddly here in Australia we have plenty of reasons to thank our lucky stars.

Victoria aside our nation was largely cushioned from the impact of COVID-19 with states like Queensland, South Australia – until the pizza box panic – and Western Australia largely operating as normal.

Daniel Andrews supporters will tell you he single-handedly saved Victoria from a full-blown emergency conveniently ignoring the deaths of 819 people.

But memories fade quickly and Melbourne residents now largely mask free and able to stand up in a pub and drink beer have started to forget just how hard lockdown two actually was.

Owners of failed businesses, young people who have lost their first jobs, couples dreading the next mortgage payment and parents and grandparents who have forcibly been separated from family will also take a long time to forget.

Many Victorians will be dealing with the fallout from COVID for a long time. Picture: NCA NewsWire

The impact on the mental wellbeing of Victorians is also something we will be dealing with for a very long time.

Already reports of increased domestic violence, the stress of loneliness and the number of COVID-19 related suicides are being reported. That’s expected to get worse.

For many though the reset, forced lockdowns, and working from home routine, has allowed people to realise there is a better way to live their lives.

The frustratingly long daily commute to and from a city job, the challenge of the daily school pick-up or dealing with inter-office politics means I think many won’t want to go back to those pre-COVID-19 days.

On a personal note, it was 12 months ago on Sunday and I was standing in the giant foyer of the Commonwealth Bank in Martin Place in Sydney and my mobile phone rang.

I was in a queue to get foreign currency – Japanese yen – for a quick pre-Christmas trip to visit friends at the Niseko ski resort on the northern Island of Hokkaido.

It was Friday December 13 and I had just finished a punishing two-week stint filling in for Alan Jones on 2GB’s breakfast program that required a 3.30am alarm clock and three and a half hours of live radio.

The program was virtually running commercial free because of advertiser boycotts around some comments Alan had made earlier in the year, so it was non-stop talking.

Australians have plenty of reasons to thank their lucky stars in 2020 when compared to other parts of the world. Picture: Getty Images

On the end of the phone that day a year ago was my long-time manager telling me the new owners of 2GB – Channel 9 – were replacing me on my afternoon radio show with a Nine personality.

This came completely out of the blue and management didn’t even have the manners or class to call me themselves even after working for the network for nine years.

They offered for me to return to a night time shift that up until the end of June last year, I had been doing nationally – including on Melbourne’s 3AW.

Given I had a contract to present afternoon radio until the end of 2020 I politely declined their offer and walked away.

I have never publicly talked about this before but that meant 2020 – Time Magazine’s worst year ever – became the first time since I was a 17-year-old teenager back in 1972 that I wasn’t working a minimum five days a week.

That meant 48 years of uninterrupted full-time employment.

Now I’m NOT complaining, far from it. I am the lucky one here, but that employment change back in December last year combined with the virus and its disruption to peoples’ lives – including mine – caused a rethink of priorities.

Looking after parents, keeping in touch with mates and making sure the work you are doing makes you satisfied and happy, has worked for me.

Steve Price with his mother Margo. Picture: Supplied

The 2020 year has in fact delivered plenty of positives personally.

Take my mother for example, who I last told you about back on November 7 when it had been 257 days since I last saw her.

That stretched out to 289 days, but the rescue mission took place this Thursday just gone, when I packed the car up and drove her across the Victorian border for a summer holiday.

Getting lost in the Adelaide Hills on the way to beachside Brighton to get her, added to what turned into a nostalgic trip down memory lane for me.

It got me thinking that with international travel all but ruled out until next March – at a minimum – a visit to our old hometowns (neighbourhoods) – if you have good memories of them that is – should be a summer trip for everyone.

Brighton beach in suburban Adelaide is at the end of Mum’s street. As a Year 10 student I was forced to swim 50 metres to get my Beginners Certificate in choppy waves. A swim I still have nightmares about.

Walking along that same beach this week, I remember going spear fishing with an old broom handle, bike tyre tube and prongs attached with gaffer tape.

Summer was hanging at the Brighton jetty and being brave enough to jump off the curved roof of the shelter at the end without breaking your neck or back or both.

Getting lost in the Adelaide Hills even took me past the Blackwood High School sports oval where I played my one and only outstanding AFL game for Seacombe High bagging five goals from a forward pocket, Eddie Betts style.

It also took me past the Flinders University Hospital respite care unit where I played Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman off my mobile phone to my dying father Grange Price on the last day I ever saw him.

Time Magazine calls 2020 the worst year ever. I disagree, it’s been a challenge, but it has forced a lot of us to find some good in the bad.

Bring on 2021.