I Made the Best Out of a Fairly Fruitless 2020! How About You?
January 10, 2021 Looking back at my first business trip with American Fruit Grower, I think of Forrest Gump and one of his more poignant lines: “If I’d a known this was gonna be the last time me and Bubba was gonna talk, I’d a thought of something better to say.”
Eleven months after the fact, that’s kind of how I feel about last year’s annual meeting of the International Fruit Tree Association (IFTA). The show, in Grand Rapids, MI, just a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Cleveland, occurred during Valentine’s Day week, only two weeks into my start with the magazine.
Just a month later, by the middle of St. Patrick’s Day week, the coronavirus was locking down the entire country. I’ve been working from my Berea, OH, basement ever since.
Had I known IFTA was going to be my last show of 2020, I now second-guess myself: Would it have hurt to trade a few more business cards? Could I have shaken a dozen more hands? Should I have run through my elevator speech a couple more times? I mean, who knows when the next in-person conference will occur? And when it does, will shaking hands even be a thing?
So much changed in 2020. So many questions will need to be addressed and answered, hopefully before many more industry gatherings like IFTA are forced to go virtual or canceled altogether. Until that time, I want to wish a happy new year to you and your family and friends. We all deserve that much.
As for the old year, was it a complete loss for you? Is there nothing to celebrate in retrospect? I hope that’s not the case. In fact, I’m willing to bet there is something that each of you can cherish even in the midst of a pandemic.
Just before Thanksgiving break, the editors here at Meister Media Worldwide gathered over Skype for our weekly group chat. The question was posed: What is something you are proud to have accomplished in 2020? Several colleagues acknowledged their success in hosting virtual conferences of their own for the first time. One editor recognized her coverage of the dicamba controversy. Another co-worker, battling pancreatic cancer, simply appreciated making it to Thanksgiving.
And, boy, that puts things in perspective.
For me, I thought my first year with American Fruit Grower went well enough, starting with that IFTA trip. Maybe I could have done something differently that week and each one thereafter, but that’s the perfectionist in me. The most difficult aspect of a debut year is learning a new industry and always feeling like you’re dipping your toes in the water.
What I will always find nostalgic and beneficial about 2020 was my entry into the world of videoconferencing. I’m not a photograph guy, let alone a video guy, but in this age of lockdowns, there has been no getting around Zoom and Skype on pretty much a daily basis. I consider this to be a professional and personal breakthrough.
And it wasn’t my only one in 2020. By mid-summer, I was knee-deep into Twitter for the first time. That could easily be considered a detriment, but in this case, I’m referring to my business-specific account, which I’m careful to make sure never strays beyond the world of fruit growing.
In turn, Twitter has typically come through when I’ve looked for story ideas and sources. And there’s never a shortage of provocative Tweets, one of which pretty much sums up my philosophy from Day 1 of this pandemic: “Reminder: If 2020 stunk, it’s your fault.”
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