Notes From My Journal
A Surprising Benefit of the Lockdowns
I came down here at the end of March to check on some improvements we’ve been making at FunLimon. (FunLimon is the community development center my family and I have been developing across the street from Rancho Santana.) K joined me a week later. For 20 years, my/our sojourns in Nicaragua lasted a week to 10 days. There were always reasons to be back in the States or at some office in Europe or Asia or elsewhere.
But that all, suddenly and amazingly, changed in 2020. The lockdowns forced us to have our business meetings digitally and, notwithstanding predictions to the contrary, it worked out surprisingly well. We meet more often, spend less time in redundant conversations, arrive at decisions faster, and – speaking for myself at least – feel much more connected than before, when I was spending, on average, two months a year on planes and in hotel rooms.
And that is why we were able to spend so much time here this time. There was no reason not to stay longer.
I am grateful for that, and optimistic about how the Zoom environment is changing business. That’s a subject I’ll be talking about in a future posting. Today, as K and I are preparing to fly home, I wanted to share some photos and thoughts with you about why we are always happy to spend extra time in Nicaragua.