This is optimistic Jonathan writing. COVID provides us with constraints. We can lean in to those constraints, and thereby realign perspective. We can drive breakthrough.

I have been watching / listening to NPR’s Tiny Desk series – a brilliant reimagining of concerts, executed around a tiny desk in the NPR office. With the pandemic, they have been doing at home tiny desk concerts instead – the pared down, pared down experience.

Bands are putting on concerts in the back or their cars, in bubbles (Flaming Lips), in bedrooms; Billie Eilish recreated the NPR office on a set. The blog photo is the Lego DJ bus set the kids had for a Christmas present a couple of years ago. Ah, the freedom!

The creative arts thrive on constraint. Really, the world does too. Entrepreneurship is ‘creative destruction’ – it recreates the circumstances for customers to say “yes!” TikTok has prospered under COVID because people have looked inwards and discovered their (and their pets’) genius.

As we end this year of years, I hope you can use the COVID constraint to your advantage, in some small way. If so, hold on to that part. We must cling to the idea that the world moves forward in a positive direction.

Happy New Year. Salut.

This Much We Know.