CHAMBER NEWS & VIEWS Looking forward to 2022

Lynne Conlan is executive director of the South Hillsborough Chamber of Commerce. Call her at 813-634-5111, or email lynne@southhillschamber.com.
For my last column of the year, I thought I would do a little review of the past year. Then I realized, that you can’t look back at 2021 without going back to 2020. Yep, they kinda come as a package — and not the kind of package you want to find wrapped and nestled under your Christmas tree.
Looking back to March 2020, when the stay-home mandates were coming at us, I honestly thought that would last about three months tops. So, I did start out being optimistic. That didn’t last long as the three-month mark came and went. Then came the masks. Then testing or was testing first? Everything hit us in kind of a rush.
We all remember the new words and phrases we added to our vocabularies: Social distancing, PPE, Zoom, virtual events, herd immunity, mRNA, WFH, essential workers, flatten the curve and contact tracing, to name a few. We learned how to pivot, and pivot we did, leaving us all feeling like the reluctant leads in The Nutcracker. And far too many of us have been impacted by the disease itself, having either contracted COVID-19 ourselves or losing friends and family in heartbreaking and life altering ways we never imagined.
Watching all this from the chamber perspective, I have shared business and personal sorrows and set-backs with our members. But I also watched with awe as our members have reinvented their business models and created tenable positions from which to operate in the future. You have all amazed and inspired me. I was not watching people giving up. I was watching a group of fighters making it work­­­­­­­­­­­­­ — whatever “it” turned out to be. And I’ve watched as you have supported and encouraged each other. You make me proud to be part of this resilient and caring community.
Looking forward to 2022, I hate that we are facing a new variant and some new setbacks. But the chamber is looking ahead to next year, albeit with a little trepidation at this point but also with hope and fingers crossed. I’m not a doctor and have never played one on TV, so I cannot give you any medical advice. But we have health care professionals and community leaders on our board of directors, and we will follow the science.
I want to wish you a very safe and happy holiday season. But as we look forward to the new year, I think you can skip making any resolutions for the new year. You’ve done enough….you’ve been enough. We don’t want you to change anything. You’ve shown you are strong and resilient, and we like you just the way you are. My only hope is that you stay safe, and I look forward to seeing you again in 2022.