Bill Gates says 2021 was ‘a year of great personal sadness’

Bill Gates, 66, known for being a co-founder of Microsoft, said no year in his life had been more “difficult” or “unusual” than 2021. In his blog, titled GatesNotes, the billionaire shared a piece venting about his personal struggles , this Tuesday (7).

For him, 2021 was “an incredibly difficult year for many people, myself included”. Gates says that while he preferred to focus on his work for the past year, he acknowledged the curiosity that had arisen around his divorce from Melinda Gates, announced in May after 27 years of marriage.

“Melinda and I continue to run our foundation together and have found a good new pace of work,” the billionaire told Bill and Melinda Gates of the nonprofit. “But I can’t deny that it was a year of great personal sadness for me. Adapting to change is never easy.”

Gates explains that one of the biggest changes was spending a lot of time alone, and even described himself as an “empty nest” after the departure of his two youngest children, Phoebe and Rory. Throughout the text, he also celebrates the marriage of his 3rd son, Jenn, to equestrian Nayel Nasser.

“The house is much quieter without a bunch of teenagers around,” he wrote, who now finds more time to work or read a book. “[Mas] it’s a strange and disorienting experience,” he wrote. “My personal world has never seemed smaller than in the last twelve months.”

The Microsoft billionaire adds that it was a year of “great transitions”. In addition, he says he fears a dangerous decline in people’s trust in public institutions after the Covid-19 pandemic period.

“Based on what I’ve seen in recent years, I’m more concerned than ever about the ability of governments to accomplish great things,” he wrote. He also said that he is writing a book on how to prepare for a pandemic, and that it is “the biggest and most important thing I will be working on in 2022.”

Finally, he was enthusiastic about the technological advances brought about by the pandemic, and sees that they can bring a revolution to health, education and the world of work. “Incredibly, we are just beginning to see how digitization will change our lives,” he reflected.

“There is a lot of potential for technology to create more flexibility and choice for people.” Gates even predicted that the “acute phase” of the pandemic would come to an end “sometime in 2022” and acknowledged that the new Ômicron variant is worrisome.

“The world is better prepared to deal with potentially bad strains than at any other point in the pandemic so far.” For him, “new drugs will be able to take care of most cases and hospitals will be able to take care of the rest”.