I had a Coronavirus meltdown last week. Despite being somebody who is always busy and hardly ever bored, I started to get a serious dose of spare time envy. I virtually ‘shouted’ out the point that a lot of us are still working, and harder than ever in these difficult circumstances.
That said, I do feel very bad for those who have lost their jobs or been furloughed. I know that a lot of people are really struggling and wish they were still working and the overlay of dealing with sickness and loss all adds to our anxiety levels. I was just letting off steam.
For those of us who have worked remotely or run our businesses from home for a number of years, it has been business as usual, in fact far more than usual to accommodate the disruption and stress of the current situation we are all experiencing.
I’m not going to lie, like most of us I am finding lockdown very hard and although I made a commitment after a particularly inspirational webinar with Jaz Ampaw-Farr entitled ‘Keep Calm and Get Inspired’ run by the Marketing Society to ‘thrive rather than just survive’, my sense of humour momentarily failed me. Dealing with cancelled events, sponsorship deals and corporate work, and recovering from what appears to have been a mild case of COVID-19, I let my feelings loose on social media.
This manifested in a serious rant about the people sharing their newfound delight in cooking, crafting, decorating and baking bloody sourdough bread! The bread becoming the metaphor for my frustration!
The response was polarised by those who wholeheartedly agreed with me (I did hit a very raw nerve with other seasoned home workers) and those who cared enough about me to challenge my views about not having time to be ‘creative’ and more importantly cutting myself some slack and resting up.
So, writing this is my version of baking bread. I find writing a pleasure mainly as in the usual run of things I don’t have time to explore and expand my thoughts which are mainly confined to rants or comments on my Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn feeds.
Now we have had a few days break over the long sunny Easter weekend, I have been trying to enjoy our little patch of Rochester Riviera for the first time since we moved into our house just over a year ago and we have been for walks and cooked some lovely food.
I do believe very much in what Jaz said about thriving rather than surviving and I’m under no illusions about how hard it’s going to be. She also made a really important point which ties in well with my frustration about spare time and creativity.
Funny Women is my life’s work (yes, I know this is corny but true) and it has become a creative community populated by lots of clever, talented and amazing performers, writers, creators, producer and directors. Consequently, I’ve always focused fully on the intellectual value or ‘capital’ of Funny Women. I was therefore delighted when Jaz said that this was the highest form of capital in business at this time.
Despite the obvious importance of financial capital, it gives us the lowest return on our investment in terms of time and effort during isolation and while we are remote working. She went on to stress that physical, relational and spiritual capital are equally important – which I plan to explore during the enduring period of lockdown.
Perhaps I will come out of this slimmer, fitter, happier and more comfortable with the world than I have been for years. However, I don’t think I will be baking sourdough bread any time soon…
