I have a weekly catch up with my manager on Friday, it’s never a really long meeting, we talk through his diary for the next couple of weeks, talk about what I’m doing, catch up on how we’re feeling, things we’ve observed around the business that should go into the bucket for audits or risk planning. Writing it down it sounds much more high level than it actually is, often I remind him to go for a walk or campaign for him to have more of a work/life balance! We’ve been doing it since October and we continue with it now. All of this explanation to talk about his comment this week, that I’m always cheerful and take things in my stride.

I find this fascinating because as most of the people that love me know, I’m very often grumpy. Clearly, I try to be professional and not bring that grumpiness to my work because I have taken to heart the advice someone gave me, “You’re feelings are yours, you’re not allowed to inflict them on a bunch of other people who are trying to deal with their own feelings”

This has stood me in good stead generally, but the real reason, I am coping with lockdown and perpetual working from home (aside from continuing to have paid employment – which is such a relief!) can be summed up in the first photo, look at that sky at 10pm. It’s light, the sun is mostly shining and comes up about 4.30am.

One of the things, I’m acutely aware of is that this won’t last forever and I’ll be working from home in the autumn as it gets dark. That has some good points, yay for not having to commute but boo for feeling trapped in the house.

I need to make some changes to my space. I need a desk that isn’t my kitchen table, so I can have another screen and maybe a docking station and keyboard. To do that, there needs to be some re-arrangement of my living room, which has a knock on impact on the bedroom and the cupboard of doom. I know what needs to happen and I’m working on it.

This weekend, my support bubble arrived with a car and we went to do some shopping, for the plot and for me. We couldn’t get everything, we did get some thyme, I finally got a new airer and Ma got a stepladder. This was secondary to seeing Ma and getting to hug her. The second best thing was sitting at the table across from her, talking and eating. I’m adjusting to the new normal but I’ll never adjust to losing this normal so soon (Ma tells me that she’s going to be way over 90 before she shuffles off this mortal coil, so I have at least 20 years more!)

The rest of the weekend was sent catching up on the allotment and the house, oh and it was World Gin Day on Saturday so there was this.

Plans for this week are as ever, work. I’ve got a bunch of interesting stuff to do this week, some of it genuinely interesting and some of it interesting because I have to learn how to do it before I get it done!

In the flat, this is the week of the cleaning the floors. Last week, I cleaned my bedroom floor (even under the bed) and it made a huge difference, so I need to do the same to all the others. Of all housework tasks, I loathe everything that involves cleaning floors, hoovering, sweeping, mopping, scrubbing, I hate all of it. If I could ever afford a cleaner, that’s pretty much all I’d really want them to do. Well that and the occasional oven clean!

On the plot, it’s do all the things on last week’s list that I didn’t get to on Sunday!

Fortunately for me, it’s June, it’s light and my energy levels are high, I need to re-establish my grip on the dirt levels in the house before my energy levels plummet and then it just takes much more energy to get anything done!

I hope everyone has a good week.