More ups than downs

It's only been a week since my first blog but it sometimes feels like longer since last Wednesday. The days do fly by, I have had many conversations and interactions which have left me with a mix of emotions this week. The overall feeling is one of wanting to help as many people as possible during these times, and my personal goal is to make sure I have more ups than downs every day. As the chaos of moving businesses remotely for so many seems to have calmed slightly, the daily intensity is still there for most of us, so I decided to join my daughter with her morning PE class with Joe Wicks to see if exercise really does help set up your day. I'm usually on a long school run first thing, now I am raring to go and laughing with my youngest. Lucky I'm working from home, since I'm not sure I would have made it up the 4 flights of stairs to my office, I could barely walk yesterday after Monday's session! Yesterday evening I was convinced that the class had broken me, but when I got up this morning, my daughter was my motivation; I didn't want to let her down. I was so glad I joined in, it was really uplifting to hear that I was part of 500,000 families around the world involved in the session. I'm still not convinced this is actually a child's PE class! I admitted to my husband over the weekend I have been living out some of my childhood career aspirations during this time. I studied Anatomical Sciences at University, after deciding medicine wasn't the right path for me. Fainting during my work experience in A&E probably had something to do with that! However, I now wash my hands as if I'm scrubbing in as a surgeon. The novelty of singing happy birthday has worn off. At the weekend, I set to work on cutting my own hair (apologies to my hairdresser who will have to sort it out at the end of all of this) as well as my husband's. He has a lot of face to face, remote team and clients meetings so my brief was....don't mess it up! I said I'd start at the back since he's not leaving the house any time soon and no one will see him. It turned out really well, maybe the time I spent with my primary school friend playing hairdressers really paid off! Unfortunately, both of my kids have decided that I am not skilled enough to go near their hair! Let's see what they say in a few weeks time. Although I have really enjoyed playing at other jobs, I still love recruitment and won't be changing careers any time soon. Being able to offer support during such challenging times has felt worthwhile. It's my nature to always feel that I could do more but I have been humbled and privileged to have been part of some extremely honest conversations this week and hope I have made a difference and provided some guidance. My motto in the office is "if you have one achievement in a day, then the day is a success", there has never been a time when this is more relevant. Small achievements right now feel like much larger successes. It feels like we have stepped back in time to a more basic lifestyle. We are satisfied with less, we are having to communicate more, we are all in this together and there is a feeling of greater respect and community spirit. My family have got used to me rationing the food, the spreadsheet is changing daily, even the pre teen and teen have moaned less, or maybe I have managed to block this out more! In between working and home schooling, I've also been helping my mum and in-laws with food deliveries and keeping in contact. My mum said to me that her favourite soaps, EastEnders and Coronation Street are also being rationed, maybe there's more positives to this period of time than I first realised! And, no we haven't finished the sweets from last week yet!