When I set up this site a few years ago, I thought it was going to be the start of something special. My own platform to write about whatever I liked, whenever I liked. Not about building a brand or an online presence but just a place to capture and order my thoughts as I went about my life.

Roll forward four years and I have written so little here that I am beginning to question if it is worth renewing my domain and hosting subscription the next time it comes around. So why the writer’s block?

I am in awe of those whose lives are so busy or whose thoughts are so profound that they find the time and energy to write on a daily basis. It’s not that my head is empty; if anything, there are too many thoughts, too many emotions flying around in there (see Give your mind a break!) just that I lack that something that compels me to capture these in writing. Or, at least, to capture these in this form of writing.

Is it because I am fundamentally worried about writing something that reveals too much about me? I have pondered this a lot recently as a result of a leadership development programme I am on. Every time the focus of the particular session turns to talking about ourselves I get a familiar knot in my stomach. Ask me to talk about something or someone else, no problem, I would happily blather on for hours on end. Ask me to talk about me and I’m like a rabbit in the headlights. In fact, I wonder if the session earlier this week has given me the impetus to get something written down here today? It was about the power of story telling and using stories as a call to action, to get others to sign up to your cause and lend their support. By the time the facilitator had started to tell us her story, I started to feel very uncomfortable, knowing that my turn was coming soon, albeit talking with just one other person. As it turned out, the colleague I was assigned to in the break-out room did a great job of teasing out my thoughts and I came up with a story of a genuine life experience about supportive and timely access to services that indeed has shaped my values and driven me throughout my career.

Interestingly, I am drawn to telling stories through writing and those who have read my work tell me that the stories and characters in them reveal a lot about me, more so than I had thought when writing them. Is this the light bulb moment? That is, I don’t like to blog as the interaction between me and the reader is too direct? There is no filter of fiction and make believe to allow me to truly open up?

I will reflect on that and, who knows, I might be back again before too long.

As I sit here on a pleasantly warm and sunny evening in June, I feel, for the first time in a long while, a compulsion to write. This is unusual as it’s typically an emotional event that prompts me to fire up the laptop and start typing; tonight, I feel contented.

But why? We’re in the middle of a global pandemic, life as we knew it has been turned on its head and looks like being severely disrupted for many months to come.

That’s not to say I haven’t been thinking a lot about everything going on around me, just that where we are right now has an eye-of-the-storm calmness about it. The immediate panic-stricken response seems long in the past – even though in reality it was just a few months ago – yet we are far from out of the woods. However, like a toddler walking for the first time, the country is continuing to make small and tentative steps towards restoring life to how it was before. Of course, it might not be like before and I’ve lost count of the number of times people refer to the “new normal” almost to the point it has become a single word.

Newnormal.

I said I was calm tonight, but underneath I feel an underlying sense of unease. Despite the initial baby steps, the appetite is there to lift restrictions at an increasing pace. Once the flood gates have been opened, it’s going to take one hell of an effort to close them again.

Lots of the shops opened up again today and from the pictures online, it seems that thousands of people have been champing at the bit to engage in a bit of retail therapy beyond clicking on the ‘buy now’ button. Is it just herd mentality fuelled by targeted social media advertising or is there a sense of desperation out there from people to rediscover a little of what life was like before all this happened?

I wasn’t one of the thousands and not just because I was working (at home) today. If I’m entirely honest, there is a part of me that is thriving off life at present. Of course, I am devastated by the cost to human life that the world has experienced in the last six months. Easy to forget that every number is a person: a mother, a father, a daughter, a son, a friend, a lover and all those affected by death during these times will, no doubt, wish that none of this ever happened. In that sense, tonight’s words indeed should be taken in perspective and could be perceived as nothing more than some self-indulgent self-reflection. I beg forgiveness if this is how it comes across.

However, I want to tap into something bigger than my own feelings and I suppose I hope that by sharing, I can spark some thoughts in your own minds.

What was life like before?

Routine; busy; daily commute; traffic jams; swimming; face-to-face meetings; planes in the sky; family get-togethers; crowds at football matches; trips to town; rushing; school runs; plenty of pasta; cinema; beer in a pub; freedom to travel; life passing by; and traffic fumes.

The list could go on and these were some that popped into my head. You will see that some of these are aspects of life which I dearly miss but, equally, there are some elements of that life that I could do without experiencing ever again. I genuinely don’t miss the faster pace of life before; the tick tock of my natural metronome is more in step with the tick tock of life around me presently. And I like that.

That said, I do want (and need) to go swimming again and I long for a Sunday roast with all the family talking over each other at the dinner table rather than on a Zoom call. I want a beer in a pub even though a pint costs almost a fiver. I want to travel again. I want my kids to get back to school so they can see their friends and re-start learning in a classroom (or the playground).

Work is going to be an interesting one. Not just for where I work but for companies up and down the country and across the globe. Have we witnessed a seismic shift to virtual companies with almost no office estate? Will those of us who can work from home ever return to the office where we previously spent countless hours? How will we cope in a face-to-face meeting without being able to turn off the camera and microphone for an enormous yawn? Will people still need season tickets or has the daily commute by bus or train had its day?  

Time. I feel I have so much more of it than before. Time for family, time for oneself, time for reflection, time for hobbies, time to waste. Time is the commodity of greatest value that we all seem to have more of. Gone is the harsh 6.15am alarm – I haven’t set my alarm for months – and gone is my morning stomach ache from the mad rush corralling the kids so they are ready in time to leave for school. In fact, as I write this, gone is my cramping stomach altogether. Wow, that’s one I hadn’t clocked until now. The Buscopan will be going out of date!

Could some of this be the newnormal? Or is this merely a holiday from life before, with life after becoming much the same as before. Perhaps my eye-of-the-storm analogy is more fitting than I first thought and this is merely the calm in between before and after with not much changing after all?

I suppose what I want to say is that I hope some of this change is permanent; we should hold on desperately to what we currently have and value so dearly for there is every chance that it will be wrenched from our grasp before we know it and, over the years,  become nothing more than a distant memory. Remember when we baked all that bread? Remember when we went walking every afternoon? Remember all those films we watched as a family? If only we had time to do those things again…

Maybe this is why I have felt compelled to write this evening (it is still warm just a little darker); I want to capture this moment, revel in its calmness and hope that life before and life after are similar…but not the same.

The best thing about February is that it is short.

Each year, this dastardly month is upon us and drags me down with its general misery. You’re probably thinking how immensely unhealthy it is to make such strong connections between months of the year and feelings of well-being. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what I find myself doing…

Last week, I spoke with a few colleagues in the office about this (searching for some solace to be perfectly honest) and was surprised how even verbalising the different months provoked in me a strong emotional reaction. Without much thought at all, I was able to place them into the following categories:

Positive – April, May, June, July, September, October, December

Neutral – January, March, August, November

Negative – February

On reflection, the good news is that I have only placed one of the twelve in the negative category and even better news that there’s only a couple of weeks to go before it’s over.

In the meantime, I will just trudge on through the mire knowing that March is just around the corner and then I can start shifting up through the gears into the long stretch of positivity from April through to July – even writing these words is lifting my spirits!

There is one very happy day in February and that is Valentine’s Day. I’m certainly not buying into the commercial extravaganza but it was on this day 16 years ago that I asked my girlfriend at the time to marry me. Fortunately, she said “Yes” and the rest, as they say, is history.

Maybe this month is not so bad after all.

(Yes, it is).

While I was writing How short, this life? I found out that a dear friend of ours had passed away. Well, just about one month later, his funeral took place. Despite the sadness of having to finally say farewell, the service was also a happy one where his family and friends shared their memories and celebrated his life.

A week later, and I have been reflecting on those eulogies. In one of his finest songs, Imagine, John Lennon sang  “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can.” Of course, nobody at the funeral talked about material things, the house where he lived, the type of car he drove, the clothes he wore. Rightly, they were about the person, his life, his achievements, his loved ones. When life comes to an end, the legacy will almost always be the intangibles or items with high sentimental value: a conversation; a chance meeting; camaraderie through work or volunteering; a cherished letter, picture or video. Most of us would give up everything we own to keep our loved ones with us on this earth. His brother summed up what he thought about his older sibling as “Splendid. He was a splendid chap.”

Hopefully, I have still got a long way to go before my final breath but I am clear on how I want to be remembered and would be very satisfied with the word “splendid” when people talk about me. We spend so much of our lives chasing the money and fretting about keeping up with the Joneses but how much easier would it be if you could recondition yourself to be satisfied with what you have got? This isn’t about shunning basic needs and for those unfortunate to have very little, what I am writing may come across as idealistic or the thoughts of someone with clearly not enough to worry about. What I am trying to say is once you have attained a reasonably comfortable standard of living with a roof over your head and food on the table, be thankful and try to avoid feeding an insatiable appetite for more and more.

In the Japanese animation Spirited Away there is a character called a Hoshigari (ほしがり) that gets its energy by satiating the appetites of the greedy who, in this case, keep asking for gold which it conjures up from its hands. In the end the Hoshigari turns on them and starts to eat up the very people it gave the gold nuggets to in the first place. It’s a poignant message in a film well worth watching if you haven’t seen it already.

I certainly don’t want to get eaten by a Hoshigari and so the next time I feel a hankering for something new I will channel my energy instead into imagining what I can do towards becoming a splendid chap.

That feels like a much better use of my time.