End of Lockdown

What I’ve learnt…

I’d been contacted my my Production Manager from work the week before, so I knew my hiatus as an early retiree was about to come to an end. And frankly I’m absolutely gutted. We have covered some feelings of the our time together in Lockdown in our new vlog on the Chris and Shell YouTube channel. You can watch that here.

But I just thought I would dig a little deeper and talk about some of the less obvious things. Sans socks! As you can see from the image above, my feet are scratched, dirty, paint engrained and slightly sun kissed. And now I am back in socks, I am really missing having my feet out and exposed to the World. Which admittedly might seem a little daft, but it’s not to me. As clothes cover and protect, it is easy to become immune to the feel of the temperature the weather. In my battered old ‘flops I feel free, lighter, more in tune with myself and my surroundings. And socks and shoes feel like a barrier to these feelings, a layer of seperation from me and everything around me.

Sound of silence, or birds, or wind, even the fridge. Things that get pushed aside by trains, cars and planes all of which we are surrounded by. Especially the planes. Being on the approach to Manchester Airport is something you get used to. the sound and the trails in the sky. But how quickly you appreciate it not being tsubjected to the constant sound of jet engines. To sit in the narrowboat with the door just slightly ajar and to be able to hear all the bird song and the tweets of the young ducklings and cygnets is just beautiful.

Lastly it was something we immediately realised that we should have mentioned in the vlog - the weather. The weather has been absolutely incredible.

To have had almost six weeks of Sunshine and dry weather has elevated this period to amazing. To have this much time to reset, study, relax, read and generally focus on yourself and the ones you love, is unprecedented as an adult! It takes me back to school Summer holidays and the beauty of being outside, ferel, playing, building dens, riding bikes…… And in later years drinking neat Pernot in the woods! (I wouldn’t recommend this, to this day the smell and taste of pernot can leave me full of anxiety and stress).

What I am trying to say is the focus on self has been wonderous. Whether that is completing an online course, painting, reading, DIY, whatever task you accomplished it was yours. Yours to contemplate and complete at your own pace without having your days determined by the allocation of time to work.

And that leads me nicely to the biggest takeaway of this extreme social experiment that we have all taken part in. Time. If nothing else during this period, it has hit home just how precious and important it is. How much I can waste of it, mindlessly scrolling, dreaming of things currently out of reach, wasting effort on things that aren’t helping me to attain the life I could lead now!

My focus coming out of lockdown and into the new normal is clawing back as much of our most precious commodity as possible - TIME. My time, me and my familys time, me and my friends time, because without that, lockdown has taught me that the life I had been living is pretty unfulfilling….