Well that’ll teach me.

I’ve been supremely lax in posting anything on my blog in the last few months, but that’s not to say I haven’t been thinking about it. Actively planning to. Undertaking all the relevant parts of a blog post (writing being the main one, obviously) except that crucial last little ‘publish’ step. Just hadn’t quite got round to it. And now this. Now, in a cruel twist of fate, the fact that we’re all self isolating in the face of a global pandemic at once means that I suddenly have ample time to publish all those pending posts, and that they are all rendered utterly trivial and irrelevant.

Actually, though, neither of those is strictly true. Somewhat mysteriously, I don’t seem to have the time to do anything more now that we’re all confined to our homes for the foreseeable future. If anything, I have a bit less time. The house needs more cleaning when you’re in it more to mess it up and then notice the mess.

Also when you’re working from home, and at home in the evenings, the fridge seems to require constant restocking. I put this 50% down to not eating out, and 50% down to spending 90% of my working day getting up to look in the fridge.

Then the shopping itself takes a million hours while you decide which supermarket will have the best queue-to-space ratio (basically either wait ages in a long queue for a supermarket that’s only letting in a few at a time, and then have a relatively stress-free shopping experience, or nip in with little waiting to find you have to do a supermarket sweep style shop while holding your breath the entire way round, as you struggle to keep 2cm, never mind 2 metres, away from the other customers).

All sorts of beauty treatments, mainly nail related, have to be mastered via extensive you tube viewing and procurement of dubious powder concoctions.

Also work. Working from home has become a 9-5 multi-person video call, around which all actual work must be accommodated. The video call is entirely concerned with ensuring that everyone is on mute, and then that everyone is off mute when they need to speak (which is typically only successfully conveyed to the muted speaker after they have completed a presentation of approximately one hour‘s duration). That and commenting on the decor of colleagues’ spare rooms, admiring pets, commiserating about the challenges of juggling work and home schooling, and marvelling at the one team member who still hasn’t done a Joe Wicks workout.

Oh, and all the other video calls to inspect the health of distant relatives and friends whose actual faces I haven’t seen in so long that if I’m honest, I’m not really sure I recognise them at all. I’m probably FaceTiming a load of random strangers. But time must be found for all these things, before this elusive ‘free time’ materialises.

So then, the second thing. The topics of my nearly-posts centred loosely around the themes of mental health, self care and motivation. You know, a few years into cancer treatment and coming up to the annual checks. Obviously all underpinned by the solid subjects of nails, ponies, food and friends. Ok, so I realise that not being able to get my nails re-sparkled isn’t the most serious risk of this particular global pandemic, but actually, eating well, being in touch with friends, spending time outside, in nature (ginger pony optional) and – yes – continuing to maintain some focus on the normal pleasures, nails or whatever, all key aspects of my coping strategy right now.

Along with keeping so busy I don’t have time to worry, of course. Speaking of which, I must just go and stare mindlessly into the fridge again…