Maddie is out of the office

As I write this I have just received the news that I am heading back to the office. Yes, I left again, it was not necessarily planned, but it was a contingency I had prepared for.

I left my very safe, friendly, fun and comfortably paid job, to move to yet another island – cat crate and all! Long story short, the HR team was displeased with my choice to move away from commuting distance to London, and so I was abruptly out of the office again towards the end of last year.

Whilst slightly scary to find yourself owning a home, living somewhere new, and without a job, this has been a truly wonderful time in my life, so I thought I would take a few minutes to review and reflect; it seemed like the right point to add to the blog (whilst I am still legitimately out of the office!)….

• Moving house is ludicrously unfun, however, if you project plan, have people who are willing to dive in and be part of it with you, allowing you to outsource what you can, it can become a mini adventure in and of itself.
• If you have the resources and are happy to sleep on a blow up bed for four weeks, it is possible to have an entire house revamped in that time – be prepared to be locked in various rooms and have to drop out of bathroom windows if you have your internal door handles removed.
• On which, be prepared to mediate between painters and joiners if you employ them to paint and rehang the same doors simultaneously.
• If there is something you really know you want in your home, find people who will hear you and make it happen, don’t compromise – your home should be something YOU are proud of.
• On the subject of, I have only learned since being here the value of loving where you live, being happy to come home each day, whether that is from work, just being out and about, or indeed from holiday. Something entirely new to me; I used to count down until the next time I could be away – now I treat my home like a luxury.
• Taking time away from the City has allowed me to realise the value in the small things, the adventures, the people you choose to be in your life; it really doesn’t matter how expensive your shoes are – although I have a rather delightful selection of Hunter wellies – they are probably the only per se expensive thing I have bought in the last ten months, and they are actually used! I relish in them, if you see me wearing anything else then I must be playing tennis.
• If you move somewhere new, don’t be scared to make friends – I am petrified of new people, so if I can do it, I am sure you can too! Invite people over, offer them a glass of port and some cheese, be happy to talk about the book you’re carrying around with you, try to relax the resting bitch face.
• With this in mind, say yes more! Buy that dry robe and try sea swimming in February, borrow a tennis racket and play appalling tennis several times a week just for the fun of it, accept and plant 19 buckets of lily bulbs from your neighbour, learn how to cook lobsters straight off the boat at midnight, forage for fruit and research making plum wine; on the other hand don’t sign up to buy a horse or a boat until you absolutely know you can afford it.
• If you find yourself stepping back into a job you worked 20 years ago whilst you consider next steps (something has to pay for the wine and cheese!) it can be immensely rewarding, and you realise that age is literally just a number. Work friends are the people you spend your days with, much like working together on a yacht – it doesn’t matter where you have come from, your qualifications or your situation, at this point in time you are all onboard to get to the destination. Respect and pay attention to each other, do your role but offer to help if someone looks like they need it, try to smile, breathe, swear if you need to, remember that there is strength in adversity. And there will probably be a parking beer* at the end of the day.

* A sailing thing – the drink you have once your boat is safely parked up and all the jobs are done; it might be 3am and it might be a neat gin because that is all you have on the yacht, or just a big cold glass of water if that is your vibe, you may not have been on shore for days, everyone probably needs a shower, but you sit with your friends and sigh and smile, because you made it to here – a parking beer.

The average internal monologue is 4,000 words a minute, for some it can be up to 6,000.

That is a lot of constant criticism. Of repeated reminders of how likely we are to fail, to mis-step, to blunder, be laughed at and ridiculed.

Does the inner voice ever encourage or embolden? Mine doesn’t. Mine is every unimpressed teacher, every strangers’ glare, every time my parents said “disappointed in you”.

And yet we step up, we surprise ourselves by our resilience, every day we continue on and try again. Partly obligation, of course, it isn’t appropriate to ignore the alarm on a Monday morning; but we silence the voice telling us we cannot, and make whatever small steps are required to begin to complete our day.

6,000 words a minute telling us we are going to fail, versus 100 words a minute from a friend or colleague or loved one telling us we have done a good job, that we are strong or brave, that we are someone they respect or look up to, that our opinion or input is desired, that we are a good friend.

It is so hard to remember the best and not allow it to be overshadowed by the worst yet to come. To misquote one of my favourite shows, let’s be both; the inner negative will probably always be there, but it shouldn’t overwrite all we achieve; the possibility of failure or having already failed and not realising it yet, the shadow just around the corner, the head bowed to stifle a laugh at our expense; if we feel we have achieved in the moment we should be proud. And we can still be scared.

These feelings can coexist, we just have to know we have done our best, will try again tomorrow, and perhaps everyone else – both outside and inner voices – will be kinder.

How have you coped with lockdown? With isolating? With loneliness, or the opposite; people in your personal space all the time?

I turned to food. It comes with huge and predictable guilt, but at the time it is fun; the planning of what to eat is the highlight of my day, the purchasing, the discovery of new Maddie friendly items, and the enjoyment of the moment of eating! But then there is the inevitable shame. If anything I eat more to ensure it is “worth it” on the other side. The regret the next day. When I next brave the scales. When I catch a glimpse of myself side on in a mirror.

I have barely seen anyone in person since March, and fundamentally do not do video anything, so few people know quite how badly the frenetic 2020 eating has affected me. Since my desk is directly in front of the fridge I can literally reach in from my chair, it is hard to say no to what my boss has termed a “snaccident” except mine are almost continuous.

I have tried not buying food, but the fear hits me 30mins before the supermarket closes; what if THIS is the day they close for good? What if THIS is my last chance to buy those little luxuries I need right now? Because if that is the case then I deserve this one last glorious midnight snack.

I hate the way I look and feel, and I am doing my best to encourage myself to exercise, hoping that once I start to see the wins I will finally stop eating the contents of my fridge at least twice a week.

But we have hit a roadbump, which prompted me to write this post. I sent the below email to my gym earlier, and I thought it couldn’t hurt to share – in case anyone else feels like me, in a loop, without a clear or shame free path back to pre lockdown life.

You are not alone.

~~~

Good evening,

I attend your gym between 3 and 7 times a week, and I am delighted with your staff and service. However, yesterday I was informed that the photograph you have on file for me is no longer acceptable and you will cancel my membership unless I let your staff take a new one. This year has been hard. I have put on upwards of 40lbs and still have 20lbs to lose. I do not want a photograph of me taken like this, feeling hideous, for posterity. I did not go to the gym today through fear of having to be photographed like this, and confess I am considering cancelling my membership; I had to flag this to you as this goes against what I would assume is everything you stand for? Why are you discouraging your members? The gym should be a safe place, free of shame. I have tears when I think about having to try again to come tomorrow and face a camera, I may be brave enough but I may not, and I doubt I am the only one. Please consider your policies and be kind to your members and those who may consider becoming a member, we want to improve ourselves with your help, please don’t put hurdles in our way.

I always thought I would be the person to build the bookcase, the secret tunnel, equip the attic room. To secrete food and water, to pass notes, to save a life.

It turns out that I scare easily; if my family are at risk, I am not so bold.

We are being tested now, it is not the wars or the massacres of our grandparents, it is a new test – one of isolation and fear. There are no bombs or shots fired, but a simple handshake could fell you. Those who dare to travel sit silently on planes with masks on, because an afternoon choir session could kill your loved ones.

Do not sing. Do not cheer. Do not hug. Do not kiss. Do not shake hands.

How will we welcome people back into our lives? I live alone. I touch no-one. I don’t know if or when that will change.

And the most unexpected thing of all, I am not Anne Frank, and I am not the family who fostered her, instead I am on the side of those reporting misdemeanours because it feels like the only way through this. We cannot look away when we see people taking risks they cannot account for.

The yellow brick road is hard to find right now, but I have to hope that together we can walk the way home.

A precious commodity.

Looking back I don’t think I realised quite enough how fortunate I was at sea, with all that space. It awed me, amazed me, I felt so lucky to be there and live the experience, but I didn’t think enough about the space.

If anything we would concentrate on the lack of space!

As you squeeze past someone in the galley, or bump someone’s feet when creeping to your bunk in the dead of night. As too many people fit on the same bench, because the other side of the yacht is being covered in waves. As you climb inside the engine bay with someone you met less than 24hrs before.

Right now space is a strange thing:

1. We cannot touch each other. I’ve never been a touchy person (my friends will vouch for this, I have even thought about asking Google “how to hug” because it makes me so anxious – Where do you put your arms? Who goes up and who goes down? Do you touch? Do you Keanu?)…. so actually I don’t mind this change too much at all.

2. We live in our own space all the time. If you thought your home was just a “crash pad” then 2020 had a surprise in store. You have to love your space, to want to be in your space. Live, work, exercise, relax, sleep. There is nowhere to go. My space is eight paces across and thirteen in the diagonal.

3. The mental benefits of outside space. I love the outside; as well as the sailing, I have been known to dig potatoes and do assault courses, but I am much more likely nowadays to be found outside being leisurely or lazy. When outside time was limited by lockdown that was very hard, now we can go outside (weather permitting!) the space to walk and breathe means so much.

4. The sky. I listened to a podcast yesterday and they interviewed an astronaut who had just returned from the ISS (aside: this ties in with my claim to fame, ahem) as in actual SPACE and she said the thing she missed the most was the blue sky. They had all the space you can imagine surrounding them, but she wanted to be back here, to breathe the air, and to stare at the blue sky we take for granted.

I love my space, I love the blue sky, I also look forward to a time when there are too many of us crammed around a pub table or sqeezed into a sushi bar.

I wouldn’t mind never having to awkwardly hug someone again.

My housecats are intrigued by doors; not just the ones which lead to the world outside.

Wardrobe doors, cupboard doors, the elusive bedroom door. They touch them and stare at them, they open them to just ajar and stare wide eyed at the sights beyond, and sometimes when no-one is watching they slip through…

It is not just doors, an opportunity which could be a door, a portal, a route into another world, is equally as intriguing; loose skirting boards are prised off by curious paws and squeezed through into the dusty darkness within. Indeed, when I lived in Tenerife, they found a loose panel at the back of a wardrobe through which they would climb and nest amongst the clean linen.

We all grew up with Narnia, this idea of another world just beyond ours, a mere step through a wardrobe door away. Some place we never knew existed, of which we could go forever without knowing, if we hadn’t tried to test the boundaries of what we thought we knew were the edges of our world. A door where a wall should be. Stepping into the outside, into the unknown.

I feel a bit the same myself right now. I cannot see the outside world from within my flat. I can see a tiny bit of sky through my neighbours windows if I stand on my table. I can hear if it is raining, but it isn’t enough to know what is out there, what awaits me when I open the door and step through it.

Will it be safe? Will it be sunny or cold? Will I be the only person on the streets? Will the streets have changed? Will the world have changed? Will there be armed guards, will I be turned straight home, will I be hurt? Will I accidentally harm others through my own naivete? Is going outside, stepping through that door, still a gift, something to be feared?

The ice queen could pass by on her sleigh, or it could be time for father christmas, for all I know from being inside there could be lions and fauns waiting for me.

The world outside is so unknown right now. Every time we step through the door it is as if into our own Narnia; don’t forget your coat, and remember it is important to believe.

Over the years I have moved a lot, and big moves too – thousands of miles, pack up my life, sell or give away possessions, start again somewhere new with my suitcases and a cat crate. But this recent move, to working from home, to seeing no friends, to a life truly only with myself, took a different type of adjustment.

My mother worried about me when I was out at sea for days at a time – I didn’t help by phoning and crying on occasions I was on shore – and she worried about me when I lived on an island and could go days without seeing a friendly face. I wasn’t worried, I knew I had a plan, and I knew I had plans. Things are very different now, none of us can plan anything; but this isn’t a pity me post, this is a realisation.

I have always been a planner, it was a reason people were surprised I wanted to be a sailing instructor, you can’t live to a schedule when you are at the behest of the wind. However, I felt I had plans; I knew when I was working, I knew what I wanted to achieve every day. When I wasn’t working I set myself small goals. But I always looked forward to the big plans, to the knowns, to the – until now – concrete items in my diary; holidays, birthdays, weddings. One by one being striked through as they are cancelled.

Last weekend I was very sad. I asked if someone would like to see me for 10mins from a safe distance, I just wanted to see a friendly face. They said no, I cried. Then I watched the Queen tell us to be strong, and I cried.

But as of this week, maybe I have passed the Wednesday, the hump day of lockdown, I feel better. And I hope you all do too!

I have no plans, but I am making plans to make plans! To go to the South of France with my sister. To drive my currently retired car to see friends in Bristol. To have lunch on the terrace with my parents. To go to our favourite pub and eat excellent Thai food with sailing friends. To sit in a park, picnic and laugh. To go back to Lanzarote and feel the breeze off the sea on my face. To go to the gym, the charity shop, the library…..

To do all the stuff we used to take for granted, which I have stopped missing and feeling sad about missing, rather started to feel the anticipation about getting through this and saying yes to plans again.

Anyone who didn’t say yes to plans before, and I am guilty of this, for saying no because you’re feeling fat or have anxiety about whether you’ve been invited out of kindness – suffice to say, after all this, if people don’t want to see you they don’t have to, and you don’t have to see them! If we can cope with social isolation, we can all cope with a bit of FOMO and some quiet time when we need it.

A huge hurdle I have overcome this week was getting frustrated with myself for repeatedly eating the contents of my fridge/cupboards; I am one of those people who doesn’t usually have food in the house. Now I have moved all of my lockdown provisions to a locked cupboard, which I will open only if I get sick and/or need to quarantine, and if I don’t eat them at the end of this I will take it all to a food bank. I have the reassurance of having the food, but also not thinking of it as my food, a huge weight off my shoulders.

And a plan to, hopefully, give it all away.

Six months in to being back in the office, and City life isn’t quite what any of us could have imagined right now*.

So, some London lockdown updates Chez Maddie:

– The cats are big fans of work from home, especially sitting on my stuff, touching my face, and shouting at me when I’m on a conference call, albeit they sleep a LOT (and snore!).

– Moppet is delighted I have two laptops and a monitor which all have thick and difficult-to-replace cables she can try to chew through when I’m not paying her enough attention.

– Dismantling the WFH set up every evening (see above) is very boring, and if this continues there’s a high chance it will become work-from-bedroom-floor; which is already where the printer/scanner lives as it’s a bugger to move.

– I do not want to put on work clothes or tights ever again, and shall be petitioning to work in gymkit full time from now on.

– My “outside” time has become the most precious part of my day; I plan it meticulously, because I don’t have any outside space or even a window in my flat, so aside from that glorious exercise each day I am truly inside and alone (with the cats).

– There’s a terrifying rumour they may enforce a “camera on” rule for work conference calls; these are all done via an online system to which US participants dial in from their laptop, and us UK ilk dial in from our phones (because phone = camera off….); a companywide laptop “camera on” rule means an entire rethink of my lockdown plan of living in gymkit with dirty hair; as a colleague realised the other day when he gamefully joined in, and remembered too late he was wearing a rugby shirt and hadn’t shaved for a week.

– Work hours no longer exist, since we all live at home and work at home we literally live at work, and can (and I do) work all the time; I joked a couple of months ago, when work got super busy, that we lived at work because we were working evenings and weekends, and my boss joked that he was taking advantage of the flexible work from home policy because he could go home and work…. more fool us.

– I have cat food and cat litter to last me a month, it was a worry for a little bit (the Sainsbury’s with stock caught fire, of all the things right now!) but I’ve sourced enough for two weeks and hopefully have more on the way; if the worst comes to the worst they’ll eat ham and I’ll blend cornflakes into grit for litter.

– Me-wise, I am watching my way through all my boxsets before I start to exhaust Netflix (thank you, sibling!) and Amazon Prime – and may finally have a reason to start opening all that 30th birthday champagne, if lockdown continues past the point at which the wine provisions are depleted….

Making it work, from home, work from home…. I have no real life friends any more. Send help. Don’t send help, send wine in the post! Please.

*Could Hari Seldon have predicted it? Is this part of a larger plan to save the world? We have to hope so.

I’m a sailing instructor. I work for a finance institution.

I work on yachts. I work in an office.

I live in Lanzarote. I live in London.

There was a point not long ago where my life forked, where I was offered two very different opportunities, both were tempting for very different reasons, and I took the London fork. Was it the right one?

What is the per se “right” choice when you are faced with such different decisions? How do you decide? How do you know, after the fact? And do you stop being the person who would have made the other choice, taken the other path?

I don’t think so. I’m still the other person, I still pause when someone asks me the question of what I “do”. I know where I live, I know where I work, I know who expects to see me on Monday; but I haven’t lost the qualifications I hard earned over the last few years, and the experiences are something I will carry with me forever, even if I never officially act in my capacity as a Cruising Instructor again, it is still part of who I am.

And that’s something I’m sure a lot of you can relate to. Who are you? What do you do?

You’re a lawyer. A mother. A marathon runner. A mountain climber. A teacher. A horserider. A keen cross stitcher. A father. A carer. A swimmer. A brother. A thespian. A pilot. A yachtmaster. An engineer. A sister. A COO. A friend.

Who are we to say that it is that what we do for a living which most defines us. Our loves and our dreams, our past and our achievements, make up so much of that too.

Our whole picture is far greater than just one of our parts.

I have never been a girl in a box, and I don’t plan to start now.