Here at Brazen, we make podcasts so women can tell their story in a safe space.
We produce a written transcript of those podcast interviews, so if people prefer or need to read the words rather than listen, they can do so.
The other thing we do, is write. We offer up a space for women to tell their story through words, anonymously if they wish, because giving women the option of how to tell their story is just as important as telling it, and it’s really important to us at Brazen.
In addition to those things, we have a weekly spotlight with five standard questions, so just in case you’re out there thinking that you don’t have a story to share, we’ve pulled together five quite thought provoking questions that might help you see that you do. Get in touch if you’d like to give that a try soon.
And while it’s good to lay it all bare, the things that we do on the site and the opportunities for you to tell your story, the thought to write about this blog post came from reviewing a blog I wrote just after the January school holidays. I was going to post it up on the site after the school holidays and I’m glad I didn’t. The article I wrote was about how hard the six-week holidays are as a working Mum. It’s quite a whiny piece of work, but I guess back then when I wrote it, that’s how I was feeling.
But now we’ve just come out of seven weeks of staying home with various restrictions. Stay home. All day, every day. Oh, and homeschool. Did you know they changed how to add up numbers? Carry the 1 has left the building, and it’s all about skip counting and creating addition strategies to get your answer. Let’s do some art. Let’s keep up your extracurricular activities. Dance lessons on zoom – cool. And let’s try your music lesson that my child would normally have at school with a person and do that from a pdf and a YouTube tutorial. Never mind that I can’t read music to save myself, I’ll google how to do that so I can help my kid.
So, I’m glad I didn’t post my whiny blog from January about how hard it was to have freedom to go places with your kids in the holidays. To have them do activities and play dates with their friends. Because actually, doing a six-week stint of holidays with the kids while attempting to work, while it’s tricky, isn’t a patch on seven weeks of lockdown instead.
If you look after kids as your job, or one of your jobs, did you find lockdown hard?
I found it hard. But then on some days, it was a joyful walk in the park.
And on other days it was blissful, and I was present with my husband and children. And on different days it was like my house was on fire and there was no escape. I distinctly remember about three weeks in to level 4, being ordered to the supermarket by my husband even though I wasn’t our designated shopper, purely because I had to be in a different place to gain some balance in my mental health. Who knew a fast perusal of cleaning products in aisle ten could bring me some much-needed relief?
And now that my children have returned to school, and there’s less pressure to do all the things at home, there are elements of lockdown that my family are going to keep.
Rushing is the main thing that is going to change.
Honestly, the rushing around I was doing prior to lockdown can get in the damned bin. I’m not going to do it anymore. And working mostly from home as much as I can seems to be the answer to that. I’ve proven I can do it successfully, and it seems to be that I get more work done in a shorter time frame at home, too. Probably eat more than I would at my office, but that’s not insurmountable!
The next thing that has complemented my rushing syndrome is all the things. It’s no wonder I was rushing all the time, looking at my list of things I volunteered to do prior to lockdown looks mad to me now, only seven weeks later. Rolling out of bed at 7.30am after a good 7-9 hours of sleep suited me well. It suited my kids too, not having me bellow at them to get up, get dressed, get your breakfast, go go go!
So, I’m saying no to rushing. No to doing a ridiculous number of things. No to 4am wakeups just so I can cram 2 hours of gym work and training in. No to endless activities that my kids barely enjoy. No to taking on more study papers than I can comfortably cope with. I will relish in my newly slowed down life instead and it’s going to be great!
How long do you think it will last?
