I’ve seen many people talking about the effects this lockdown has on you, not knowing the day of the week, the time of day, the ups and downs, good days, bad days. It’s true, you experience all of the above and more. Sometimes, I skim through my facebook feed and am thoroughly depressed by it, articles about people misbehaving, so called professional info etc etc. I usually try to shove it away from me before I can be sucked into the negativity.
But overall, the thing that has struck me most, is the sense of humour that overrides everything else on my feed…. by a long mile. I am impressed, really impressed by the endless jokes and memes surrounding this unique situation. There have been some corkers, that have made us laugh out loud. It makes me realise two things: 1) what a great bunch of friends we have, with such great sense of humour (sorry, I don’t know what the plural of that is! 😬) and 2) people’s sheer resilience in the face of adversity. It always gives me such a warm and fuzzy feeling to see it. 🥰
Having slobbed around yesterday, we decided that whilst it was great and all that, it left us feeling a bit twitchy and wasn’t so uplifting as doing stuff has been. Each to their own and all that, but it seems that doing nothing much isn’t terribly good for our sense of well being at the moment.
We were pondering on this in the evening and realised that this week had been the 4th anniversary of when we signed all the papers to buy the house and committed to our big adventure in Austria. And that since signing them, we haven’t had a proper holiday, or even really stopped much in that time. We have had a couple of days away in the camper to the Grossglockner, which was fun, but definitely not restful and a few days away to Croatia (huge thanks to Fliss & Sam for making that possible), which were also wonderful, but again not restful as the weather was shite and we spent the time sightseeing and driving around instead of collapsing in a heap.
Of course, we have relaxed, rested, had days of doing nothing in that time, but it’s usually with the backdrop feeling of guilt that sits on your shoulders when you know you have a list of things to do that are a mile long.
From the moment of signing, the crazy time began; selling our house, packing, making the move and then ultimately arriving here bang slap in the middle of high season with just 3 days to unpack before the first guest was due to arrive. He didn’t actually show up, as it turned out, but obviously we didn’t know that beforehand. 🙄
I remember that, for logistical reasons, the vast majority of our boxes got dumped in one of the big rooms upstairs – and stayed that way for a very long time! We prioritised unpacking the kitchen so that we could make the guest breakfasts, creating a safe area in the garden for the dogs and our bedroom (somewhere to sleep) and that was pretty much it. For months! It was the end of September before I finally dug out some of the boxes with my clothes in and had been largely living out of the suitcases we had packed to see us through the first two weeks. Just a month ago, I finally found the box containing the lampshades for the kitchen light that we’d been searching for on and off through the last 3.5 years! 😂
We had always planned that we would have time to catch up on ourselves in the winter, but then, of course, our first winter was an epic snow year.. a series of 3 storms in quick succession, each bringing 1m of snow with it…. and then I bust my knee. That was me out of action for the duration and Mark just trying to keep everything going with the snow and the guests. I also sadly lost my Dad in the middle of it all too, so perhaps not in the best frame of mind either. We’ve found ourselves trying to clear the accumulated backlog of stuff ever since. This year has been the year that we really started to get on top of it all and it’s a great feeling to finally feel like life is a little more under control… or at least it was, until all of this started!
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a tale of woe or a self indulgent pity fest. It just probably explains a little why we are perhaps unaccustomed to sitting around relaxing and don’t always find it as restorative to the soul as we probably should. That, and sitting around not doing anything positive gives us too much time to think about the scary parts of the future and everything we are doing now will benefit us when (fingers, toes, everything crossed!) we are busy again with guests. All of those jobs we will have cleared will allow us more guilt free time to do fun and relaxing things… we will be ahead of the game for once and not trying desperately to catch up. That will feel amazing!
I guess what I’m saying here is that we should each do what helps us to get through this period. For some it is relaxing and taking a break, getting to do the hobbies and whatnot that we never normally get a chance to do, even watching TV in your PJs if that’s what helps you and makes you feel good. For us, keeping busy and putting everything in place for re-opening, investing time in having a better, more efficient, cleaner and newly decorated house is what sustains us at the moment.
So, with that in mind, today Mark started on the long anticipated (in a very negative and much swearing under breath kind of way) redecoration of our ridiculously tall and challenging entrance hall. And I sat in front of the pc all day, dealing with admin stuff (in an equally swearing under breath kind of way). We both ended the day with a sense of much satisfaction and positive feelings abounding. Neither of us could be bothered to perform culinary masterpieces, so it was pizza and more episodes of Outlander. Not a bad day all round. 😁
Stay safe everyone xx
