Category Archives: Lockdown life

2020: Lockdown life September in review

This is part of my year in review. Writing one post will make it too long, so I’m breaking each month into a separate post. This is the latest instalment of lockdown life.

I’m plodding along and not getting discouraged with the fact that it’s the 7th day of January 2021 and I’m still reviewing 2020. I’m seeing it as characteristic of 2020 – a plodding kind of year. What I mean by plodding is that it was slow and we needed to get through it, and the best way was to plod. Come to think of it … 2021 will be a plodding kind of year too, especially given that the earliest we’ll see a vaccine in South Africa is April which will cover only 10% of the population. We have a bottleneck – the government, which I hope will resolve itself soon in the hopes that they will realise that they can’t do this on their own and need help from the private sector, businesses and other interested South Africans.

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Spring is here! It wasn’t exactly warm on September 1st, but it got warmer during the course of the month. It was another low key month characterised by loads of work – I’m working longer hours from home than before Covid: is anyone else experiencing this as well?

I started the UCT Copy-editing course this month, something I’ve been looking forward to! I’ve done editing of school books but I want to expand my knowledge, and this short course had my name on it 🙂

I did a webinar on the Five Essential Skills for Successful Collaborative Relationships. It’s a longish video but my webinar was 30 minutes; the rest of the time was responding to attendees’ questions. I wore make-up and work clothes :). I can’t remember if I wore shoes.

I took a vacation day on the 4th and Chè and I went out to pay the vehicle licenses that we weren’t able to do during level 5 lockdown (which is when they expired). And why is this significant? Because I wore shoes (and jeans for the first time in months).

My Mom’s orchids are flowering but not mine …

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Check out August.

 

2020: Lockdown Life August in Review

This is part of my year in review. Writing one post will make it too long, so I’m breaking each month into a separate post. This is the latest instalment of lockdown life.

I can finally feel that Spring is coming! While having late afternoon tea on the patio with Chè – after many hours in front of a camera – we saw the weavers build their nests.

lockdown life weavers building nests in spring

I visited my sister, the first time I got out to visit family for the first time since February. Oh, what a wonderful time we had, catching up and going for walks in the beautiful trails around the house.

lockdown life river walk

I started creating mandalas on Procreate; this is one of the most relaxing activities I’ve engaged in this year.

lockdown life mandala creation

I planted chard, lettuce, blueberries and jasmine for Spring.

lockdown life growing vegetables

agile42 did a short coach profile on me for social media.

lockdown life agile42 coach profile

A few other things happened:

  • One of my nephews (he’s a rocket scientist, literally) got his dream job in Germany.
  • I’m on the search for the perfect desk and chair. I can’t make up my mind what I want.
  • Chè and I are in agreement that cats are the centre of our universe.
  • I did an AromaVeda course.
  • I spent many months in Birkenstocks and socks. This is significant because I always said that I would NEVER do that! But I’ve changed my mind – this is the most comfortable way of wearing shoes around the house. My face may be fully made up and I may be wearing work clothes, but my feet are comfortably encased in sandals and socks.
  • I’m trying to get an orchid to grow in my office; the leaves keep falling off so I have no more than two leaves growing at any one time, and there is no sign of the orchid stem thingy.

Let me end off by saying that this has been the most time I’ve spent ­– uninterrupted – at home. I’m loving it – I actually want to work from home all the time from now on. I’m also seeing my home space with new eyes and now I have the time to improve the things I never had the time for. I started by creating a coffee station.

August was a lot more exciting than July.