Although it’s a little premature to be looking back on the Coronavirus lockdown and how it affected it socially and personally, it’s easy to say that most of us have at some point over the past 2 months learnt a new skill, picked up an old hobby or reached out for our creature comforts to get us by. Here, team Alliance share what they’ve been getting up to recently…
Kayleigh’s three things keeping her sane in Lockdown…
Skillshare
Before lockdown, I always found it really hard to find the time to learn new things. Life can often be hectic and time flies, so I’ve been using this strange situation to tick off the items on my to do list.
A few months ago I found Skillshare, a website with thousands of videos on various subjects, such as lifestyle, marketing and graphic design. Even though I’m a graphic designer by trade, I always believe there’s room for improvement and that you never stop learning, so I’ve taken some classes to expand my graphic design knowledge even further!
Virtual Quiz Nights
Another thing that often gets lost during everyday life is spending time with your loved ones. I think everyone can relate to missing someone during this, so many have taken the liberty to host virtual quiz nights with family and friends.
For myself and my partner, we take part in a quiz night every Sunday with our family (of which we usually win haha!) and we even have a virtual pub to go to every Saturday with our friends. Even after lockdown, we hope to keep up this up and make sure we really keep in touch.
Netflix
Of course Netflix had to be on the lockdown list and I think there’s many who can relate. During this time, I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up on the series I was falling behind with and the movies that have been on my list forever! However, I might just have to re-watch Ricky Gervais’ After Life series… just one more time!
Matt’s three things keeping him sane in Lockdown…
The past six weeks for me like many others has been a unique experience. Instead of working in the office, meeting clients, attending networking events and other work related activities, I find myself staying in the relative (key word – will explain further on in this post) safety and security of my house with the company of my wonderful 10 year old daughter during the day during the week and some of the nights.
Alliance Marketing remains open and we are still working be it from dining tables, spare rooms and wherever else we can find in our homes that provides some sanctuary to think straight and focus. I’m sat here writing this in my spare room with my daughter sat behind me at her desk getting on with her work. The arrangement is working pretty well although Izzy does share quite a few of my traits and is prone to breaking from what she is doing to have a ‘chat’!
This leads me nicely into the first of my three things I am doing to keep myself occupied during lockdown…
Home Schooling
I wasn’t a star pupil at school! Studying wasn’t one of my strong points but now as a parent I want to do whatever I can to give Izzy the best start in life. When it was announced that the schools were closing, Izzy’s mother (who is a key worker) and I agreed that she could come to my house on weekdays. At the outset, we were taking part in the Joe Wicks workouts, watching the various educational programmes on TV, YouTube and the internet and I was setting a few tasks of my own for Izzy to do. This worked well for a fortnight but (huge respect to teachers) it was becoming increasingly difficult to find new things to watch and do and try to find a balance between them all.
I’ve discovered that teaching methods have certainly changed since I was in school which has been an eye opener and caused maybe one or two moments of frustration for the pair of us.
We’ve now found our own daily routine that works for us. Our mornings are spent in the spare room working. Izzy’s school and teachers have put a lot of effort into online learning and she is being set plenty of meaningful activities and interacting with her friends via Google Classroom. Our afternoons revolve around practical ‘life’ lessons – cooking, gardening and basic DIY tasks.
DIY – SOS
When I moved into my current house almost four years ago, I had all these wonderful ideas about how I could renovate it and turn it into our home. These ideas have remained as just ideas until lockdown!
I love the idea of DIY projects, I appreciate how rewarding and fulfilling completing a project in your own home can be but I did struggle to find the motivation to get on with these tasks and turn my ideas into reality in the limited spare time I have during ‘normal’ life.
Since lockdown started, I have ripped up all the downstairs carpets in my house to discover a beautiful parquet floor throughout, stripped the paint from the door frames, painted the kitchen and downstairs toilet and am currently halfway through stripping and sanding the stairs. I’m as surprised as others who know me about the amount I have actually managed to do. The tasks aren’t particularly difficult at all but they are very time consuming and pretty monotonous. Saying that, I really am enjoying spending many hours on the weekend with my radio on and just getting on with it and feeling very satisfied with the results.
And, in the words of the late great Magnus Magnussen, “I’ve started, so I’ll finish” these tasks and who knows might feel inspired to start more once lockdown is over!
The third thing to occupy me during lockdown is sort of work related it’s…
Donald Trump!
In my opinion, to work in our industry and be relatively successful you need to be interested in learning about other people, finding out what makes them ‘tick’, how they can be influenced and what they will respond to. We use this information to help our clients communicate effectively be it in a written, visual or spoken format with their key stakeholders – customers, media, employees etc.
Donald Trump absolutely fascinates me. I’m not a big fan of reality TV and haven’t watched either the UK or US version of The Apprentice. When Trump ran for President in 2016, the tone and messages of his rallying calls gained my interest. His (well, his campaign team’s) strategy was deliberately aggressive, blunt and direct to not only further raise his profile but to appeal directly to the Republican party base he knew he needed to win over to be successful. It suited the type of person he is to a tee, and to give credit where its due, he has maintained this approach throughout his time in the Oval Office (there is a strong argument that he is incapable of adapting to anything else!).
He somehow managed to not only remain in office but also improve his ratings after being impeached which is an achievement in itself. As has been widely reported in the media, he is a bully, narcissist and generally self-obsessed individual and displays all the traits associated with these. His preferred method of defence is to personally attack the individuals he sees as his enemies.
Over the past months, I have been watching with great interest how he has dealt with this global pandemic. Unlike previous threats to his presidency, Covid 19 isn’t a person, a political party or organisation. Calling it names on Twitter or threatening trade sanctions doesn’t work and his inability to either realise this or to deal with it is having a catastrophic impact on the country he is the President of. He hates the fact that the medical experts are held in much higher regard than him by the general public, that his administration was found to be very slow and woefully unprepared for what has happened, that the American people don’t just want lip service but guidance from their elected leader and perhaps most importantly for him that he can’t go out on the campaign trail to secure a second term as President.
He has been found out, and watching him respond to this has been for me, a source of constant amazement. There are so many questions I would like to ask (one thing he is very good at is not directly answering questions with Mike Pence his Vice President a close second) of him, the American people and how on earth he remains in post!
So to conclude, lockdown to date has been a positive experience for me. I’ve been able to spend lots of time with Izzy, turn my DIY ideas into actual projects and recharge my batteries in anticipation of getting back to work full time.
Watching, reading and listening to the tragic stories being reported both here in Wales and across the globe has made me think about what I have and how fortunate and thankful I am.
Gareth’s three things keeping him sane in Lockdown…
Being locked down has been a real eyeopener for me, and it has made me realise why I haven’t chosen to work from home for any length of time in over 8 years! I have 2 children and my wife has 3, so between us we have 5 children which can mean there’s 7 of us confined to the house at any one time. Thankfully, the kids (and us parents) get some respite now and again when they start at their other parent’s homes.
However, this period of time in lockdown has helped me understand a lot more about what I like, dislike and has given me opportunities to find new skills and try different things.
Firstly, and probably the most controversial(!) is…
Tiktok
Now, if you’d asked me what I thought of this menace of a social app a couple of months back, you wouldn’t have liked my choice of words. The kids have been using it for some time now, and its constant repeating of song choruses and noisy sound clips can very quickly become annoying! However, out of curiosity (and slight boredom) I posted a video on it a few weeks back and have been hooked ever since! I find it to be a medium to output creativity which is different from the day job, plus some of the videos are hilarious! Tiktok has seen a massive influx of over 30’s join the app since lockdown and I think it has kept a lot of people (me included!) busy, creative and happier inside.
Reading
Reading has always been one of those past times for me where I would spend a solid few hours reading a book, and then end up not picking it back up again for sometimes months-on-end. However, the options for activities away from working or watching TV has been limited since lockdown, so I have found more time to commit to reading books that I had started quite a long time ago.
Two books I’m currently reading are ‘Start With Why’ by Simon Sinek and ‘Hyperfocus – How to Work Less and Achieve More’ by Chris Bailey.
I feel both of these are made even more relevant in today’s current climate, certainly because working from home opens has it’s challenges when it comes to be able to focus, be productive and allow oneself to plan for an uncertain future.
I’m reading more articles online too, having recently taken a free trial on the blogging app Medium which seems to be like a treasure chest of useful articles, stories and advice from people in all different walks of life.
Family
It seems that although physically we are separated from family, we are connecting more with each other through facetime, Zoom quizzes and the odd group chat message. Since lockdown, our family has seen 1 birth and 3 birthdays and I have to admit it is the strangest feeling not to be able to visit a family member’s house just to say hi, have a catch up or give a hug. For my family, it’s made all the more difficult, because my parents live in the house opposite and my brother, his partner and their newborn daughter live just a few houses across from us!
However, we spent a lot of time being socially distant, whilst still getting the opportunity to see and speak to each other on a daily basis. I have a niece that is 4 weeks old and I still haven’t had the experience of holding her, I’m sure that opportunity will be there in the coming weeks though.
