Lockdown 2.0

Looking back, I found the first lockdown challenging, which began a week after I’d resigned my role at my previous employer, and ended a week before I began my new role at my present employer. These challenges were overcome and lessons learned, and I ended the lockdown in a better state of mind, contentment and employed.

But here we are, in late November, coming to0wards the end of the second lockdown, but that’s not the end. I understand why, yet my heart sank for all those still looking for work, trapped on furlough, or now reliant on universal credit to get by. Indeed, I feel privileged to have a great job, that challenges me and my ability to progress and am relieved to report, as I work in the exempt construction industry, I manage to maintain the thing I needed most all along; a job to do.

There are some who relish four more weeks of sitting at home, or at least being paid not to work, but I pity their fear of responsibility. For me, and many like me, we need a purpose greater than ourselves, that we can work for. I write because I enjoy the process, but I work to enjoy not working. It’s important to remember that; there is no fun time, without work time, no relaxation without concentration, or a pleasant change of cinerary, if you didn’t have an every-day. This is a fundamental truth of the human, no, the animal experience, throughout the ages. So, if you have read my earlier article about getting a job through the Civid19 pandemic, I learned one valuable lesson; I, like many -whether they admit it or not - need work to keep sane.

Initially, there was the novelty of the event and the seemingly unprecedented global pandemic, that provided myself and many others the rare opportunity to review our lives; stop the running around. What we were we working for? Many changed careers, enjoyed the freedom to think outside the working day and, like me, paint, write poetry, go on long, pointless wonderings and contemplate. Many enjoyed time with their children, loved ones and had more time to think than any three week holiday ever did.

Any yet, I’d soon run out of things I could do to keep myself occupied and became bored with awakening every day to the following thought: what do I do today to stop myself going crazy with boredom?

This lockdown, I’m one of the lucky ones, I have a good job and good prospects and because of the lockdown 1.0, I know the value of working in the day time and enjoying the fruits of my labor in short, sometimes rushed moments of peace, tranquility, binge watching TV, when I should be clearing out the cupboard under the stairs.

And in that vein, I’m reminded of the Philip Larkin poem, Toads revisited, that begins with the lines;

Walking around in the park, should feel better than work.

The lake, the sunshine, the grass to lie on.

The poem portrays the sense of out-of-place that the unemployed feel, whether they’re avoiding or sick and unable to take part in the daily routine of work. More swell the ranks of the unemployed as I write this, due to the devastating effect to business the restrictions of the latest lockdown. Even when this lockdown ends, there will still be some form of partial lockdown in to spring of next year, at least. A tier system that will give varying levels of lockdown rules, depending on local infection rate. And this, lockdown-lite version of restrictions is likely to last past spring, at the earliest. Restrictions are here to stay, maybe until the arrival of a 100% vaccine will speed things up.

The effect to the mental health of not working for so many and for long, is a ticking problem, eclipsed by the Covid19 narrative, for now. I for one, have struggled to re-adjust to the daily grind, so I know there are millions more that are going to be undertaking the, underrated and overlooked, challenge of the return to work, the relationships, the stress and the sense of achievement.