HEYDON COVID-19 PROJECT APRIL 2020 -
Lizzie Dickinson
photographed 5th April 2020 - 14 days into lockdown
Being self employed, I am used to spending time at home working in my office, so enforced "isolation" has in many ways been an easy adjustment. However, as I work in the events industry, I have no work until August at the earliest and so the normal routine and rhythm of daily life has completely changed; and surprisingly, I have found that I am hugely capable of not doing much each day!
Life has always revolved round work - clients, meetings, deadlines, being away on site - but now I find the enforced revision of daily focus now leads to online fitness training each day and a rediscovering of the garden that has largely been ignored for a fair few years.
I am blessed with the most amazing view across the fields to Royston and Sandy and find spending time weeding in the garden is hugely therapeutic, engrossing and satisfying. We have an abundance of birdlife and have adopted a pheasant who comes for a morning feed and patrols the garden as his own.
I lost my husband 2 years ago and so find the lack of physical contact with friends and family the main downside; there is much to be said for being able to share the highs and lows with another human that you love and know so well and have that real human warmth and physical connection with. I try to see this current situation as a gift of time with which to connect with oneself and take time in the every day to just "be" - there is no distracting entertainment to be had or places to go or work to bury myself in - just the ability to watch and wonder at the evolving season of spring leaping into life and feel fortunate to be in such a wonderful part of the world where I can see and feel life continuing around me.
My hope is that once work begins to return, I am able to take the best of pre and post Covid worlds and work to a more balanced daily routine - as my first wonderful boss told me many years ago "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"
Written 17th April 2020
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