Do I even want normal back?

I am an eternal optimist, and my ‘everything will be ok’ attitude has seen me weather many personal storms and bumps in my career. However, if I am being completely honest it sometimes gets me into trouble, and I can forget to look at the big picture. I am always looking to the future, and I’m that kind of really annoying person that always has another plan brewing; think relocation, career, hairstyle, changing my bedroom around when I was a teenager and driving my mum mad. I now do the same but with the whole house and drive my husband mad…but that’s another story.

I remember watching the news and hearing about a new, highly contagious virus and thinking ‘Poor China!’. And then I got on with my life. It did not enter my consciousness for one minute that the virus would make it way to my doorstep and change my world as I knew it. As an insufferable optimist, even when I heard we had a case in Australia, I said to my husband ‘Don’t worry, we will still be able to go to Bali in June.’ Little did I know, 8 weeks later I would be cancelling flights and putting hotels on hold.

Covid took me by surprise, the bottom fell out of the recruitment world and I suddenly had to re-think what my work meant to me. Thankfully I am usually quick to adapt to change (my positivity drives this) and have found other meaningful ways to support candidates and clients during this time. But I do struggle with following rules and not knowing when life will return to normal….so I’ve been trying to unpack that a little bit for myself while I’ve been separated from co-workers and friends.

I have thoroughly enjoyed working from home, but I have also missed the buzz of not being in the office. Thankfully I work for a company that already had a strong work from home policy and we transitioned quickly with the technology needed already in place. Of course, we have been innovating and using Zoom and Teams to continue working as much as normal. This has been the case for all of us. However, it took me a while to get to the bottom of what parts of this I’m really enjoying about this time.

Slowing down. Breathing. Not rushing. Family time. Freedom to use my time effectively. Learning new skills (I’m re-learning French!). Reading more books. Lunchtime walks with my husband. A different pace of exercising. Appreciating being outside in nature. Good home cooked meals.

The link was connections. Real, life affirming connections with others or myself. Time to think about who I am, who I want to be and how I want to resume life after Covid passes. I have realised, I don’t need normal back. I don’t want to go backwards, I want to go forwards.

I want to keep my unhurried family time, I want to stop people pleasing, rushing, not breathing fully and always playing catchup. I want to continue to have Zoom catch ups into people’s lounge rooms, to see their wedding photos hanging behind them, their cat on their lap or their children in the background. I want to know their cat’s name, their children’s ages and hear how life is affecting them, for real.

Moving forward I know there will be an aspect of returning to normal, especially in business – I really, really do miss the busy rush of filling multiple temp jobs a week, but I also want to do that more mindfully, in a more considered way and asking people the questions that matter, not just the ones I need in order to complete my job. I am looking forward to continuing to prioritise my family, my marriage, the friends that give back as much as I give out. Normality is changeable and I am looking forward to my new normal after this is over, through my usual positive, but maybe somewhat more realistic, lense.