First day

Some 13 years ago, I started a full-time job. Precisely one day after I left the one before that. Money was tight with a baby on the way and 'wasting' holiday wasn't an option; nor was a boozy leaving do. To compound matters, it was straight from press day in one busy newsroom to press day in another with a new set of rules and floor plans to navigate. I wouldn't recommend it.

This being 2020, things are done a bit differently now, though the time lapse between my now-regular role of lockdown parent and office worker is only marginally longer. Minutes after dropping off my second child for his third day back at school, I'm online at home doing some background research and trying to work out the priorities of a new part-time role. Having been recruited and interviewed via Zoom, I've still not physically met my bosses, nor any of my colleagues. Day one won't involve a hunt for the stationery cupboard and I already know my way around my kitchen, though I may have to nip out for biscuits.

More crucially, there's no direct replacement for observing and then joining in with a new working culture and learning the timbre of office chat, nor opportunity yet for the sparks of inspiration that can fly off face-to-face conversation. The things, in other words, many of us have missed about our established places of work these past six months. There aren't just new rules to learn for the job; there are new rules for work full stop - and this is in its own way quite liberating.

The three-days-a-week role allows for freelancing and it initially feels like an extension of the elastic freelance life. Indeed, I dipped a toe in the water with four days of freelance work last month in the concentrated bubble of the Edinburgh TV Festival, this year fizzing with new energy from its online reconfiguration, which felt like a fresh start in itself.

Now, in place of the discombobulation of a typical office first day of navigating e-mail log-ins and a host of strangers' names, comes the mental gymnastics of establishing a new routine, one that includes the prospect of lunch on the sofa. Reassurance comes from - what else? - a wide-ranging mid-morning Zoom call and the day maps itself out with the prospect of a mix of immediate and longer-range deadlines.

Lockdown has at least prepared me for the 'just get through the first day' feeling of a new job; oftentimes, just getting through it one day at a time has been enough. I think I'll be okay.