Where are we now, and where next then?

I've been building up to write something. But considering the state of things, for weeks I've been wondering exactly what, and for who. And even as I start I'm still wondering exactly what? I know it's not a bad time to write, frankly. I have felt the pull towards it since the lockdown.

One lockdown insight is that from the normal sense of 'who would want to listen to anything I have to say', I do now have a heightened sense of 'why bother'? I put this down to the relative monotony of 'no other people' being around like they usually are, combined with a sense of being 'sick of the sight of the four walls of my apartment'. Sometimes this manifests itself as a sense of 'I think I'll just lie on the sofa for a bit...', but which I find myself recalibrating with a '...no hold on, because then why would I get up again?'

So you could say that social isolation, for me, has created a bit of a 'malaise', with days fading into one and a sense of lethargy prevailing. Physical, emotional and conversational workouts surely help, but the monotony of being stuck at home, the background malaise nevertheless remains.

As the sixth week of social isolation clocks up here I've concluded that routine really helps, for sure. I started running, meditating, forcing such things in to the routine to fill out the days. Any day with online human contact is better too, in fact the more of that I get the better. So surely this is a time for building and improving relations. With family, friends, and for work too, why not? People may not be in the mood to buy much or take big decisions, they're 'waiting and seeing' right? But building out, refreshing or renewing our networks makes perfect sense right now.

I haven't actually written much yet, but feel the urge. My hesitancy may be because it feels like the dynamism and sheer scale of what is happening out there is hard to reconcile with the monotony of the 'solitary confinement' most of us are having to experience. Which is why I've even found it hard to write about how it makes me feel, because it's a bit 'well, where do I start?'

For me, looking after myself (emotionally, physically), investing in important relationships and writing are a current focus, and I'll say a bit more about how I can support that for others too, below. And though this hasn't been such a focus for me, another natural way to pass the time in isolation, very logically, is to educate oneself, right? In fact, what better time?

I'm British but based in Sofia, Bulgaria and in the first two weeks of lockdown I was thinking alot about whether I should return to the UK, trying to assess how bad it is really all going to get. In the second week I became convinced I should be a hero by trying to get a job in the UK with the NHS, but by the third and fourth week had settled right back to the idea of staying in Bulgaria and certainly don't regret that now. It is and has been home for some time now.

So in these last weeks what I finally settled down into was refreshing my Innevent proposition, with an emphasis on a set of Services which are focused on building up better understanding and stronger relationships, and in turn more fit for purpose business decisions and growth activities, and which enable the production of effective, 'impact content'.

What I am calling 'Creative Conversations' and 'Executive Peer Partners' are all about intelligent dialogues, one to one or in a group, be it about what's happened, what's happening, and what might be a good course of action to follow next.

There's a short introductory video to Creative Conversations here

And more on Executive Peer Partners here

A natural hot topic for the regular Executive Peer Meet-ups will be how our businesses can best respond to the Coronavirus Crisis over the coming months.

You can register for the weekly Thursday night (1900 Sofia / 1700 London, from April 30th) Virtual Exec Peer Space meetups here

Finally, on the writing and content side I've teamed up with two other Sofia based content specialists to form The Content Collective, which I introduce here

So if you want to work through an intelligent, content-centred response to pivoting or building up your visibility to reflect a changed and changing environment, get in touch and we'd love to work that through with you.

Hopefully lockdown won't go on too much longer. Once it does stop, one hopes and I suppose, there is going to be some kind of major reckoning about it all.

In the meantime, look after yourselves, take care, stay safe, and reach out if you think I might be able to help you with anything from Bulgaria?