Are you feeling fur-low?

After spending 130 days on furlough, I returned to the office, albeit still on part-furlough initially. This means I work two days per week. I have been back for three weeks (6 days in total) and find I am being asked the same question on nearly every call...

How are you feeling being back at work?

The truth is, it's not one feeling. I have been feeling every emotion under the sun and my answer is multi-layered.

First of all lets start by saying, I love my job. I love what I do for a living. Helping people, whether that be clients, candidates or my colleagues. I like to give advice I feel is the best possible advice for that individual. I tailor my help and advice for everyone, because not everyone needs the same guidance. But what happens when it is taken away from you? One of things you love doing is suddenly taken away, for me the ability to help and guide others. By being put on furlough I understood it was to the benefit of my company and the bigger picture - it was beneficial to me as I had a job to come back too. To understand how I feel being back at work, I need to express how I felt not being at work; frustrated, angry, upset, out of control, lost and helpless to name but a few emotions.

How was I supposed to support my family? Pay the mortgage? Pay the bills? How could I be happy and make this all seem normal for my 5 year old boy and 2 year old girl? Simple...

Even though I love my job, I love my family more

That is how I did all those things. Because when I work I do everything in my power possible to support the people who need me and 99% of the time I do it with a smile on my face. So, if I love my job, but love my family more, you can guarantee that I was going to throw myself into furlough and make the best of a bad situation.

A quick disclaimer, don't think for one second that I am oblivious to what has been going on. I have witnessed real heartache and loss during this time. People extremely close to me lost someone so special to them and who was a big part of their daily lives due to Covid-19. Seeing people you love go through that really is gut-wrenching to see how horrific this virus is. I also have a close friend who has suffered financially at the hands of Covid-19 - losing nearly everything, whilst trying to raise a young family. I class myself as one of the lucky ones.

So, a few weeks into furlough we get used to being just our own family unit living within our own little world. Zoom, becomes a daily activity, whether it's Grandparents reading bedtime stories, weekly family quizzes, speaking with old friends or fun with cousins. Plumbing becomes a new skill and we set to work on decorating bathroom and living room. We start to get used to it and as things ease we re-introduce seeing family (at a safe distance of course), then pubs and restaurants open and we even have a staycation in Devon for a week. Life with my wife and little ones has been close to perfect, but don't be fooled, at times it has been exhausting. I can look back at this time positively, but returning to work changes everything once again.

Returning to work has been great, speaking to so many of my candidates and clients and hearing their stories of the past four months. How their lives have changed. How their thought process has changed. How their view on everyday things have changed. They want to know about me in return and all ask me the same question "How are you feeling being back at work?".

I feel happy to speaking to people again and catching up. I feel valued that people actually want to talk to me and are interested in my feelings. I feel pressure as we all need to work twice as hard as before. I feel disjointed only working two days. I feel lonely sat in the office, whilst my colleagues work from home. I feel sad that the past four months have gone by in a flash and every morning I had cuddles in bed with my favourite people in the world, yet now, once again, I will barely have time for that. All those moments and memories we made will be exactly that, memories.

So, how does it really feel? It feels great to be back doing what I love and it feels like I'm missing my right arm all at the same time.

I never actually felt fur-low, I had to adjust and I did. Now I need to return to what I am good at and what I love doing, using my memories of furlough to remind why I do this job everyday.