It was a really rainy day yesterday which wasn't very nice but I had so much work to catch up on, it made me feel a bit better about staying in most of the day. I haven't worked at all over the last couple of weeks and you can't work from home and just swan around all the time, so this week there is going to be a lot of catching up. All my income from my two work websites is from commission, so I'll have to find time to catch up over the next couple of weeks. I have worked at home for twenty years and apart from a few times when life has been really difficult with family or my own ill health, I work out a work plan for the day in two hour blocks and it has all gone really well. Some days I work more than others and fit in around what I am doing that day but always try to work in my two hour blocks, and either work two, four or six hours in the day depending on what else is going on. I make enough money with Tom's wages to get along, and as we always look for ways to save money and aren't really interested in buying expensive items, have managed. I like being my own boss and there is only a few things I miss about going out to work. I am well aware I am rather vulnerable if I am ill but then again I don't have to worry about a company I work for not surviving in difficult times. Whether I sink or swim is really down to me and how I adapt my work over the years. I really enjoy that feeling of independence.
It is a way of life more and more people are having to adapt to. So many people are working from home I do wonder how many will manage as time goes on. I have a large family, which although I moan they distract me, I can't imagine what it would be like working from home all day with no one coming in, in the evening to share your day with. Even though eldest daughter is a police officer, her work is mainly office based now. The team she works on, have adapted to work phones and computers set up at home, online meetings and even court presentations online. Her kitchen is starting to resemble a police incident room! The trouble is sitting at a kitchen table on your own is hard after several months. If Scarlett is off nursery ill and wanting attention, an online meeting with a Detective Inspector and a magistrate takes on a whole new level of stress she hasn't had to deal with before!
Eldest son and I talk about it all a lot and he often says to me "Human behaviour changes very quickly." He has the most wonderful business brain and I think he is right, there was an article on the news yesterday about the massive new warehouses being built to cope with the parcels waiting to be dispatched from all the online shopping we are now all doing. In a way it is very sad but in another way there are exciting new opportunities for people. I would say to anyone who is worrying about whether their job will survive or who are furloughed and don't know if they will have a job to go back to, to start their own business. There will be new ways forward I'm sure. If I was younger and not so close to our retirement plans (although they still involve another business!) as a dog lover I would start a really good dog boarding kennels. Everyone has gone puppy mad in the last year and many of these people are going to want foreign holidays in the coming years. They will soon discover how hard it is to find good kennels. I think there are lots of new ideas for businesses if you just look around at how life has changed and instead of feeling despair at how things are going maybe we should see it as a new challenge. Eldest son makes me smile, he has a motivational line for every occasion! This is one he often uses.
