Can’t wait for lock-down to end? Neither can we. That’s not to say there aren’t aspects that we’ve enjoyed. Here’s our top things that we’ll miss from a life locked down.
Wait, what? Miss about lock-down? Sounds crazy, I know. Hear me out…
Background
As we now start to regain some of our freedoms and begin to get our lives back to normal, the overwhelming feeling I think for everyone is that of relief. Having personally got ourselves stuck in Spain for the duration of it, with arguably the strictest lock-down rules and punishments of anywhere in the World, we are as keen as anyone to embrace any gradual lifting of these restrictions.
In some ways, despite our severe lock-down, it has actually had less of a dramatic impact on our lives as it has others. We had already left our jobs for the year and living a life of travel meant that we were already quite isolated as a family unit, by choice. Consequently, it has meant less upheaval for us than for people who have had to either continue to work in potentially dangerous jobs, or juggle working at home with the demands of homeschooling for the first time. Maximum respect to all these people – we’ve had it easy in comparison.
In some ways it feels like we’ve been waiting for what feels like forever for this time to come. Oddly, in other ways, the time also seems to have almost flown by! Near the start of the lock-down, my children did an activity of writing all the things they wanted to do once it was lifted onto little pieces of paper and putting them into a jar. Unfortunately this means that once our freedom is finally fully restored, we’ve now got several months of theme park visits and fast food meals to look forward to, until every item has been ticked off this list!
Strangely, as we begin to move towards a life of increasing freedom, this has got me thinking about how there are some aspects of a life in lock-down that I have actually enjoyed. I’d even go so far as to say I’ll miss. So here’s my list:
#1 Family Time
Sounds like a bit of a cliché I know, but for most people this lock-down has given them a chance to spend more time with their families than they usually would. Don’t get me wrong, there are regularly times I have seriously gone off my children during these last few months. Also, oh what I wouldn’t give for just one day off from them! That said, for the most part it has been great to spend more time with them and really see them growing up, rather than just getting a few hours around work. It’s one of the main reasons we decided to leave our home and travel for a year in the first place. It is time you’ll never get again and gone in the blink of an eye, so we should all be making the most of every minute. That’s what I tell myself when they are driving me crazy, anyway.
#2 The Lack of Rushing
What with full time jobs, childcare to arrange, keeping fit, socialising, and taking children to endless clubs and activities, our usual lives at home can feel pretty hectic. Add to that visiting dispersed family and old friends at weekends, as well as squeezing in travel and holidays whenever we can, it sometimes feels as if our diaries are booked out for months in advance and we barely have a spare moment to catch our breath. It takes a ‘doodle poll‘ just to arrange to meet up with a few friends!
With all that normally going on, it has felt surprisingly liberating during this time to not have to constantly rush around and not have that nagging feeling of always having something else that we should be doing. It has made me realise that although I want my children to live stimulating and fulfilling lives, there is also a place for sometimes just relaxing for a minute and allowing everyone to catch up.
#3 No Stress when Leaving the House
Closely linked to less rushing about in general, one particular stress that I have especially enjoyed not having to deal with is getting out of the house with children. That is, getting out on time. My mornings at home pretty much go like “get up, get up, get up, get dressed, get dressed, get, dressed, brush your teeth, brush teeth, teeth, eat breakfast, eat breakfast, eat, shoes on, coat on, other shoe, hurry up, hurry up, please go faster, hurry up…” All that for one of them to then have a meltdown like the World has ended because of a reason as important as something like wanting to be the one who opens the door handle first. You get the idea. I’m sure most people with children experience something similar. It feels like a relentless battle and ends with us being late at least 99.9% of the time anyway.
Needless to say, this is not something I miss and another top reason for us choosing to live away on the road for a year. However, even on the road we are sometimes under pressure to get going in the mornings when we have a long journey ahead of us or somewhere to be. To not have a morning rush at all during this time really has been bliss.
#4 Zoom Meetings
I don’t know about you, but I’d never heard of the Zoom video conferencing service before this lock-down began. I’m a teacher back home but this is not something I’ve ever used at work before. The first time I used the app was when my sister-in-law set up a meeting on my niece’s birthday for everyone to sing to her. Since then, we’ve used it loads for keeping in touch with friends and family from all over the World. Being able to keep in contact with multiple people at the same time in this way is brilliant. I think we’ve chatted to distant friends and family more during this time than we ever have before! Because most people are unsurprisingly not very busy at the moment, it is never hard to arrange a time for multiple people to meet, in a way that would be almost impossible to achieve otherwise.
#5 The Quiz
I’ve always loved a good quiz. Before children we would regularly go to various local pub quizzes with friends when we could. Sadly, in recent years, it seems that the modern phenomena of everyone having Google in their pockets has somewhat killed off the humble pub quiz. In any case, it is not often we get to have an evening out without children anymore when we’re back at home.
One of the best uses of Zoom in my opinion has been the bringing back of the quiz. I’ve seen pictures of people from all over using it for this purpose, ourselves included. Since the lock-down began, neighbours from our street have organised a weekly quiz where everyone contributes a category. It is just for fun (what I say when we don’t win, obviously), and has been a really nice way to keep in touch with a whole load of people from our street back home who we have not seen for almost a year because of being away travelling. We’ve really enjoyed our weekly quiz and it is something we’d have never had if it hadn’t been for the lock-down.
#6 Homeschooling
Controversial, I know. For a lot of people this has been one of the real added stresses of lock-down, particularly for those with no prior experience and those who are juggling full time jobs at the same time. I’ve seen that nationally levels of respect for the job that teachers do have never been higher! For anyone who has found this aspect of lock-down a real challenge, I genuinely sympathise. For us though, things have actually been a bit in reverse.
Having been living a life on the road this last year, we have already been having to homeschool our eldest, Savannah, who is 5. Her not being in school for the year was one of the biggest concerns for her grandparents before we set off. We had been doing a bit of formal learning with her, but had mostly just been teaching from experiences as we’d been out and about, discovering new and interesting things every day. It was working well enough. After all, what better way to learn? The switch to lock-down has meant we’ve had to change our approach though.
Suddenly, with more time on our hands and heavily restricted mobility, our focus has shifted to more formalised learning. Also, because Savannah is doing it, it has meant that her younger sister, Aurora (who is 3), has been keen to join in too. Mornings have become our learning time. It has been really satisfying to see the progress they’ve made over the last few months. In her desire to try and keep up, I’ve even got Aurora doing basic reading and writing. Good going for a 3 year old. For some useful ideas that have helped us with achieving this, see our roundups of the Best Resources for Homeschooling on Lock-down and our Top 5 Apps for Homeschooling.
Don’t get me wrong, children can be annoying to teach and mine are definitely no exception to this. Savannah can be negative at times and get discouraged easily when she finds new things difficult. We were lucky enough to be offered a place on an online course from ‘Role Models‘, that has helped to build her confidence and resilience in this regard. For details, see our review of their course ‘Brilliant Me & My Mind’.
#7 Drinking from Lunchtime
Not me, I’ve been pregnant. I’d imagine not for others either who have either been working hard or who don’t like drinking for whatever reason.
I know a lot of people have been enjoying this freedom though, particularly those with gardens to sit in when the weather was good. It is not often you get to have a pretty much guilt-free beer or mojito in the middle of the afternoon. I know this has been much enjoyed by many (and pretty much on a daily basis too if my husband is anything to go by!), so it had to make my list.
In Summary
While we are all desperate to leave this lock-down behind and get our lives back, there are definitely some things that I’ll miss. Spending more time with family, less rushing, more time to relax and less pressure to feel like we should always be doing something or using our time productively can all be positive things; things that sometimes our normal lives just don’t allow. So for now I’ll try to enjoy all of this while it lasts. Just don’t ask me to ever have to do all this again – having this experience once has definitely been more than enough!
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I’ll be m zźissing it all too x
I agree with most of them. I’m not sure If I will be missing homeschooling 😛 but definitely all that lockdown open our minds and eyes and teach us that it’s not always worth to rush in our life
#KCACOLS
I hope the Zoom calls stay! I think it’s highlighted an easy way to stay in touch. It might not be easy to get everyone free at the same time, but I’d never even have thought of it before. I’ve even got my mum to do the odd Facebook video chat, which she’d never have bothered with before!
#KCACOLS
Yes, I agree. There would be things that I will miss from lockdown like the opportunity to spend so much time together as a family. I have loved seeing my girls bonding so much within this process. I enjoyed doing homeschooling but I don’t think it is something I would miss lol I actually like having access to all the school’s resources. I will miss this because it was nice to see what lessons they were having and what topic and how were they learning it. I hope this access continues. Thanks for sharing this list with us #kcacols 🙂 xx