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I was really looking forward to our long-planned holiday in Wales last week anticipating lots of fresh air, walking and relaxing. The reality was that I was laid low with a cold (just a cold, not flu, but I don’t do colds lightly), my husband injured his leg on the first day, and the weather was pretty rough.

Covid-19 has meant many of my clients’ hopes and expectations of career progression have been sabotaged, at least for now. Appraisals have been postponed, promotions have been delayed, people that were going to be moving on or taking a sabbatical aren’t going anywhere which has caused bottlenecks.

I wish I could say that I invented the title of this blog myself but I came across it at an online session on meditation run by Cambridge Buddhist Centre (one benefit of lockdown is being able to access stuff from my sofa that would normally be out of my reach!)

One particularly vivid memory I have from school is being in an English class in the final year of the girls’ school I was in – I would have been 15 or 16.

May I introduce you to Alex. Alex is a finance manager in a tech company. She’s struggling to keep her head above water at the moment as she fields demands from all directions – her boss, her colleagues, her clients, not to mention her team. Alex has a large team and finds her time constantly hijacked by their queries and requests for help.

This morning, I went off-piste. I’ve been feeling groggy all week and today I woke up tired again. However, after I did my usual 20 minute meditation, rather than just going up to my desk as I would usually, I curled up on the sofa with a blanket and closed my eyes. This is Unheard-Of.

When my husband and I first met, he used to joke that he was my “No 1 fan”. He buoyed me up with words of encouragement and celebrated what went well for me. He even came and cheered me on at a tennis match.

Are you suffering from the Covid-19 phenomenon of Zoom fatigue? That feeling of, “not another Zoom meeting/quiz/virtual drinks (delete as appropriate)”.

Last weekend, I was on a creativity course with speaker and coach, Michael Neill. One of the exercises was in pairs and involved one person talking for 10 minutes about something they wanted to create in their life and work whilst the other listened.

This Tuesday, I hosted the first of 4 weekly conversations about how to rise above lockdown. One of the challenges that emerged was how to make the most of our time over the coming weeks, and possibly months.