I don’t know about you, but I’m the kind of person that likes to be busy – and not just busy, but also productive. I enjoy doing something that produces a result, I suppose. Hence working in recruitment – it matters to me, it has purpose. I also enjoy doing something that at the same time uses my grey matter sufficiently to keep me sharp enough to engage in the rigours of everyday life. Which is why, on 26th March, when I made the decision to furlough myself from my one-woman show, I knew I would quickly tire of the fact that those rigours from then on would mostly entail deciding what flavour soup I’d have for lunch.
And on top of this I had the niggling thought in the back of my mind (as I started to debate the merits of reliable old Heinz Tomato versus Yorkshire Provender’s rather more fancy offerings) that in order to be good at your job – whatever it is – requires you to be busy doing it in order to maintain the skills it takes. What’s the saying, Use it or lose it? Well, indeed, if you stop doing something for long enough you will naturally become less familiar with it, and the same goes for any period of unemployment – however it has come about.
And so I found myself in the same position as many others during the Covid19 crisis, and just as vulnerable to the “use it or lose it” trap. But, thanks to a contact in one of the incredible voluntary organisations in my local area, I found myself a fabulous opportunity to use my skillset for good at this time. At the beginning of April I set up (and have been managing since then) a Telephone Befriending Service to give comfort and support to those who were either shielding completely or who simply found that the crisis had exacerbated feelings of isolation and loneliness that were already present. Using my recruitment experience I matched Residents to Volunteers in the most thoughtful way possible, using the information I gathered in my initial calls with both parties. And, over the last three months since getting started, we have discovered that such feelings and needs are of course, in some shape or form, ever-present in our community, and so our intent is that we will continue this service beyond the lifetime of Covid-19, which I will continue to be involved in post-furlough for as long as time allows.
I can’t express how grateful I have been to have had this opportunity. It gave me a reason to flick that switch every morning, a chance to continue to be productive, a way of protecting my mental health, and, ultimately, from a professional perspective, a way of ensuring that I would be as ready as ever to pick up with my clients whenever they were.
Which, thankfully, is today!
It’s good to be back 🙂
