Still isolating

I have been isolating for the best part of eight weeks now. I am being shielded by the people I share the house with as I am in what is classed as a vulnerable group. People talk of the “new normal” when the reach of the virus is contained. I feel this is true and that a significant number  of us will not return to the same practices and way of working that we were used to before.

This is definitely true for me. Before I became isolated I was driving large distances every week spending more time driving than I would in the meetings when I got there. I used to think I had to do this. It happened ,as a result of choices I had made for my personal life, that my work was a distance away from where I lived. I took the view that if the colleagues I worked with didn’t continue to see me on a regular basis then the working relationship would deteriorate and my work would drop away. I had spent some years developing what I do and at my age was not looking to start all over again. In any event I had invested time and money in building the business and wanted to hang in long enough to get a proper return.

As it has turned out, I have been able to do everything that is needed by phone an email with some Zoom conference calls thrown in. The main colleague I work with has acknowledged there is no need for me to come down to meet him and travel as I used to.

So this has given me so much more time. Instead of always chasing my tail, grabbing a sandwich on the way, using eighty per cent of my monthly allowance put aside for basic expenses on driving and eating while away from home. I am now able to get up without having to rush out of the door to start a journey of not less than three hours and often six hours before I did any work. I walk from one room to the next to work and I have no travel expenses.

What is there not to like?

So how do I use this extra time? Exercise. I am now walking for an hour every morning before breakfast as well as doing some exercises and Yoga stretches. I feel fitter than I have ever done with the added benefit I am losing weight and shaping my body naturally with the assistance of HRT. I am eating healthily and preparing my own food without all the preservatives and additives I have been eating on the hoof. I get more work done and the best part of it is, as someone who has transitioned in the last two years I have so much more time to perfect my female persona….my voice, mannerisms and all that goes with it. By the time this lockdown is over, I intend to be walking on four inch heels as if I had been born with them on my feet rather than trying to give an impression of a baby giraffe trying to stand for the first time.