A year of living Covidly

We made it.

2020 started of as a year with smoke and fires before entering the first pandemic in 100 years. The agenda was to push forwards with setting up a business as a private education company but these activities soon wound down when parents were furloughed, students were asked to leave school early and examinations postponed. I am extremely grateful to still be standing at the end of it all, and I am not ashamed to admit that I'm on first line low dose anti-depressant medication and anti-psychotic medication; but better things are on the horizon in terms of vaccines. I wanted to contribute more to the national efforts to reduce Covid-19 but time and time again I have been stopped by "what if" thinking. I am just grateful for the governments altruistic nature, its selfless support for individuals and organisations - these are the hallmarks of the United Kingdom. However, I have had lots of ideas as to how the UK could have improved its test and trace system which I look forward to documenting in literature in the coming year. Hopefully this will discourage the government from awarding consulting firms with multi-million pound contracts and encouraging more long-term thinking and delayed gratification.

The whole year has felt a bit like walking through mud - lots of sticky mud. The wonderful Lucy Charlotte, my wife, has been a tower of strength, ably assisted by her sister, father and mother. Words fail to express my gratitude, especially for how you picked up the pieces after I wobbled back in 2015 when a previous employer was found to be irresponsible, guilty and accountable. My psych was helped when she (Lucy) pointed out that I would survive. I may not have a job. The sector I loved may no longer be recognizable as it once was, and may not want me anymore. But I would survive. That helped. It helped a lot. My wife sustained me. She is the centre for me. She makes my world make sense. We enjoyed our quiet little lockdown life. We had each other, and that was enough.

A few years back I thought about quitting blogging but I love writing. This year and next year I am giving myself the luxury of posting once a month. I have been rewarded with increased readership. Thank you for all the lovely feedback, the best place to talk to me is still Twitter - @nf00038. I want my blog to provide the occasional laugh in a somewhat bleak period of our lives. I look forward to 2021 being the start of the roaring 20's. My blog brings such joy to my life. I learn so much from it. It recharges my batteries and provides me with renewed faith in the world. Thank you.

I attended a few teaching job interviews in schools this year; and was able to reflect on the teaching of those children with additional needs. Job interviews are something of a rarity these days since I was diagnosed with Autism in 2015. I also participated in extra curricular after school activities at a few schools in Hampshire which allowed me to demonstrate my skills in robotics. The inherent challenge here was the teaching of the complexity of Robotics to primary school children.

My fellow Christmas casual work colleagues at Royal Mail sustained me. For a short while there, along with six others, we were responsible for processing all of the Christmas parcels in Basingstoke. Over the course of the six week period running up to Christmas I calculated that we processed 37 tonnes of parcels every afternoon. Together, we did OK, and we worked together to get through the parcels. I shall look forward to seeing Royal Mail again in 12 months time. However, it did surprise me that the Basingstoke mail collected from Basingstoke wasn't filtered out and was sent to Swindon for further sorting before returning to Basingstoke to be delivered.