Have you learnt a new skill during lockdown? Apparently lots of people have.
Personally I have learnt tons of new skills…. but not perhaps in the traditional sense. Nevertheless a skill is a skill, so here goes…. I have learnt that if I go to bed fully dressed it saves me time in the morning. That if I get up at 6am I get two hours to do stuff I need to before school starts. I have learnt that I only have time for a bath every third day, and one I am particularly proud of, I have learnt to multi-task whilst cleaning my teeth.
But no wait, there are more. I have learnt to quadruple-task on a regular basis; to leave grumpy children be; to manage expectations; to placate cabin fever; to teach punctuation and synonyms; to do my times tables much more quickly; that I am really not the best at keeping track of time; that more gets done when I write my children a to-do list; that they will watch the Simpsons for hours if I let them; but that maybe that is all the education they need… and that after a few weeks I need to shake up the menu. My newly acquired skills really are endless, and i could go on …
But there are two biggies left that I haven’t yet mentioned. Two skills that i realise now life has been trying to teach me probably for quite a while. The first is that when a person is pushed too hard, for example when there is too much school work, or unrealistic demands are being made by a boss at work it results in a miserable, grumpy person who shut’s you out….and you think it’s your fault. But here’s the life skill - it’s not! In fact it’s nothing to do with you. You just have to let them work it through for themselves and not to take it personally. But that a bit of an outburst of annoyance might ‘nudge’ them.
The second is this: don’t care so much about everything. It’s not worth it. The world has you by the balls if you do. We all need to take back the power and just chill out a bit more because everything eventually works out in it’s way. Don’t try too hard.
And so to conclude, no I haven’t had time to learn a new skill like the guitar or the drums or the harp because right now I am learning skills that are subtly far more important. It’s family world right now and we have all been learning in our own ways how to adapt and evolve and to support each other.