So here we are. Sort of,\nor maybe not, back in action. Some days it feels like an age since we listened\nto Leo on a random Friday night in March telling us our lives were about to\nchange irrevocably, and some days it feels like yesterday. Some days I wake up\nand not only do I not know what day it is but I\u2019d be hard pushed to tell you my\nname. The novelty of the early days of art and craft with the little kids and\nmiddle-of-the-day mid-week movie watching certainly wore off on the days of washing\nthe groceries in Milton solution and stripping anyone who had to leave the\nhouse to their undies at the back door before they were allowed back in. The\nshush in the house when the daily infected and died figures were being read out\nwas matched only by the shush of no home from school-time. In our house the\nLeaving cert was cancelled, graduation was cancelled. There was no long-awaited\nTY trip to Italy, no bright-evening clatter of kids visiting, in and out all\nday. No little pals, no big pals, no getting dolled up for a night out or\ntogged out for a big game. When the march of Covid changed our lives and made\nus still and our homes quiet any novelty was long gone. So now, just when we\nwould ordinarily be winding down for the Summer holidays we\u2019ve been told we can\nsort-of venture back out, but stick to the rules. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Truthfully, I don\u2019t know\nhow I feel about that. The kids are all nearly old enough that I had embarked\non a plan to upskill and re-join the real world some time ago. Get a job, do\nsomething worthwhile, but Covid and the changes it brought does throw a bit of\na spanner in the works. I\u2019ve been privileged to be at home with my kids but it\nwas always my plan to return to work. That plan which was coming along all in\nits own time, but nicely none the less seems very different now. The world\nseems different somehow and for people like me for whom re-joining the ranks of\nthe gainfully employed was always going to be a challenge it feels like a much\nmore dauting prospect. I canvassed a few\nof my \u2018working-mom\u2019 friends who had to work from home during lockdown and they\ntell me that doing so full time while the kids are at home is no joke. I\nbelieve them. Being a full-time working\nparent is tough at the best of times. Still, lots of them said that working\nfrom home two or three days a week is definitely preferable to commuting every\nday. It\u2019d be nice to think that all the\nchanges to working lives that have been implemented over the last few months\nmight give rise to better remote and flexible employment options for them and\nthe rest of us in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n