Covid-19 in the community

I am still taking it easy you know one day if I feel tired I am telling my manager, not feeling great today you know can I just take a half day off and he says yeah that’s absolutely fine. So, they are very, very supportive and because the year end is really busy as well, but they are very supportive. And if I want to take a break I just tell them no today is not my day just wanna take a break not because of my anxiety or anything but because I am generally feeling tired. You know some day maybe I have a late night and I don’t sleep well at night because I can’t properly lie down and sleep um you know so I do take breaks. I don’t think it has anything to do with work because in work I am not stressed out at all even though it is the year end because I know how supportive they are.

I had to continue my job because I am working at like another front worker, front line worker so I have to go but worried about myself that I have to go, if I can get the virus or not but I try to wear the mask all the time but it’s still so many closest thing like I followed, still I had like a positive like in December during the second wave.

And a bus driver died, thirty six around, bus driver died because of the Covid because they came to work. If they don’t come to work, they stay home, they not die because of our job, nature of our job. If it’s like, you know, the war time or something, you had to go to do our job because we need to run the service otherwise how people move from one place to another place. This is like backbone. [The transport system] is like a running service and like a backbone of the [city]. If they don’t run the service, no one can move from here to there.

With some of the herbs, I cannot get it, cannot access. Some of the things I cannot practice the way I want to. So, I feel sometimes, frustrated in all. I, I’m adjusting and I have adjusted like everyone else. But that’s something that I want to do and I could do it. That’s not there. And I get ever so tired with physically and mentally, I get ever so tired by the midday or end, end of the day like five o'clock around that time. I guess I get so tired. And that’s something I am not understanding. All I’m thinking I’m getting old, or is it because of that or because of Covid that happen, I don't know. So, I don't know, something, something is.

I remember sort of saying as well, I remember thinking clearly “I’d better work on me CV and go back to my office CV because there’s not that much here for guiding”, so I thought I’d better, you know, see what else is out there but of course, we realised there wasn’t. We probably could survive financially for a bit but it’s just a knee jerk reaction that I need to, I need to find a new career because there’s not any, you know, tours have been stopped. I remember, I remember saying something like, hopefully by June, I’m hoping by June it will be okay again, which seemed like a lot, that’s three months of work out of the window. I can’t, that seems like a, I thought that was a sensible approach. So okay, let’s write off three months then by June, which is the busiest month, I want to be back and that changed in my head to September. Then yeah and like now well, I might just change my mind because the news is but I’ve actually got no expectations now.

It affected work for me because obviously schools were closed and I’m a teacher so I couldn’t, what hurt most was I couldn’t play and perform as a musician, doing gigs, that hurt me, because that’s my social life. That was the thing I live for the weekends, travelling round the country playing and performing so not being able to be in school teaching that was bad enough then not being able to play or perform that was even worse, so yeah.

Yeah, just try and protect yourself as much as possible and, you know, try and do a risk assessment as do you have to do a face to face, you know? Can you get away with advice and things but, you know. I mean it’s been fairly difficult in the last year trying to deal with so many patients by telephone because it’s so different to how we’ve been trained and how we’ve always worked, you know. And it’s not been satisfactory. Very stressful and it’s not been enjoyable. Up until March last year, I enjoyed my work immensely and, but it’s you re-evaluate your job, you know, and it’s been difficult.

When I got Covid, I got a real sense of community from my own congregation and wider community. So many people got in touch with good wishes. So many people contacted me to say, “I know you’re very hard working, please rest. We need you in one piece, it’s more important that you be well. Don’t overdo it, don’t rush yourself, don’t worry, we’ll cope, whatever.”