Best of both worlds: Estelle’s journey in a pioneering role - March 21
Holiday
March 2021
Having just come back from a short holiday at home, this month I thought I would remind you that it is important to take your holiday – even if that means you must spend the entire week at home because of Covid lockdowns.
Last year, during the first lockdown, I found myself blending my teaching and Digital Schoolhouse time together as I wasn’t teaching and had instead been given the green light to work on live workshops which we were delivering via Twitch (if you haven’t had the chance to catch any of them, you can view them all via our YouTube channel here . This was fine during term time, but I found that I was also doing this during school holidays and as a result I don’t think I was quite as well centred as I normally am. Fast forward to February 2021 and I found myself becoming grumpy and resentful about my Digital Schoolhouse work – something that, if you know me, is very unusual for me. I started to think about why I might be feeling like that and realised that it was February half term – a time that traditionally I would have gone away on holiday. I decided that although I couldn’t go away, we are in the midst of another lockdown as I write, I still needed to have the break and so I immediately booked off my DSH days for the following week.
So, how did you spend your holiday at home? I hear you cry! Well, firstly my husband also took the time off as he was also beginning to feel run down and, like me, hadn’t realised the link with it being a time we would have normally gone away. Next, we decided that neither of us would cook for the week – we would prepare simple lunches but other than that we would order takeaway. We also decided that we had to try different takeaway to the ones we normally have – if we were on holiday, we would have eaten in lots of different, new, places so that would be our way of emulating that.
Thirdly we would try to do something different every day, we went for walks in places we don’t often go to, we grabbed coffees and went for a walk along the seafront (something we’ve been planning to do for a while but somehow never got around to), we went for a drive with our favourite playlist just to singalong, we got a Now TV Cinema pass and took it in turns to choose a film to watch each evening but most of all we relaxed and this week I feel myself again!
Having had this experience I am already thinking about when I would normally take my next holiday – April, around Easter time – and will be getting that booked off. It’s so important to give yourself time to relax and unwind even if you can’t actually go away.
