My Corona

I was sitting in a hotel room in Paris, with my beautiful 4-year-old daughter; she was asleep, and I opened my laptop and started to check emails. I remember thinking I could have been in a movie; the scene was a dark hotel room, with only the glow of the screen illuminating my face, while my tired child slept next to me.

The news that I was reading from my emails was like a corporate horror movie. Email after email were from clients, people I know well, whom I have worked with for years, politely but with quiet desperation pulling out of their contracts. There was not much chat, just a finality that didn’t allow for discussion, questions or negotiation. Just: “I’m sorry but we can’t pay you, we have to stop the work, effective immediately.”

That anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach grew with the anticipation of what was to come next and the impending  stress I knew I would face as I thought about how I was going to keep the jobs of my team viable. It was a house of cards falling down around me with each card blowing around my head, just long enough to reveal the people, the ideas, the sweat, the tears and jubilation of the work that we’d lovingly completed for them. These cards got swept up and blown away without a tether, lost to the breeze; seemingly forever. This happened over and over again. There was nothing to hold on to. I had to surrender to the chaos. I felt I was in a hurricane and waiting for the storm to pass, till I could be one of those picking through the ruins of my business and life, like I’d seen bushfire victims do on the news.

We arrived safe and well in Sydney. I had not slept for three nights from the stress and of not wanting to let my daughter sleep unsupervised on the plane from Paris. I was delirious; but the Sydney sunshine and the warmth on my skin was a moment of reassurance that we were home, we were safe. Everything else could wait.

Walking through the airport carpark there is that familiar readjusting feeling of being back from another place. Using your legs again after 24 hours of sitting down, of the different time zone, the refreshing light. We talked of the lockdown, the isolation and lack of toilet paper. The world went mad in our 10 days away. It was surreal.

We went home, a place I would not leave for 14 nights – a new home for me – we’d only lived there for 10 weeks. It was strange. It would become my bunker and headquarters for what would come.

The response that we all had to COVID-19 hitting our shores was intense. Whatever you had to do to get through the days – the phone calls, emails, questions you had to ask and answer, the cancellation of activities, holidays, weddings, meet-ups – whatever is the unique mix of your own life. For me, I had a little one at home, a failed holiday, isolation and a haemorrhaging business with worried and stressed staff who didn’t know if they had a job or where their rent or mortgage payments would come from.  

I had to get the facts clear. That was tough and totally exhausting. On the Monday of my second week in isolation I redid the budgets, restructured the team and the work, and created a new scenario for the business. Satisfied I had a plan, I completed the work I had to do, tackled the piling administration, and went to bed. Tuesday, I did it again, Wednesday again, twice on Thursday, all in reaction to changing circumstances, snippets of information from the government, rumours and assumptions. On Friday I did it at 11am, 1pm and then again at 5pm. At 5:15pm, encouraged by my long suffering business coach, I decided that I wanted to ensure I could give my team the best start to their unemployment, I gave them notice, a full month of pay, their annual leave and made heart-breaking calls telling them we were done.

I was inconsolable. Completely exhausted, wrought and desperately sad for the loss of the business I had built up over 13 years and for my staff whose well-being I have always carried in my heart.

Then my father called to say that my cousin who had suffered five years of arduous pain had died. It was too much.

The Australian government announced some support was coming; “it will be great”, he said, but no details were forth coming. It was three long arduous weeks of anxiety, unsure as to what I could commit to with the staff, clients and myself. It was dark and the pressure was closing in on me.

After numerous calls, emails and chats with my accountant, bookkeeper, reading the legislation and hearing from the experts, I re-hired the team on new contracts with the Job Keeper funding. It was something bright in a lot of dark. We had arrived somewhere, though I was not quite sure where. I’m not sure any of us did.

Home became work, the office slowly evolving out of a guest bedroom, things shifting around me, my physicality representing the sudden shift and turmoil that was going on. The bed was here, then it was over there – temporarily, and then it found a home, new and out of place for a while.

We closed the office and dismantled the unique collection of stuff we had accumulated into different directions. Every desk, allen-keyed shelf and cup had a memory, a moment, an achievement, a disappointment. It was like all the emotional energy of the past were stored in these random artefacts of the business, that when moved, was released, and settled upon me. I struggled to be in the office clearing and cleaning, and only got out due to the dogged determination of one of my team. It was harsh and the setting down of the office keys was a final physical reminder of the change.

A few weeks into the newest reality, somehow the benefits of the storm were revealing themselves; more time at home, more time to play, the ability to exercise before work, more time to cook; the house started to take shape, the new routine emerged and a calm appeared.

I enjoyed the calm, but knew it was a thin veneer. There was still so much to determine – jobs, structure, product, reputation, energy levels, life design and more. Where would the money to pay the mortgage appear from? Who would I be working with? What would I be doing?

Gripped simultaneously with fear and elation for this new chapter I sat down and started to write. And the questions emerged: where had I been amongst the weight of the work? Where was my voice amongst the many ‘ghost’ personas I inhabited? Freed from the restraints of the I have had some space to consider my future. I’ve been asking myself; how do I want to work? What do I want to think about? With whom? What does it all mean? And what have I learnt through it ALL.

I feel older, wiser perhaps, but certainly weathered. I want to move this extraordinary experience and shape-shift it into something great, something that inspired me, my world, and my daughter to keep me challenged and growing.

I know that I want to evolve. I do not know where I’ll come out from the last 13 years of effort, energy and devotion, but I can’t wait to find out.