Current Times - Johanna Mulley

We want to share with you our experiences in the 'current times', this week we hear from Council Member Johanna Mulley.

"Current times are strange, confusing and unknown. This period has lasted much longer than any of us could have imagined and it has taken it’s toll on each of us in different ways.

I’ve been a home worker for more than a decade, so the move to ‘working from home’ was relatively easy for me. Whilst the last two years saw me going to our Milton Keynes office on a regular weekly basis, I’d been managing my team remotely during that period so we were pretty much already set up and little needed to change. In fact, I was one of the lucky ones as the main change for me was no more commuting the 7 hour round trip to the office and more time at home with my husband and our needy rescue cat - somewhere I’d spent very little time over the previous two years! But even so, after the first few months, the cracks began to show.... there is just no real permanent replacement for human contact, not for me anyway. I had a feeling of loss and I couldn’t quite put my finger on the reason. Surely I should be happy that I didn’t need to spend my days stuck in my car on the M25?

Recently, prior to this short further period of lockdown, I arranged a socially distanced meeting with three members of my team that I’d onboarded during the pandemic and it was then I realised that it was that I’d been missing. The simple act of sitting with people, in the same room, enjoying day to day conversation and debate, lifted my soul and brought me back to life. I think it helped my team members too. When it is safe to do so again, I plan to ensure that each of my team members has the chance to do this over the coming months and I hope that it will help them feel like there is still normality in these strange current times."