MICKY MURRAY

COPING A LOT BETTER THAN I THOUGHT I WOULD

MICKY MURRAY

MY KETTLE HAS NEVER WORKED so hard in its life.

I’m assuming that by the time we go to print we will still all be self-isolating and on lockdown.

I must say, I’m coping a lot better than I thought I would be at this stage, even if we are only four, long, weeks in, I expect it would be a very different picture if I ran out of tea bags.

The current situations makes me thankful that I can work from home, it’s been a bit strange at times, and difficult to adjust, but I’m thankful that I’m in this position. I have one of the best job in politics, as a constituency officer the majority of what I do is essentially to help people, and it’s been comforting to see all the organisations, businesses, and voluntary groups coming together and repurposing what they do, to provide much needed community support.

I’m one of those people who get lost during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, I forget what day it is and all understanding of time goes out the window and if you’re like me then It’s incredibly easy right now to stay up late, binge on Netflix and comfort food, and generally neglect yourself. So I’ve been making an effort to keep some sort of structure to my day.

Every day I’ve been waking up around 6am, I almost NEVER do this usually, so it’s taken quite a bit of self-discipline, it’s so easy to just turn over and go back to sleep. I’m not a great sleeper, so I’ve started using the ‘Get Sleepy’ podcast to get to sleep. It talks you through some breathing exercises to do to relax and then someone reads a story, keeping track of the story isn’t important, and it’s been such a great help getting me to sleep, which is how I’ve been able to get up early in the mornings. I understand that this is so much easier to do if you’re waking up to work from home.

“If you’re like me then It’s incredibly easy right now to stay up late, binge on Netflix and comfort food, and generally neglect yourself. So I’ve been making an effort to keep some sort of structure to my day.”

Every morning, well most mornings – this morning I stayed in bed and watched Ellen DeGeneres for an hour and a half, I’ve been going for my daily allowance of exercise. I’m using a ‘map my walk’ app, there’s quite a few available, to map out a 4-5km walk, taking different routes as much as possible. It’s such a great start to the day, the suns up, the temperatures fair, and there’s no one else around. As I usually work behind a desk my walk to and from work and my lunch time walk are sometimes the only daily exercise I get, so it’s been really important for me to have a walk on my own away from my laptop and social media, and it does wonders for your physical and mental health to get out of the house and forget about everything going on in the world. Social media has its share of downsides, especially when it comes to fake news and people being able to say what they want with zero accountability, but recently the good side of social media has been coming out, I’ve spent a lot of time getting my “going out” kick from Facebook live videos, Marcus Hunter-Neill, aka Lady Portia Di’Monte, does a great segment every day at 3pm, so I take a tea break and stick it on at 3pm and leave it on it the background while I’m working, he has guests, shows wee videos he’s been watching, and it’s really down to earth and great to listen in on.

‘The Virtual Lounge’, which is a virtual live lounge on Facebook managed by Alex Jay from The Diva Dolls, have almost daily shows on, from local drag artists, acoustic sets, and even people like Kitty Brucknell from The X Factor, it’s definitely worth checking out to fill the void of not being able to go out, and I’ve been watching, virtually, with friends with has been fun.

Of course it’s been an incredibly difficult time for society, and especially for all those people who are self-isolating alone, but there is something really uplifting about the outpour of support across communities, the people volunteering with the Health and Social Care sector, and all the people who are going the extra mile to make sure that everyone has what they need.

Stay safe, be nice, take advantage of a terrible situation and learn something about yourself, read something you normally wouldn’t read, watch some documentaries so you’re not frying your brain with fiction, pick up the phone and have a chat with a friend, this is a great time for those “yeah, we should hang out sometime soon” friends to properly reconnect.