That Friday feeling

It's the end of the working week and I've the uncommon feeling of having made significant progress this week.  An approval, that Colleague R had suggested would be challenging to obtain, turned up on Friday afternoon and we are now preparing for our Review call next week.

I would have liked to have celebrated with an early finish, but I had a call in the late afternoon and Marauder* and I could only manage a short walk as drizzle fell from an overcast sky.

I'm also chuffed to report that I have managed to catch another rat in the shed where I used to keep the chickens' feed.  What better way to start the weekend than with the death of rodent scum.

The end of the working week got me thinking about how people are using instant messaging, email and conferencing calls to stay in touch during the Covid-19 lockdown.  At the start of Social Distancing, I was quite happy to stay in touch using these apps and tools.  

However, as time has gone on, I've become less inclined to participate and I think I have worked out why ...  These tools are exactly the same as the ones I use at work and my social life has moved from being informal get togethers and shared meals to wretched alerts on my 'phone that interrupt my non-working life without thought to whether I want to talk to anyone or not.

Basically lockdown has meant that our friends now have access to more of my time than I really want to share with them and I am feeling somewhat resentful.  I know that this might seem selfish and awful, but I am busy at work and need time for me, time for the family and time for our friends.  At the moment I feel that Covid-19 has given everyone license to eat in to my personal and family time using methods that are very similar to interruptions at work.  

Perhaps they should read this.  They might understand why it sometimes takes me a week to reply, or not at all, as the case may be.

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*  TP's girlfriend has popped up for the day, and possibly an overnight stay, so they walked Whiffler and Dog #3** earlier in the day.

**  I really must give her a proper alias.