Chris Platts

Having officially become a Community Interest Company (CIC) on 20th June 2022 you could say I was a little excited to get going and get going to knock down the next milestones. Unfortunately for me this was made harder by a string of health issues that put me in check. Which is not ideal when you’re looking to capitalise on some good momentum.

The first problems were a viral chest infection. Everything pointed to COVID apart from the constant negative testing. Shortness of breath, tight chest and a inability to stay awake or sleep for more than 4 hours at a time. Completely counterproductive and very irritating. After a week of this my gall stones decided to reappear and make sure that there was no chance of being comfortable while still suffering with the previous symptoms. Yet another irritation to try and deal with. Finally an additional infection of my throat just to top things off. A truly miserable time for 3 weeks. But not a complete loss.

From previous experience of being off work I knew how to keep manage expectations so not to get too frustrated. I was able to plan appropriately to keep things ticking over. After a couple of days I was able to work out that for the 4 hours that I was able to keep awake. The middle 2 hours were going to be the most productive. Even if I couldn’t do much, I was able to do something. Little things such as researching how our new services will work when we release them. Cleared away so of the nagging administrative work that always seems to end up at the bottom of the list of jobs to do. Design a couple of new social media posts and rehash some of the old ones. Managing expectations and not getting frustrated. Easy to say, not so easy to do. Especially when you might feel a little bit better one moment, then completely wiped out again then next. Slowly plodding along but getting into the right position to push on when the opportunity arises.

What I have learned from the past is the need to ease back into the swing of things. Too much too soon can ruin any progress being made and you end up worse off than before. It can be hard to plan rest into a schedule, but it needs to be done. Especially when coming back into the work environment after a lengthy time off. There may be times where pressures from line management to push through can become untenable. However if you look back at why you became ill in the first place, it was probably because you were running on empty for quite some time. Don’t rush into full working life. Rushing around trying to play catch up is potentially going to be counterproductive in the long run. That short term gain could end up being long term pain. So look after yourself and keep topping up the tank before you run out again.