IT was with a mixture of anxiety and excitement with which I faced the proposal of going into the office for a meeting last week.
A REAL meeting with REAL people. No Zoom. No Teams. A meeting face to face with colleagues I have only seen on screen in wee boxes for more than a year.
How good would that be?!
Then some concerns started to creep in.
How would I cope walking in real shoes as opposed to trainers or slippers? Will I remember to wear trousers that are not mud-splattered from the latest walk? And do I still have the ability to ensure what I wear on my bottom half matches the clothing on my top half? Or does nobody care anymore if you pair purple leggings and red socks with a mustard jumper?
And then the real anxiety kicked in.
Covid is still out there – was this really a sensible plan? Glasgow was still in level three last week.
I’d had one jag but was awaiting my second dose of the vaccine (which, I’m absolutely delighted to report, I received on Thursday).
Technically journalists are key workers … but, as First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has constantly reminded us, if we can work from home, we should.
But I’d be super careful, I told myself. My kind husband said he’d run me in and pick me up so as to avoid public transport. I’d arm myself with sanitiser and extra masks. I would try not to breathe too much.
Then news broke of a third wave of coronavirus in Scotland and my resolve to re-enter the real world crumpled. I chickened out. Our meeting was back on Teams.
I am by no means alone in this worry about going back into the world. FOMO – fear of missing out – has been replaced by FOJI, or fear of joining in.
And it seems it’s not just the health implications that scare us. For many of us who have been holed up home-working, we’re out of practice with social interaction. Even the logistics of navigating the outside world, things once carried out on autopilot like buying a train ticket and popping into a shop for a pint of milk, have taken on a strange new significance.
Ian Robertson, a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist and author of the newly published How Confidence Works, says: “It’s still an uncertain situation. Then we’re doing this delicate dance around people’s different attitudes to what’s acceptable and what’s not. And that feeds into the third thing, which is social anxiety, because our social relationships are sustained by habit.”
However, he has some advice – “fake it till you make it”, adding: “Do things you don’t quite feel ready to do.”
But, he warns: “Don’t do the ‘big bang’ return, particularly if you’re a somewhat anxious person.
“Pick off a few sub-goals … a series of nested goals leading up to the big one.”
OK, goal number one … master the art of walking in real shoes again. Goal number two … wean myself off tracksuit-wearing. Goal number three …
I fear it might be a while before I’m back in the office!
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