Lockdown Team Blog - Series 2: Donna Scully

3 minutes to read.

Last year, our teams produced a series of blogs written by colleagues across multiple divisions of the company. They provided a small insight into our evolving working practices and values as we all adjusted to our new post-COVID19 world. Now we're back with our second series!

Here is the seventh in our 2nd series of posts from our Director, Donna Scully.

"I did my ‘Covid Blog’ Series 1 on 16^th June last year and it focused mainly on the shock of totally working from home, how poor I realised I was at ‘IT’ and how it had been a baptism of fire for me especially around the public speaking I do!

Since then I have managed to improve my IT skills (debatable), got my home Wifi upgraded and ‘came to terms’ with doing most things work or social ‘virtually’ without constantly moaning!

From a personal point of view, there have been huge challenges. I am from Dublin so my Mammy, brother and a lot of my family are there. My Mammy is in a Nursing Home so that has been very worrying until she recently got her vaccine.  I miss her, my brother, family and Dublin.

I also have family in the UK I have not seen for over a year and we can only FaceTime for now which is tough.  I know a lot of you are in the same boat.  It’s not nice.

On a positive note, I’ve really tried to stay optimistic, grateful and dig deep to keep my chin up.  That’s not to say I don’t have bad days because I do.  Really bad days but I dust myself down and ‘go again’ trying to focus on the good rather than the bad.

I am trying to learn mindfulness because you’ve never met anybody who ‘does’ rather than ‘is’ more than me.  I never stop moving, I don’t know how to be still so wish me luck with this!  When I walk, I listen to Brene Brown so I am ‘learning’ how to be wholehearted, less of a perfectionist and how to ‘rumble’! That is not a dance by the way…..

From the start of Lockdown1, John had the great idea of us getting dressed up once a week (as if we were going out), get a takeaway, drink wine and get the music on.  I named it ‘OutIn’ as opposed to ‘OutOut’ which was what I called me going out with the intention of staying out a long time! We’ve taken photos of our escapes and posted them on social media for a few reasons. Firstly, to see if anybody else fancied doing it and secondly, in case anybody found it fun to see what we were up to.  The feedback has been great so we are delighted.  John has been a real sport too letting me post pictures of him because it is definitely not his ‘thing’!

I have to mention my amazing colleagues who have not only kept Carpenters going so well but me too! I knew we had a good team round us but you really know who you want in the trenches at a time like this.  I’m really thankful to them all and to our brilliant Executive and Operations Teams who have done a fantastic job not only of making it ‘business as usual and more’ for customers but of taking care of each other too and sticking together.  They are all superheros.

I am delighted the vaccine rollout is going so well and I really hope it is our ticket out and back to some normality. Stay safe, try to keep your sense of humour and I will see you on the other side."