Positivity

This year has been really rough! As I sit here at the end of August, settling into phase 3 in Singapore, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on all the good that has happened so far. In the past couple of months, I’ve really struggled to stay positive and that it’s way too easy to get depressed when things aren’t going right and focus on all of the good shit that has actually been happening.

Family

This is the biggest positive of the whole year. In Singapore, we’ve been in some form of lockdown since early March. The kids have been on home-based learning since late April but before that, we kinda kept to ourselves and only went out when we needed to. Meaning that we’ve spent a lot of time as a family at home. Olivette is now back into her new year and Amelie will start grade 1 in a few weeks, exciting!

Anita and I have watched our girls blossom and grow throughout this period. Amelie is really enjoying her quiet one to delve into art and craft and has been snaffling any little piece of recycling so she can repurpose it into something for her toys. Olivette’s personality has really exploded, she’s a cheeky girl and has been involved in anything Amelie is doing and is usually bossing her around or causing some kinda mischief.

The girls bond has grown as well because they have spent so much time together, and they have been fighting less and less as the days pass, they love and care for each other and I hope that continues because it’s beautiful to see them be there for each other.

We’ve had Olivettes 3rd birthday, Anitas 36th birthday, my 38th birthday and Amelie’s 6th birthday. Thankfully we were allowed to have a couple of friends around so we planned a small unicorn themed party. Poor Olivette still hasn’t had a proper birthday party, 4 will have to be the big one, although I’m not really sure what 2021 will bring.

Exercise

This has been a bit trickier because of the government regulations on place that we need to wear masks when outside of the house and not involved in strenuous activity. To be on the safe side, we’ve worn masks as much as possible when outside as to not draw unnecessary attention to ourselves.

Anita and I have been getting up early on Saturday mornings and going for a long walk around the area, along the park connections pandan reservoir and a couple of weeks ago we went for a bike ride from home to the National Stadium and back, and while it was raining the whole time it was nice and cool and a fun way to start the weekend off. We’ve gone on a few big bike rides as well which has been fun and a new way to explore.

We’ve been out with the girls along the canal teaching Amelie to ride her bike so hopefully she will be off her training wheels soon. Olivette has enjoyed being on the back seat of my bike as well. Anita hasn’t been running as much as she probably had planned to but she’s still smashing everything she puts her mind to.

Because we were trapped in the house and only allowed out for exercise it’s made us form some new healthy habits as a family and that can only be a positive going forward right?

Home

The apartment is falling apart week by week it seems but we’re making the best of a bad situation and have tried to put a lot of effort into cleaning and organising our spaces so they better suit our needs now. Because of our hectic schedules and with two young kids we just never made the time for it in the past.

It has been nice to go through and clean out a lot of old clothes, toys, books and junk from the girls room, and although every poster I hung fell down within 24 hours the girls have a nicer space to play and hang out and easier access to their favourite things.

We’ve organised and disposed of cupboards full of junk and old clothes and kept only the stuff that we’re going to use in the near future. Before the circuit breaker period started, we had a family photoshoot at the marina barrage and we still need to get a set of prints framed and put up around the house which will be nice as the last set of pics we had taken were when Olivette was 6 months old.

Business

The business has beent he most challenging part about this whole situation. On one hand it’s been awesome to have the flexibility to change my schedules and adapt the business to move with the market, but ultimately it’s taken up too much of my time and I haven’t been as available as I would have liked to be for Anita and the girls.

Its a tough balance and something I’ve been working on but I still don’t have the balance right yet, and I feel that my clients and employees get the best of me and the family gets whatever is left over which sometimes isn’t very good. I’m aware of it and working on it so I guess that’s a positive.

We’ve lost a couple of staff members which has put added pressure on delivering on a couple of projects and we put hiring on the back burner until we get a bit more stability in our sales funnels which have been up and down.

I’m thankful

I’m thankful for the opportunity to still be able to provide and support my family and our lives here in Singapore. I know there are a lot of people who are doing it tough right now and we are certainly some of the lucky ones. Anita and I are both employed and the girls are back at school this month, so besides the mandatory mask-wearing and staying at home more than usual, our lives haven’t had to change all that much and for that, I’m thankful.

Hopefully, we will be able to get some sort of travel in towards the end of the year or early next year but we will take things as they come, this is more than likely going to be our last year in Singapore so we can spend a bit of time exploring the island as who knows when we will be able to get back.

I really hope that you are doing well and keeping safe.