Just when we thought we’d got that work-life-balance thing spot on – but we’ve been discovering how confusing it can be when work and life collide.
It’s more of a linguistic shunt than a literal crash… so to explain…
One side of our business is property letting – bricks and mortar, rather than floating homes.
Our own home and office is a 50ft narrowboat – this week navigating the Trent and Mersey, Wardle and Shropshire Union Canals. The latter is positively busy – more moving boats than we’ve seen for weeks! It’s also very beautiful.
We’ve got used to dealing with leaks on the water – leaking locks, leaking water tanks and leaking windows come to mind.
We’ve been tackling leaks of a different kind for some tenants – leaking radiators. That demanded a call to draw on a well established relationship with a plumber local to the radiators. Given that our properties are in different places we keep up good relations with plumbers, electricians and carpenters in several locations. Networking remotely you might say!
Another facet of the business is journalism with some PR (public relations). The journalist welcomes leaks but PR is somewhere you generally prefer NOT to have them. Fortunately there weren’t any this week although we did pass a reminder of a political leak which has resulted in a positive flood of bad news for the Government over the past year or so.
Then, as we were heading into another lock (and we’ve tackled a fair few in recent days), we had a crisis call from another tenant – about a different kind of lock. He was locked in his bathroom! As we tackled one kind of lock we were simultaneously sorting a solution to a different kind of lock for him and by the time we were heading into the next lock for us, he was free and a repair was underway.
Managing work and life whilst floating through the British countryside demands multi-tasking but we don’t duck that – in fact we revel in it, and we picked up another delightful duck this week – meet (early) Valentine!
Happy Valentines’s Day and have a good week – at work and in life!
Pickingupducks 