Virtually Me
Strange times! it is what we are all saying and have been experiencing since March. I was in fact preparing for my own strange times or at least change to my life, as I resigned from my job I’d been in for more than three decades and was looking forward to what would happen next. I thought I would continue to teach my 3 small yoga classes each week and expand my vintage clothing business, go on some buying trips, take some courses, maybe at some point create my own website. Well we all know what actually happened next.
At home alone for weeks on end with no distractions I managed to create my own website, and if you are reading this ,you've seen it.I complained that it was like giving birth, and it was a fairly painful process, and I am very proud of the final result. My haphazard vintage market stall business became more real by becoming virtual. I entered the world of self promotion on Instagram and little by little The Vintage Fairy emerged in to the world. It is still a tiny business but I’m really enjoying seeing it grow.
My other job, teaching yoga in church halls also had to go virtual. From the beginning of lockdown my own yoga teacher was at the forefront of yoga on Zoom. I started attending classes which were great but I couldn’t really see myself teaching yoga virtually. For one thing I didn’t think we would be lockdown for so long, I didn’t think my students would enjoy it and I wasn’t sure I would be able to pull it off. As it became clearer that teaching real life classes would not be possible for a long time I decided to give it a go.
When I opened the zoom meeting for my first online class I nearly cried, seeing lots of my lovely Yoga students smiling in their zoom boxes, looking like the Brady Bunch or celebrity squares. I realised how much I had missed them and how we were an important part of each others lives. We had all spent such a long time seeing only our family, or for some, no one, that seeing familiar faces, even virtually was lovely.
We are used to it now and Zoom actually works quite well for yoga when you know how. For it to work the students have to be muted and I miss all the moans and groans and cheerful banter. It’s frustrating when words are not enough to adjust a posture of a student lying on her dining room floor and amusing when the cat, dogs and small children join us. But virtual yoga is definitely better than no yoga.
For now I am virtually me. I do want life to get back to normal , although Im not quite sure what that will be. However I have learnt so much and can see different ways of doing things that I think I will hang onto. Selling vintage and preloved online certainly has many advantages, I have sent Items all over the place with customers not only in different counties but in different countries something I never imagined from my market stall. I hope to return to face to face yoga one day, but on those cold winter evenings or when traffic is at a standstill we will think fondly of our months spent doing yoga together in the comfort of our own homes. Perhaps we can take the highs and lows of the last few month and create a better normal.