We've been wondering how to describe what we've been up to these past few months, locked as we are in quasi-isolation in on our admittedly very large prison island.
There's been no a lack of motivation to work on our little projects, but we've certainly suffered, if that's the word, from a lack of urgency brought on by the feeling that perhaps we should pace ourselves lest we get to the end of our respective lists before a reliable Covid vaccine is discovered.
During the past decade while lounging on the deck of our boat, or wandering aimlessly down a winding cobbled alleyway or along some exotic beach in a far flung corner of the globe, we've often been asked whether we were "retired". Invariably we'd reply "Oh no, this is what we do for a living". Therein perhaps lies a clue to the challenge that we have in describing our present state. After a decade leading a gloriously peripatetic life, it dawned on us that perhaps we should consider this halt in proceedings to be a well deserved long service leave. lf that were the case though, the implication is that on the completion of our leave, we would take up our former life where we left off, albeit suitably refreshed, and in the current world circumstance that seems to be in unlikely probability.
It is increasingly common practice for employers to direct an employee to take so called “gardening leave” after an employee has given notice of termination of employment. This is a time when in order to protect proprietary information, said employee is bound to his or her former employer, before being allowed another position which is often required to be in some entirely different field of endeavour. Perhaps that's it. When the new normal is found, perhaps we too will have to invent our new career path, rather than face "retirement".
That's it! We're on gardening leave.
