We’ve been living in a nightmare since last year… it’s a mind game for everyone. One minute high and happy, enjoying the break but the next minute low and just want to jump back into the bed, under the blanket. “but the main thing we are healthy”- we’ve heard this many times. YES! That is so true but when I am feeling low, I can’t see how lucky I am. I’m sure you know this feeling.
So, what am I doing during this lockdown… in the last one year. This time last year, when I heard we might have to close, I said “not a hope!” how naïve I was… I closed the salon door on 23rd of March with the hope we could open 4-6 weeks. It lasted 15weeks…
During the first lockdown, the first couple weeks was very mixed emotionally… Constant worry “will I lose my clients?”, “will we ever open our door again?” and worried about my family and missing them so much… I missed my brother’s wedding, I missed my granny’s last dinner at her house because she sold it after 40years, it was the first Christmas without my family and at the end of the year my first niece arrived in this world but I haven’t seen her yet either. I had many low moments but I just kept saying “at least we are healthy” and that’s true because during the lockdown I lost two of my clients, who were more than clients to me after 13years, also I had many clients who weren’t that lucky and got the Covid. So Sad!!
I’m sure you had many sad moments as well. But we have to look over it and I have to be honest: I had many nice moments as well… I really enjoyed the nice summer days in my garden with a couple icelollys (sorry Caroline- my PT), many days we went on nice walks with Cleo or we played on the farm. Yesss, on the farm with my wellies, I left the high heels in the salon behind the closed door 😊
I had work as well, I had many online orders and we made a couple of online workshops with my students as well. It was really nice to see their photos after the live video. It charged me up, I felt useful again 😊 Great feeling to support them and see their achievements. I am very proud of them.
We kept in touch with many clients, at end of the day they are my wee family here and I really missed them.
I had many great wee chats with my friends, clients from the beauty industry so we could share our experience and support each other.
Then one Thursday evening we got the big news: We can open 6th of July!
Couple of weeks before we opened, we prepped the salon to be able to open in the safest way possible. Removed the shelves from the wall to make sure the dust couldn’t sit on it and boxed up all unnecessary items from the salon to make the salon easy to clean, ordered more cleaning products and followed the guidelines to keep our clients safe from Covid-19.
Filled up our stock especially with the new summer gel/ gelpolish colors to spoil our clients and organised our new courses. We were buzzing.
The BIG day arrived, Monday morning 8am. It was a new start. We were so happy. Finally I could meet my “salon family” and do what we love to do. It was a brilliant feeling but deep down I was worrying… “how could we build up the new “Covid routin” in our daily life” “will our clients be happy enough? Happy enough to wear the mask?? How can I not offer them a coffee/tea/cappucino/lattee/sweets?” I was worried for no reason… we had no issue. I was so proud of my clients, they helped me so much and followed every instruction what we had to do to keep them safe of Covid.
We were very busy, like never closed… The salon was busy, weekend with our students and we had many orders in our shop. Back to our “normal” life with new the Covid rolls.
This happy time didn’t last long, we had to close again from 16th of October at 6 pm. It was “only” 4 weeks but it was extended another extra week. For this stage had some experience from the last lockdown, I build up a “lockdown routine” and I was strong enough this time to say every day “it is only a couple of weeks”, “I have to enjoy this time because that will be my last lockdown and I’ll never gonna be at home for weeks again”. I know I was naïve again but I tried to enjoy this time as much as possible. I went to the salon every day to sort out our orders and went for some nice walks with Cleo. Warm summer was over and the ice-lolly is not that nice in front of the fire so I went back to the kitchen and cooked some nice dinners. I love the cozy nice dark evening especially when you have nice company.
Then we opened again but only for 1 week. That was the worst. How can I do everyone’s nails?? How can I pick from my clients? Also, I had to reschedule our courses as well.
Again, my students and my clients were so nice and understood it was not my decision. It was tough, really tough. We worked day and night, but we had a great atmosphere in the salon, we laughed so much to keep our minds positive.
After that shortest one week ever I had, were closed again for two weeks. This time I was busy to sort out Christmas. We got many new colors in the salon and the shop as well and organised some more online courses. This time we started to do our new website as well. In this way those two weeks went really fast.
Opened again for Christmas and unfortunately closed again…
Christmas was hard without my family but it was amazing at the same time with my new family here.
We are still closed but I’m well used to that by now unfortunately. I am still busy with the online orders, online courses and training myself as well. We have many new plans for our next chapter.
I hope this time is our LAST lockdown and we could open our doors and waiting our clients/students/customers with many new treatments, courses, products.
This journey tought me for many things and showed me how lucky I am with my loyal clients and with the loveliest people around me.
The worst year ever we had but we are here. No right and wrong, everyone trying to do their best but we have to think positive and believe these dark days will be over one day and we could have back our normal life.
I had many up and down but still I love my passion I love my job what is my life and I am stronger as ever…
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