It’s the last day of this gruelling month called July. I’ve had quite the month, as I always do. But this time it’s been particularly tough.
After 1.5 years of surviving the pandemic, Covid finally arrived in our home. My very pregnant partner caught it from the doubled-vaxxed elderly cleaner, and she got it bad. I took care of her for about 5 days at which point I caught it too. Being single-vaxxed, my symptoms were much less severe, but it had me bed ridden for at least a whole week. Luckily neither one of us had any breathing difficulties, though my partner’s cough was beyond terrible. Even my 5 year old had the cough, but we didn’t test her - the past two tests we did on her were too traumatic and besides, we were isolating anyway, so what’s the point?
We were quite lucky to have my sister staying with us at the time (her, not so much!). You see, a day before my partner’s positive Covid result, we thought her waters had gone and to take her to the hospital, we called my sister over from Cardiff to take care of our daughter (and to be there in case we needed her for anything else). That turned out to be a false alarm - the waters had not broken, and my wife was not in any kind of active labour. It was just active Covid, and she wasn’t even vaccinated thanks to UK government’s policy on vaccinating pregnant women. Anyway, my poor sister got stuck isolating with us for 1.5 weeks - and then a few more days because the baby was overdue. I’ll come back to that.
The day we thought the waters had gone, I sent out a paternity leave notification (email) to all my clients. Almost all my clients were very happy with the news, but I felt I needed to reassure them that all projects would remain ongoing, and to explain how I was planning to manage their work with the help of my globally dispersed teams. Running your own marketing consultancy does mean you can’t just go on holiday, or take a paternity leave, which really sucks - unless I find someone to cover for me. And if I could find someone who could do what I do, why would they work for me?
I ended up telling some of the more demanding clients that I would be working a few hours each day, roughly two days a week, to justify future invoicing but also to cut back on weekly meetings and catch-up sessions which I wouldn’t have time for.
But the baby didn’t arrive that day, did she!
I sent my clients that email and in almost an instant, my partner had become very sick, my daughter couldn’t go to school any more because she had to isolate, and I suddenly had my hands full, making chicken broths, running steams for inhalation, arranging groceries and medicines, and just keeping the house going. Really glad my sister was there, because after just 5 days, I went under as well, and before I knew it, 2 weeks had gone by without me doing any kind of work at all. As far as my clients knew, I was on paternity leave. Some had congratulated me on the baby in advance. Others were just giving me space, which was very kind of them.
When the symptoms began, I thought it was stress about work causing me a tension headache - you see, I had two website projects due to go live that week. I was also worried about my partner having to deliver the baby all by herself with Covid, always hoping that the baby could hold out until she got better. Then I wanted the baby to wait for me to get better so I could be there when she is born.
I must say things did work out on the baby front. She arrived on Monday, healthy and perfect. And her superwoman of a mum did really well too. No complications, although she didn’t get her epidural, which was quite unfortunate. There was a lot of stress about my sister being stuck with us for 3 weeks at this point, and she had accommodation, internships, work and assignments to sort out for her university, so I’m glad she could be there to look after our daughter while we were in the hospital, and headed back to Wales the next day shortly after we arrived home.
I had managed to get one of the websites live but it was work that was mostly done and required minimal input from me as a project manager. The real stressor had been on complete pause since I ‘disappeared’ and this website was for my most demanding client. Although, it must be said, the MD did email me to say health comes first, wishing me well. But I know he’s in a precarious situation too, and needed the website live by this point (so what if he caused the last 12 months of delay on this project - the last couple of weeks before going live is a crucial time, and the delay must have been unbearable for him to explain to the owner).
There were other projects that I had ignored as well. One of my clients is a builder in Kent, and they had fewer leads coming through organically each month despite our SEO efforts, so I had to launch an ad campaign to bring them in, which I had managed to do. But an ad campaign, especially a new one, requires a ton of optimisation which I hadn’t done. The pressure was on me this past week to make it work, so I took some time out and did exceptional work (if I may say so myself) to get the ads to work. I managed to make some more tweaks since my baby arrived on Monday, and I’m happy to report I’ve had enough leads drop in since then to make a strong case to retain this client. Phew!
July was always meant to be a challenging month for our family. Covid and its lockdowns had delayed many things for our family. But the two major things that got sidetracked were:
Passing my UK driving test so we can get a car and become mobile.
Apply for indefinite leave to remain in the UK after passing the Life in the UK test.
I booked my first driving test in March 2020, which got cancelled and postponed a few times because of the lockdowns. In between I had a shot with just 3 lessons which weren’t enough for me to pass and then I got stuck in the endless cycle of booking a test, having it cancelled, bidding for earlier dates, it getting cancelled again, and this happened a few times every time the lockdown got extended. Arranging driving lessons was difficult too because of Covid guidelines.
Anyway, I’ve had a couple of lessons this past week, and am poised to take (and hopefully pass) the driving test on the 3rd of August, fingers crossed.
The indefinite leave to remain (ILR) is a visa for permanent residency for our family in the UK which sets us back by £9,000 and requires collecting a ton of documents from my partner’s past and present employees in the UK. As our sponsor, she had to jump through many hoops to get all this arranged. We submitted our application when we were both suffering badly from Covid, but with our visas about to expire in August, we had no choice in the matter. It had to be done.
We had hoped to do it before the baby arrived so she could be a UK citizen by birth, but we have missed this window now. Once we have her documents arranged we will probably need to apply for her ILR separately (another £3,000, woohoo!). Not to mention getting her Pakistani identification documents sorted out first. This is the order in which we get this and each item can’t happen without the previous one:
UK birth certificate (we have an appointment for the 2nd of August)
Pakistani identity card (smart NICOP)
Pakistani passport
UK visa (ILR probably)
Only if we get all these documents sorted will my newborn child cease to be an illegal immigrant here in the UK. We still might need to get her naturalised in the UK with a British passport after all this, but we need her to have legal status in order to travel to Pakistan this December for my sister’s wedding. So it has to be done.
Fun fact: for my 5 year old who was also born in the UK, the ILR application actually asked for her date of arrival in the UK. I comically entered her birthday because, what a ridiculous question to answer, right? What else can I enter into this date field?
My mom, sisters and my wife had been after me to watch Money Heist, and when you’re sick with Covid, what else can you do lying in bed all day. That is, when you can open your eyes. But what a bad decision this was! This show is so addictive, I found myself watching it every free minute I had! I’m on season 4 already! But as a consequence of post-Covid lethargy, newborn baby related sleep deprivation, and being unable to sleep because I’m hooked to this show, I’ve been very sleep deprived.
Last night I decided to go to bed early and not attempt to watch an episode before bed, because it’s never just one episode. As a result, I am now up early on Saturday, feeling well rested after a long time, and ready to have the most productive day ever!
So let me jot down a little to-do list for my own reference:
Deliver new content strategy for my synthetic data client (overdue after the focus keywords research project I did for them)
Submit list of suggested content changes for the same client to the lead developer
Prepare a report of the thought leadership articles we’ve published highlighting the same client, along with blogger outreach results and some website traffic reports.
Deliver the seed list expansion I did for my edge AI client who gave me a seed list of leads to expand using LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Deliver and explain the focus keyword research for my cleaning company client and upsell a monthly SEO retainer to drive down their monthly ad spend - I have a meeting with them on Tuesday after my driving test.
Do the groundwork for the same cleaning company’s new whitepaper which needs to be embedded on their website as gated content to generate leads, and also prepare a quote for the website work.
Update my plumber client about their new website development and its progress after the last design change - this is the third website build we are working on these days.
Make some tweaks to the ad campaigns I run for my car leasing client before the month is over.
Prepare a strategy document for the group of companies working in welfare and modular buildings, which is one of my biggest and oldest clients. Include an overview of a focus keywords research and cost that.
Tweak ad campaigns for the same client, especially the newly launched tanker services which are in need of further optimisation.
Check in on social media postings for newly published blog posts for my tax advisory client.
And last but not least, review the work the team has already done on this massive website build for a client that sells ice (cubes and sculptures), make a list of changes to be made for each of the 50 main pages, push them to finish the fixes by Tuesday which is when I have a meeting with this client.
As an optimist, I think I can do the first 11 of these things in one day, which were supposed to be done over the past 21 days. But the 12th one, that could take me all day too. In an ideal world, I would do all of the above today, and then have a smashing week ahead.
I can picture myself attaching and submitting all the work done in July next week: advertising reports, analytics reports, retainer reports - while also passing my driving test, going for the ILR biometrics appointment, birth certificate, vaccination appointments etc.
It would be hectic, but we will have climbed a mountain by the end of it. And most of all, my clients wouldn’t have a reason to delay payment of my invoices because they are under the impression the work hasn’t been done.
I hope this is the Saturday I get through 21 days of pending work. Wish me luck!
