I wish the answer was some epic travelling adventure, but sometimes adventure comes in different forms and life can have other plans for us!

For those who don’t know me well, you might not have noticed my absence. But a LOT has been happening. In the past 5 years, like all of us, there has been the shock and upheaval of the COVID pandemic, I had my first child (who incredibly turns five this week), I moved house and I discovered that I had breast cancer. That last one has taken up a lot of my energy for the past 12-18 months with 4 surgeries, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and generally recovering from the whole experience! Happily, I am OK now and have been discharged by the hospital.

I continued working through most of the above, apart from maternity leave and some weeks out at different points during my cancer treatment.

But I have had to be ruthlessly focused. I won’t compromise on quality of work, so it’s making new work connections and posting here and on social media that have taken a backseat.

And that’s OK with me. We are human. Which is why I want to be honest and open here. As a reminder that colleagues have lives beyond work and that they may be struggling – with a caring role, bereavement, health or financial issue, parenthood and the list goes on. We know this, but it can be easy to forget when people seem fine on the surface or we get caught up in the demands and busy-ness of work.

If you are going through one of those phases yourself, I hope you are being kind to yourself. There are ebbs and flows and times to push ahead professionally and times when other parts of life require more of our time and attention. That’s OK. Work-life balance isn’t just about the day-to-day, it applies to the overall journey of our life too.

I can honestly say that one of the things I have been looking forward to most is having more time to dedicate to my work again – I love what I do! I have so many ideas, new talks and projects that have been percolating and that I’ve been wanting to action. My brain and enthusiasm have been moving faster than my body and I have had to pace myself post-treatment, as my energy improved gradually over the spring/summer and not as quickly as, of course, I wanted it to!

I’m still making sure I get enough sleep (apart from the very occasional party that I have been excited to get back to!), but my energy has pretty much fully returned and I have more space again to go beyond primarily the delivery of coaching and training. You should see me on here again more – in fact, I already have a post ‘Ready and Resilient (lessons from breast cancer)’ lined up and it’s a talk I would like to start delivering for companies.

So watch this space 🙂 And do reconnect if we haven’t spoken in a while or if you are interested in the work Barton Insights delivers and the plans I have brewing.