Developments and Mental Health

Good after­noon people,

It’s been a busy time here, but on the sur­face lit­tle to show you all. Ivan is home and has had meet­ings, emails and plans. I have been back at the day job, which is busy in its own right, as well as work­ing away on adverts, learn­ing to do some video edit­ing for teasers which might come your way soon and get­ting stuck in to a fibre-arts SH commission. 

I am, how­ev­er, very aware that this week has been men­tal health aware­ness week. The focus this year is on anx­i­ety and on rais­ing aware­ness and encour­ag­ing peo­ple to talk about it. So here I am. As some­one who lives with gen­er­alised anx­i­ety it’s a tough world to exist in. Long ago, I moved in the world of cre­ative arts. But acci­dents and the inabil­i­ty to deal well with rejec­tion meant it felt like it was­n’t the place for me. I moved into teach­ing and I won’t say there haven’t been plen­ty of times I though that also was­n’t for me. And here I am again, my skin is a lit­tle thick­er and I’m aware that at least some of my feel­ing is down to chem­i­cals and wiring. It does­n’t make it feel eas­i­er, but it makes it more understandable.

As some­one with anx­i­ety, my fear of rejec­tion leads me often into over­work­ing as I can’t bear the though of any­one think­ing I might not be pulling my weight. I can’t be late, miss dead­lines, or say no. Which often means I bite off more than I can chew and end up do exact­ly the things that cause me such stress. How­ev­er, praise, thanks and recog­ni­tion all go a huge way to build­ing my resilience back up.

Work­ing on LD along­side my teach­ing career has been a real mix of the above feel­ings. There is so much to do, to write, to test, to find or design props for. I’m lucky that our fam­i­ly and team are so sup­port­ive and under­stand­ing . When I have a wob­ble — which is not uncom­mon — they refer to it is ‘fail­ing my morale check’ and often will go out of their way to avoid that being a thing in the first place.

Hear­ing back from you good peo­ple, that you like what we do, also real­ly fills the buck­et back up and makes so much of the stress and huge feel­ings of over­whelm feel val­i­dat­ed. It keeps me going for anoth­er day. It keeps me want­i­ng to work on this beau­ti­ful world.

For any­one out there who suf­fers with their men­tal health — we see you, and we get you.

The Lock­smith’s Dream and all of our team, pride our­selves on offer­ing an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence that (with­in the con­fines of the grade 2 list­ed Jacobean build­ing…) any­one can expe­ri­ence. You can chase all the clues flit­ting through the house, you can sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly fol­low a sto­ry, you can inter­act with peo­ple, or you can sit with a cup of tea and do jig­saws and all of these are right.

One thing we can say is that what ever comes next, we will always have the many and var­ied needs of our won­der­ful com­mu­ni­ty in our thoughts.

We still have ear­ly book­ing at the moment through the sign up expres­sions of inter­est forms, with a spe­cial lit­tle bonus of free cock­tails if you place your deposit before the end of May — and it will keep the anx­i­ety beasts from my door for a lit­tle longer too.

Dream Respon­si­bly!

Lau­ra