I recently saw Jonathan Shalit saying if you come out of the current Coronavirus lockdown without learning a new skill then it wasn’t ever because you lacked time.

Well, I now feel extremely pleased with myself as I’ve not only learned how to build a new website using Bootstrap (admittedly from a template), I’ve also managed to create a blog for it using Jekyll (again, from a template, don’t judge me). A few weeks ago those words meant nothing to me either but now I’m throwing them around like I’m some kind of UX Maven.

I do feel quite pleased that I decided to take the plunge and build something outside of Wordpress though. Admittedly it took me a while to get my head around it all, but my new site loads much more quickly than my old one and I’m really happy with the way it looks as well.

Flushed with this (small) success, I’ve decided to commit to writing a regular blog on voiceover life, which seems especially worthwhile at the strange time we’re living in at the moment.

I’m referring obviously to COVID-19 and the lockdown we’re currently living under. In all honesty, being a voiceover artist who usually works from a home studio anyway, life under lockdown isn’t all that much different to normal. Most days would be spent hanging around in the studio being afraid to leave the house. Previously this was because I didn’t want to miss out on any voice over jobs - now I just prefer not to risk drowning in my own lungs thank you very much.

Having the kids around has definitely made things “fun” and “interesting” but between me and wife we’re managing to keep them fairly busy. Not meeting up with friends and family has started to become noticeable though and I think everyone will be much happier when we can all see each other again.

Until then, there’s always Zoom, which has given me another (very) small lockdown win; the perfect video-call background. This is a bookshelf (obviously) that’s aligned perfectly with the webcam. This not only shows people that I’m business-like and clever (and that I’ve managed to fight my way up from “lower-middle-class” to “middle-middle-class”) but it’s stacked with childrens books and bits of tat to show I don’t take myself too seriously.

So all in all, it’s not been a bad start to a global pandemic. Let’s hope it stays that way.