Before listening to Michael Taylor and Neil Summers on the Tameside Radio airwaves on Sunday evening during their Music Therapy show, have a read of their latest column for us...

I like to think of myself as an early adopter of trends. Not this time. Two years after the first recorded case of COVID-19 in this country, I tested positive, writes Michael Taylor.

I’ve had loads of tests, I’m triple jabbed, and I’ve lived in the same house as people who tested positive three times without getting ill and isolating as required. The last time however was the one that did me in. 

Clearly, it didn’t kill me, and blissfully it was nothing worse than feeling really tired for a week and having to stay at home, which isn’t that different from a normal week, to be honest. 

Due to the powers of modern technology, there has been no interruption of service to me and Neil recording our Music Therapy programme.

In fact, I managed to read, listen to podcasts and watch some decent films and do the odd spot of writing in between bouts of feeling sorry for myself.

Unlike COVID, I was a big fan of the psychologist Professor Damian Hughes way before last week when his latest book hit the top of the Sunday Times bestseller list. 

He does a podcast with the broadcaster Jake Humphrey called High Performance, of which the new book is a spin off. I caught up on a few from my sickbed.

It sounds like the worst kind of self-help boosterism, that I would normally recoil from. But I absolutely subscribe to the methods and the message.

I keep saying this, life is precious and so is what we do with it.

We only get one shot at it, and it’s so important we don’t squander that chance. 

I’m feeling massively impatient and that I’m wasting my life away. There are things I want to do, places I want to go to, and changes I want to make to the world. I feel I’m taking one step forward and then another one backwards. 

But do you know who has the power to do something about that? Me. 

Lots of people in the book have their own definitions of what living a high performance life means to them. 

My favourite is from the footballer Phil Neville: “Doing the best you can, where you are, with what you have got.”

One of the reasons I wanted to get back to making radio shows again (and I do a couple of other podcasts too) is that it gives me great joy. 

The feedback we get from people like you who listen to the show is warming and humbling. 

I know I’m not the only one who has this feeling of restlessness. There’s something going on in the world of work called The Great Resignation. People are packing in their jobs because it doesn’t give them fulfilment and meaning.

I know, I’m one of them. Walking away from a job was one indication of taking control, then having COVID has been a double dose of reality for me. 

Time is ticking away, we need to spend it doing things that make us happy. Otherwise, what’s the point?

You can listen to Michael Taylor and Neil Summers on Music Therapy on Tameside Radio 103.6FM on Sunday evenings from 9pm to 11pm. Click here to subscribe and catch up on previous shows.

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