When I turned 39 in January and made a promise to myself to seize all the opportunities 2020 threw at me – in order to be the best self I could possibly be by my looming fortieth – I didn’t anticipate anything getting in my way, least of all a global pandemic. Yet here we are.
So things got a bit weird didn’t they? It’s very difficult to know what to say about it all really. We’re all in the same boat after all – or variations of a just-about-waterproof craft anyway. My personal experience began with a sense of impending doom as I watched the virus extending its web out of China and deep into Italy. At that stage, I was checking the news obsessively, growing increasingly panicky at the horror of it all. Around that time I wrote The Place, which was later published in The Capsule Stories Isolation Edition capsulestories.com/isolation-edition/. Strangely, my worry was at its highest before lockdown was enforced – I think because nowhere felt safe. I remember going to the shops one day, alcohol gel stowed in my pocket, resolutely not touching any surfaces or my face. The thing which bothered me the most was that no one else around me seemed to be behaving as I was. I saw hands on rails, on banisters, touching the card machine, the cash point, basket handles, trolley handles, faces, other people. I could almost see evil little virus particles multiplying before my very eyes. We started locking down a good while before the actual lockdown and I got to the point of willing the government to announce school closures. When they eventually did, I was surprised to feel mainly relief. This was disconcerting for several reasons. Firstly because most people I knew were dreading it. Secondly because I’d read about lockdown in Italy and Spain, really pitying those people at the time. And lastly, and most enormously, I have never, ever, ever, wanted to home school my children. It isn’t as though it hadn’t previously crossed my mind - just springing up as a novel concept when Corona arrived – it’s something I’ve given active consideration to in the past and concluded I would never do for fear of my sanity. Yet, here I was, shut inside my house indefinitely, very much about to embark on home schooling. I should have felt the fear, but I didn’t. I don’t know if I went into some sort of survival mode but I was a very jolly lockdown virgin. Us being safe was the fundamental thing and now we were, I saw lockdown as an opportunity. I felt my positivity was probably a bit irking to some people around me, channeling my feelings into a piece called Batten Down The Hatches instead, which is upcoming as part of the 100 Stories of Solitude special feature. I think in order to cope with the strange circumstances, I had to focus in. I had to see my family and our home as the world. I knew other stuff was going on out there but I stopped watching the news. I stopped checking the ever climbing death rate. I shut it out because it was too big. I stopped watching the news properly several years ago and I’ve heard it said that trauma specialists advise this as a good strategy to improve mental health. It has certainly helped me and my relapse in the early stages of the pandemic had set me back. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the things happening to others, but as I couldn’t affect them, what good did it do to expose myself to them and to absorb them? I saved my energy for the things I could impact – my family, my home, my writing. I think to some extent, I knew I was faced with a choice – to rally against this out of control beast which had appeared unwanted and unbidden to wreak chaos in our lives, or to make the most of this new scenario. I chose the latter with very little regard for the former. Occasionally the enormity of living through history would strike me, but I’d distract myself. I wonder whether I’ll look back at this time with shock at how I just adjusted to a new normal overnight; whether the enormity will hit me then. It’s not that lockdown hasn’t had its challenges, because it really has (not least a close family member becoming very ill – an extremely difficult situation only exacerbated by shielding rules), but I/we seem to be quite suited to lockdown life. I perversely enjoy the challenge of cooking up a meal with the random remnants of my cupboards, or finding creative ways to educate the children. I like that we’re all here together. To be honest, I’ve become so accustomed to this new normal that I’m quite fearful of returning to something like the normal we knew before. I think I’ll be like a member of the armed forces who can’t find their place in the world when they’re de-mobbed. I fear I won’t know what to do with myself. I guess the obvious thing I would do more of would be writing. But now that I can only write in snatched portions of time, between home-schooling and heading up the procurement and delivery division of the family, and kind of keeping the house clean, and feeding the troops, I wonder whether I really needed all the free time I had before. I mean, what did I do with it? It reminds me of how I used to think I was busy in my twenties then I had kids and discovered a whole new level of time-management requirements. Post-kids-busy could have eaten pre-kids-busy for breakfast. Lockdown-busy keeps me pretty occupied most of the time. But it feels ok. It feels quite efficient and I like that. I hate to think I’m wasting time. I also wonder whether having less time for writing makes me focus better in the time I do have. About two weeks into lockdown, I had a day off. By that I mean that I hid in my bedroom while my husband did schooling. I wrote two pieces that day. The first was my entry to the TL;DR 1000 word herd competition. It didn’t make the top 20 but the feedback it received was very positive, giving me the impression it had been a close nearly. I sent the piece out again with a tiny tweak and it was quickly accepted by Storgy (it’s upcoming in July). The second piece was Batten Down The Hatches, as mentioned above. One day, two pieces, minimal editing, two acceptances. That’s pretty darn good by my standards. Another day I wrote a piece which went on to shortlist in the Mum Life Stories stepmother themed competition. I just wonder if the time pressure makes me up my game. I’m aware that I sound very chirpy about everything today but it’s only because I’m currently riding a peak in the inevitable peak and trough life of a writer. For the last couple of months or so, I was wallowing in an arid trough, complete with tumble-weed and self-doubt. I was desperate for some encouraging news. So desperate. But as is the way of these things, the encouragement never comes when you crave it. I had a bit of a fall out with flash, deciding not to write any for a while. It was good, in that I found space for my novel again (God, the pace of progress with that is painfully slow) but bad in that no one wants to feel so discouraged that they don’t want to engage with the thing they love anymore. It’s been an odd time. But you get on with it, don’t you? You make the most of what you have. A global pandemic was certainly not on my agenda. But it’s here, we’re doing this. And I refuse to allow it to get in the way of making the most of my 39th year. Yeah the holidays, nights out, theatre trips etc. are cancelled but writing isn’t. Making submissions isn’t (80 + and counting as you ask). It’s harder to make the most of things – you have to get creative. But I like creative. I like a challenge. I guess I just have to up my game.
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September 2023
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