Learning from a part-time writer’s lockdown
Before you read this — I am not complaining. Many people suffered more than me in the last few months. I come from a privileged background and have a stable job and home life, and this post is as much therapeutic for me as anything else. I’m not asking for sympathy, nor should I receive it. There are many better causes for your sympathy, rather than someone who was trying to have a creative lockdown.
Lockdown guilt
Lockdown really threw me creatively. More so than I thought it would, if I’m honest. Although my family have been unaffected, and are still healthy, there was something about being confined to the house that just halted my desire to write. I thought the sudden lack of a commute, a vital part of my routine getting work and writing done, was the culprit at first. Looking back, even if I didn’t realise it at the time, I think anxiety about the whole situation was getting me down.
Early on in the crisis I tried to avoid the media. It wasn’t just the bleak updates on deaths and infections that was making me feel awful. It was the constant suggestions for things to do to pass the time. Every day there was a new recommendation for ‘ games to play in lockdown’, books to read in lockdown’, or ‘ Netflix series to binge in lockdown.’ All well meaning, and more likely put together to chase SEO clicks than to…
