Creativity in the Time of Corona

Like the rest of the world, us folks in Kansas have been dealing with the Rona. Yes, before you ask, my wife and I are safe. We’re both set working from home, and Kansas City is not nearly as hard hit as other parts of the country.

Still, it’s been a weird time. The last time we saw friends was the weekend after my birthday, March 8^th, roughly 84 years ago. So much has changed since then, and every week feels like a month. I’ve wanted to lay out my own experiences and how my creativity has been doing this decade. Because, yall, it’s been rough.

In the Beginning

When all of this first started, every week was a slow-motion year of change and terror, of watching this horrible thing spreading, and the flailing and incompetent responses of the people in charge. Back then, it made perfect sense to me that I wasn’t working on any creative projects. All of it got dropped – videos. Mugs. This blog. My manuscript. I didn’t even touch my bullet journal or pay attention to regular goal review like I normally do.

I suppose if there is any one bright-spot about this whole trash-fire of a situation, it forced me to completely rethink my relationship with my phone. Because the phone could give me news, and as I read the news and saw the shortages and the projects and all the incompetence on full display, I ended up doom-cycle clicking at the latest bad news. I couldn’t keep that up; I couldn’t keep doing that. I got scarce on Twitter, avoided the internet, and put my phone up and far away.

Unsurprisingly in retrospect, I had more snippets of idle time to just think or ponder, where before I used to reflexively reach for my phone and check Twitter or text friends. And, I’m not going to lie, it’s nice having those bits of time to start thinking about story ideas or coming up with potential twists.

I guess that’s good?

And then… April

I wasn’t surprised I didn’t do creative work in March. I figured when March turned to April, things were starting to stabilize so of course I would at least get back to writing.

I didn’t.

I couldn’t tell you why. I thought I had embraced a new normal. I was working from home, adjusting to a much more self-imposed structure. Truthfully, I like working from home. I’m better setting my own structure and working on my own projects. This was normal, things were safe and secure, we were alright.

And yet, I wasn’t writing. I actually wasn’t touching any of my creative outlets at all. I started coding because… why not? We watched a lot of shows (The Dragon Prince – highly recommend). It’s not that I didn’t try. I felt like writing some – a handful of words here, a dash of words there. Literally one night I wrote 12 words.

That was enough.

I’ve started this blog post something like eight times, writing a paragraph here, an opening sentence there. I’ve scrapped what I’ve had completely six times. I’m tried filming threeish videos and editing two that were already in the queue, and none of that went anywhere. One I just deleted the footage in frustration.

That’s okay. That was enough.

May I?

I’ll be honest, just saying “that’s enough” still feels cheap. It still feels shallow. Whenever I go more than a week without writing / videoing, I get afraid I won’t ever do it again, that it will never come back and that it turns out I don’t like doing this and I’m not any good at it. I know, intellectually, that’s bullshit. I also know, intellectually, we are overwhelmingly lucky – we both have jobs, and they’re jobs that let us work from home. We don’t have kids we suddenly have to homeschool and keep from licking light-sockets.

And even in these relatively ideal conditions, that fear was still there. It still took me MONTHS to tip-toe back to that creative stuff.

It’s okay if it takes you longer.

It’s okay if you just bash out a handful of words on a blog post and throw it up there to see what happens. It’s okay if you just write one shitty paragraph and throw it away in frustration, or if all you can do is just stare at the blank page trying to escape the gnawing worry of the time that is now. It’s okay if you can’t even contemplate any creative stuff because you come awake sweating at night worrying about what will happen in two weeks.

It’s okay to just get by.

In this timeline? That’s enough.

Cheers and be kind to yourselves.