Tag: creativity

Pandemic Productivity

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Reading time: 3-4 minutes
Reading accompaniment(s): Another slice of homemade cake (go on, treat yourself)

Lockdown has the potential to be a time of unparalleled productivity. Less distractions. More time. No FOMO. It has been said that Shakespeare wrote not only King Lear or Macbeth or Antony and Cleopatra—but in fact all bloody (pun intended) three—during the plague pandemic of 1606. Four hundred years later, during the coronavirus pandemic, I, on the other hand, have written approximately, well, nothing much at all. I did write one blog post, at the end of April (a cracking good read, let me tell you), but with a grand total of nine hundred and sixty-three words, though each expertly selected and utilised, I don’t think it can be considered quite the same accomplishment as that of my thespian forefather.

The thing is—I have simply not had the inclination to write. Apart from in my journal in the wee hours when I cannot sleep (the result of which I do not wish anyone, myself included, the horror of reading). In fact, I have lacked any inclination to do many a normal activity during this unsettling but, let’s face it, equally tranquil period of time. Perhaps it is because of a lack of inspiration. A dwindling of social engagements causing a depletion of any interesting base material. Perhaps it is because of all of the internal, and increasingly external, discussions about big and scary topics such as life and control and sovereignty and racism. And Bill Gates. If it’s all still such a muddle in my head, how on earth am I supposed to write any of it down with any sort of eloquence? (That’s a rhetorical question, to myself; I’m still in the figuring-it-out stage.) Or perhaps it’s because I’m lazy. A state of being that I’m almost becoming comfortable owning. (As in: you own dat, girlfriend.)

I have had some non-literary-excellence achievements, though: I have completed two jigsaw puzzles (the first since around twelve years of age), and I have baked not one but TWO BLOODY DELICIOUS cakes (my first time ever!!!). A feat I am inordinately proud of, and clearly modest about. But the jigsaws have been dismantled and the cakes consumed. So what have I really got to show for my time spent indoors? Merely slightly more dexterous fingers and a COVID-19 waistline?

Perhaps a better way to quantify my quaran-time achievements is through looking at the thoughts I am unpacking, the conversations I am having, and the way I am treating others and myself. I mean, if my daily candle-lit bubble baths are anything to go by, I’d say I’m doing pretty darn well. Not sure the couple living below us would agree, whose bathroom gets leaked on every time our tub drains. But, you know, swings and roundabouts. I am beginning to try out meditation. I am journaling more. I am entering into those aforementioned uncomfortable conversations with a willingness to learn as opposed to a one-sided view with which to preach. I may still not always communicate my thoughts or frustrations or confusions in the best or most sympathetic way (something I have always done with greater ease via writing, with more time to think, than in conversation, with less time to edit), but I am trying and, hopefully, improving, and that can only be a positive.

But maybe judging everything on a scale of productivity or achievement is where we are all going wrong anyway. I have not written King Lear or Macbeth or Antony and Cleopatra during the lockdown. But what is the problem with that? Am I a machine in a factory? Do I always need to be productive? Maybe the most important thing I’ve discovered during this quiet time is that productivity is not the holy grail. Headspace is constantly telling me to just be, after all. Which leads me to ponder: is a pandemic the ideal habitat for productivity, or is the constant pressure to be, or often simply appear, productive a pandemic in itself? I’m not sure. But it’s food for thought, definitely. And great served on the side of a slice of homemade cake. (Carrot, if you’re curious, with a slathering of coconut cream.)

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Musings on Life, Happiness & Writing

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Reading time: 5-6 minutes
Recommended accompaniment(s): A large glass of full-bodied red wine, ideally from Southern Italy, served at room temperature

Some people want to be a doctor when they grow up. Others want to be a teacher. Others an entrepreneur; an astronaut; famous (whatever that nowadays means). So many dreams harbour in the minds of naïve and ambitious children and teenagers, and even as adults the idea of ‘when I’m grown up’ is a state not yet accomplished. My current biggest wish is to have a bedroom door (the perils of a studio apartment); when I was younger my aspiration was to be happy. Truly happy. And it still is. Hence the name I have chosen for this blog.

I remember a class we had on this during high school. We must have been about fourteen years old, and – no doubt as part of our one-hour-per-academic-year session on things that actually matter in life, as opposed to the ‘everyday applications’ of trigonometry or the internal musings of Caecilius while in horto – were asked to write on a scrap of paper what we wanted to become when we were older. I wrote down ‘Properly happy’, with a very intentional, nay crucial, opening adverb.

“Are you not happy?” asked one of my friends, genuinely confused, who caught sight of my sheet after scrawling down ‘actress’ herself. 

“Are you?” I countered, just as confused with the concept of whole-hearted contentedness.

“Yeah,” she shrugged, as she joined the queue milling out into the corridor and onto our double period of I.T. with an ethically, and child protectionarily, questionable male teacher.

To me that said it all. I mean, a shrug and a non-committal affirmative are not exactly signs of absolute agreement, are they? She felt exactly the same as I did. She just wasn’t as aware of it.

I then had to decide whether I was wanting too much from life, or if other people were not wanting enough. I chose, and continue to believe, the latter, and hope that I am onto something. Of course I don’t believe in a life smelling of roses and consisting of unadulterated bliss, but I do believe, and am optimistic about, a life centred around people and love and happiness and experience and honesty and creativity and connection and passion and joy and gezelligheid (non-Netherlands-residing readers are invited to look this term up, and be prepared to be jealous of my new country’s favourite concept).

The next immediate hurdle is figuring out how this life can be achieved alongside the unavoidable requirement to earn money / keep financially afloat. For those whose life’s passion is to be a brain surgeon or lawyer, I really do envy you. For those who are carrying out these jobs sans satisfaction, I honestly don’t know how you do it. The idea of a nine-to-five job – no matter the field or level of challenge or mundanity involved – to me is so excruciatingly depressing (literally, I’ve been there) that I have simply had to look for an alternative. Which is where the writing has come in.

Starting a blog – this blog – while travelling in 2017, aged 25, was where my love of writing developed. Though I never dreamed of being a writer when I was younger; I stopped studying English at the point where it was a choice; and I have never been an avid bookworm. I don’t have any of the characteristics or merits of a successful writer, yet this is the perhaps preposterous aim. (I’m counting on the fact that innate talent and determination win all, and, of course, that I have at least a sliver of both of these things.)

My journey as a writer so far can be viewed in two very different ways. With optimistic eyes, it is going swimmingly. Through a short series of rather random circumstances a London-based publisher read my blog, liked my writing, and commissioned me to write for them a book. (I mean, does it get any more fairytale that that?) It is to be published first in Chinese and then in English, perhaps this year, and hopefully translated into a number of other languages thereafter. Spurred on by this experience, and, again, following a random (or fateful) meeting, I am 50,000 words in to my second book, which I hope to be taken on by a literary agent, sold to a publisher in a bidding war, and turned into a Hollywood blockbuster. This is not even an exaggeration; this is truly what I hope it becomes.

Under a pessimistic, or perhaps realistic, lens, things can sometimes seem somewhat futile. I was paid a pittance to research and write an entire book that is yet to be published and may never materialise. I haven’t received a decent pay check in over two years, and rely financially on others to stay afloat. I spend much of my time alone, typing away on my laptop, crafting a manuscript that may never be read by more than a handful of people. But I continue to do this, and believe that I should, because the glimmer of hope that I might become successful feeds me much more than the thought of a steady and secure and strangling employee situation. After all, if I don’t give it a go then it is definitely not going to work.

But that doesn’t mean to say that it’s easy. Writing, as a career (if you can call it that before you have been aptly monetarily rewarded), for me, is like being in a constant battle, in so many ways. It takes time, of course, to create a masterpiece, or something at least vaguely masterful, during which time you are constantly aware that you might be simply wasting time. I feel I need to be ‘in the zone’ to write well, but have not yet figured out whether creating that zone – both mentally and environmentally – aids my writing, or whether consciously writing something of value or elegance transports me into that all-encompassing sweet spot. I want to have integrity and commitment to my goal and beliefs, but I also want to have the disposable income to be able to go clothes shopping on a whim. I am unsure of when tiredness and illness bleed into procrastination and self-absorption. I feel brave and worthy and confident in my abilities, yet constantly worry about judgement from others for my choices and lifestyle and tendency for a mid-week lie in. And I am uncertain, or undecided, as to whether that mid-week lie in improves my focus, when I do start writing, or is a brilliant, self-sabotaging, scheme I dreamt up through utter laziness. And those are just the thoughts I’ve had while enjoying my porridge-based breakfast.But to achieve that life of love and happiness and experience and honesty and creativity and connection and passion and joy, I know I have to persevere. Because those pulls of uncertainty and doubt and niggling nags are not through an unwillingness to continue, but through an unknowingness of where this might lead. Of whether I will succeed. Of whether this turmoil will pay off. And I’m willing to take that risk as the alternative is, quite frankly, not an option. For me, anyway. Wish me good luck. (And for heaven’s sake – if it comes out – buy my bloody book, please.)

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