Hi,
So here you are, at home for the nth day in a row, not sure what day of the week it is and not convinced it still matters anyway. Perhaps like my colleague Tanmoy, you miss touching people. Or like Irene, your subconscious mind is so over being indoors that you’re dreaming about swimming under the stars.
As for me, I’m slowly getting used to a smaller life. I’m doing my best to embrace the understanding that we’re in a transition, "normal" as we knew it is never coming back, and the future can look like almost anything. Some days are easier than others. I’m sad about a lot of things.
I don’t yet know how to make plans in this new reality, and I miss the plans I made in 2020BC (Before Coronavirus). I have a tiny friend circle that I’ve long wanted to expand, and late last year I started feeling ready to let new people into my life in a more meaningful way. I was looking forward to having friends over for things like game night, which I’ve never done before, and taking group trips. I even had a list of people I wanted to start inviting to brunch, once or twice a month.
My daughter had just started at a great new school where, for the first time, our status as a single-parent household didn’t seem to be a hindrance to our ability to connect with some of the other children and their parents. Finally, having a stable job with paid leave meant I could spend more worry-free time with loved ones who live outside Lagos and Nigeria. My brother and his family were supposed to be visiting this weekend, my daughter and I had a short trip to Dakar scheduled for her next school holiday, and my best friend and I were planning a Euro-tour for Pride month once we completed separate residencies that we’d been thrilled about getting accepted into.
There have been other, more jarring losses. For instance, the last time I hugged my grandmother I felt a surge of panic, followed by deep guilt that perhaps I was being selfish and irresponsible. Taking things one day at a time feels scary because I never know how the world might have changed again by the time another tomorrow comes. Yet, I know that no matter what I’ve lost, there are people who have lost more: jobs, homes, loved ones. The weight of the collective grief is almost suffocating.
So I’ve stopped following the news, I hug my daughter more, I’m more committed to making my friends laugh on purpose, and I’ve followed lots more interesting people on social media. All of these decisions have allowed me to embrace lightness in a way that might not otherwise be possible, especially for someone who’s as much of a worrywart as I can be. I’m leaning as far as I can into whatever enjoyment I can find, and it’s helping me stay afloat.
I mean, I can’t keep my mind still long enough to complete the 100-page book I’ve been reading for two weeks now (Feminism is for Everybody, by bell hooks), but I can watch scores of two-minute videos in which people of all genders get their friends to put on makeup and cute outfits for the hell of it. This is my new hobby: watching viral social media trends like the "Don’t Rush Challenge" and "Books As Outfits".
It’s great content, made even greater by the fact that there is no point to it except its existence. After passively consuming tons of this type of content, last weekend, I decided I might as well create some of my own. Unsurprisingly, it was much harder to do than it seemed; I ended up spending seven hours of my Saturday making what turned out to be a three-minute video.
Safe in my home, with the help of my tiny household, I created a completely goofy "fashion film" that I’m really proud of and which still makes me laugh even though I’ve watched it at least 15 times. Don’t tell my employers (or my child!), but it’s probably the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done.
For me, whose creative ability is so often deployed in the direction of my work, (and whose productivity has dipped in the past several weeks), making this video was a wonderful reminder that creativity can be completely reflexive. In a time when I’ve been feeling adrift, partly because I’m compulsorily renegotiating all the things that used to be the point (paying the bills, making a socially relevant argument, receiving confirmation of my value), I love the fact that I made something just because I could.
And of course, it’s not just me. Lots of people are doing the same: cooking experimental dishes, writing bad (or fantastic!) poetry, knitting scarves that track daily temperatures, or making viral videos — just because they can. They’re doing it because it nourishes the soul, makes people laugh, and reminds us that joy can coexist with grief and uncertainty. Perhaps joy must in fact coexist with grief and uncertainty, so that we are able to cope, feel something like hope, and go to sleep at night with even the smallest spark of desire for another softly spreading dawn.
It’s a precious thing, to have the space and time to prioritise creativity, fun and lightness right now. We all deserve joy. One way to find it is to create something, for its own sake. Will you share what you create with me?
Till next time,
OluTimehin
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