I've written before about the last year's impact on my own creativity, but it's been something particularly on my mind of late. A year ago, I was strangely frozen for a month or so after lockdown. On one hand, it seemed like an excellent time to delve into projects and use supplies that always seem to be waiting for me to have more time in the melee. Here i was working from home, which required some effort to fill the hours I was getting paid to work (though I'd be lying if I said I pulled full 8 hour days--there were naps and household tasks littered in with the work stuff I was able to do more leisurely and with less service desk interruption off site). I would fill 5 or 6 hours a day with random meetings, hiring committee work, exhibit building, social media and resource blogging, virtual programming stuffs, articles and grant application writing, but less of the day was eaten by processing materials for ILL, which occupies chunk of every day onsite. I had time for the writing and thinking portions of my work for the library, as well as to attend webinars on programming and even present a couple times.
Even with saving a couple hours in commute (my daily bus ride is 45 to an hour each way.) I felt I was wasting my possible artmaking or writing time--time I would have killed for just months earlier. Also, the time balance I am always trying to achieve with the press, not only for filling orders, but layouts and cover designs and a million little artsy projects for the shop I have a list of somewhere. None of these served me well in that first month of quarantine. I was able to finish off a couple lingering larger book orders, and make a dent in the regular orders I was already behind since the studio move. But I definitely wasn't thriving. I spent a good portion of March, April, and May at home depression napping and wondering if I had made all the wrong choices in life. I was feeling unstable in all sorts of ways--health, finances, creatively. I tried to do NAPOWRIMO at the beginning of April and failed even earlier than I have historically--everything I was writing seemed useless and not spectacular. What was the point when the world was a mess?
I was blogging quite regularly here in those weeks, mostly to document the days and keep the hinges oiled, and eventually the words came back. By the time I went back to work downtown at the end of June, I was going full throttle on the collapsologies manuscript,, which I wound up finishing by the end of the year, so not all of 2020 was lost. Granted, this happens when you are able to chip away piece by piece without getting overwhelmed by the whole of it, but it worked, Visually, however, I was kind of blocked. I would make small efforts, but my concentration wasn't there. Unlike writing in which my process is usually to chisel bit by bit, day by day, I tend to create things over several days of more concentrated effort. Even the things I designed for others, while done, weren't things I was loving in the way I love some of my work. Done was better than perfect, but it made me feel broken.
The videos at first were a distraction and a simple need to create promos for SEX & VIOLENCE in a time when your options for selling books were limited to the internet. I did find I really enjoyed them and wanted to continue making more. I'd like to think I was channeling my energies in just a different medium, but visual art felt like something I was hiding from. Or pushing off until my emotional ground was more steady. In my crying jag of last week, pondering a bump in infections that could be the beginnings of a third wave, it all felt endless, my mental state, when a few weeks earlier it seems like we were closer to being back to normal. Or more importantly, that I felt like I was on the way back to normal--not even in logistical things like gatherings and outings, but feeling like the world was a safe space to create in. To make art, to write, to read books and be immersed in things like I was before.
Later this week, I realized that maybe it will never be a safe space again and I have to just to get over it--that feeling of brokenness. Spurred by a deadline for the Urban Legends exhibit that I need to start hanging this week, I just needed to get on with it and make something. I have a couple more in the hopper and will share when they're done, but you can get a sneak peek above and on my Flickr the direction I'm going (these will also be the companion pieces for my conspiracy theories poem series, which I am almost finished with). It felt good. It felt like normal. Or at least my normal was a little closer. I don't know if it will stick, but today I am feeling good about things. Those were just digital meanderings, but today I'll be drinking tea, opening all the windows in the dining room/studio, and airing out my dusty supplies for possible non-digital things and we'll see how things go...
