Reflections on Covid
I read this piece about covid and what it did to people. how it slowed us all down, ground us all to a halt. it was abrupt and jarring and i realised i never really thought about it. I never really worked through it. I was still in uni when covid started. I graduated during a lockdown. I started a business during a lockdown. I worked on writing and art and photography and learnt what it meant it to be a creative in a lockdown. I spent my first christmas and new years away from family and sat only with the company of my own thoughts. I left Sydney and didnt know if I could come back to this place that was mine. to this space that was mine. I went home instead. I spent months at home figuring out the new rhythms and motions of my family. I was unemployed and watching everyone else make calls, work and hustle from home. I wondered what I could contribute besides being another mouth to feed. It was good to be home. I was safe and so was my family and that was all I wanted. But still, I felt like I needed to be doing something. I decided to learn.
To learn about business. To learn about photography. I decided to get technical and learn how to shoot. Learn about colour theory and how to qantify creativity and put it in a box. I sat at my table and learnt about marketing and sales. How to sell. Advertisments and algorithm. Learnt about money and worth, pricing yourself but not selling yourself short. I learnt about lighting and angles. Composition and how to do it like this person. I made my friends become my models. I made them pose and walk in the sun and strike dance poses to make sure I could get as much practice in as possible. Because I needed a portfolio. I needed examples. I needed to be able to show people I was worth them spending their money on me. And in all that learning I forgot how much fun I had being creative. How much it brought me joy to pick up my camera and tell stories and slowly but surely, the business broke apart the art and left it shattered. But i wasnt aware. Not at the time.
The world started to open again and we booked our flights and headed straight for Korea. Because Korea wasnt home. It was foreign and fresh and it was away. Away from the walls of the home. Away from what had become normal life. It was different and we were desperate to just go. So we did. So we wandered through freezing cold seoul. We slid down slopes in pyeongchang. Laughing and just being. The way you only do when you are on vacation with people you love. We made up stories, we people watched and we rang in the new year together in a seperate world. All the while, i was creating some of my favourite photos ever. Why? because there was no pressure. There was no need to make money, i was there to just make art and tell the story of us as a family running away to seoul to catch our breath.
covid was both blessing and curse. It gave me the space and the time to let the artist take root and come alive. It drove a hunger for travel that I never really had before. But i was desperate to feed. I left my job because I woke up one day and decided that there was no part of me that wanted to be doing this. It made me grateful for the people I had. Covid made me desperate to make money. Desperate to get my business up and running. Desperate to make ends meet to show that I could do it. That I was worth it. That i was good enough. But every step i took in desperate towards my business, left pieces of the artist behind crumbling. Struggling to keep up. trying its best to churn out ideas to keep business happy and moving forward. but it wasnt working. Artist could not keep up and so the ideas dwindled. The words dried up. The well ran dry and I left my camera on its perch to collect dust.
The result of that is me trying to figure out what to do next. Me sitting in the dark, trying to pick up the pieces of the artist that the business left in its wake. trying to coax the artist back to life. Trying to force a bead of water to fill the well. trying to pick up the tools of my creativity without panicking and stressing. Trying to give the artist room to create again.
