What's making you feel better right now?
For the past year, I’ve had a tremendous case of writer's block. Although I’ve managed to easily write things for work - emails, articles, social posts etc., for some reason I’ve struggled to finish writing just about anything for myself. I get ideas and make notes on my phone and constantly think of things and topics I want to write about, but every time I actually sit down to write, I just can’t finish for some reason.
It’s ironic because this is the year that was supposed to be all about me and my career. The year I decided to take the leap and freelance and start my own business. Writing about myself and my experiences should have been the easiest thing for me to do. Yet for some reason it has become a weight, a cloud hanging over me. A constant item on my to do list that never gets ticked off. This part of myself that makes me feel so open and connected to both myself and the people around me has been closed off. I haven’t been writing for me.
It’s weird because I’ve known this whole time, for almost a full year now, that if I could just start writing again, I’d feel better. I’d be back on track. Publishing blogs on my site, narrowing my focus. Thinking about my business. That writing again will take me wherever it is I’m supposed to go, even if that place is just feeling better about myself. But for whatever reason, I’ve felt pulled in so many different directions feeling confused about what it is I should be focusing on with my business, what my clients want me to focus on, how I should market myself and what skills I should be trying to develop, that the writing part just wasn’t happening. Ironically, as I’ve been focusing on learning all these other new things about starting a business - accounting, taxes, CRM, juggling clients, time management and much more, the one skill I should have been focusing on the whole time was this one. Writing is the skill I’ve needed to focus on, it’s part of my purpose.
Then, all of the sudden, everything stopped. I don’t even recognise my life right now from what it was just a few weeks ago. The past month has been one of the strangest months of my life. In the course of 24-hours everything in my life changed drastically. And now it’s on hold, everything is on hold. Indefinitely. My life in London ground to a sudden halt and now I find myself on the other side of the world riding out the lockdown at my parents house in California. Looking for jobs on LinkedIn. It’s taken me some time to get my head around it all.
My first few days here were filled with heightened emotions, processing, still in shock from how quickly I had to leave London. One day I was having dinner with my friends at the pub and literally the next day I was crying on an airplane en route to Los Angeles. I had my temperature taken by men in hazmat suits when I landed at LAX (terrified my temperature might be too high to pass). My body held on long enough to get me into the country, and then almost immediately after I arrived I got sick.I don’t know if it was “the virus” or if I was just run down and extremely stressed out, but I slept a lot. I cried a lot. I self-isolated for 15 days and called every number available to me to try and get a test - but of course, there were none available. I completely lost my voice from coughing so damn much but after about 12 days I finally started to feel better. Sleep and meditation are the best medicine, and the tremendous feeling of solidarity I experienced, knowing that everyone in the whole world was going through this together. I went for a lot of really long walks, talked to people I love all around the world and tried as hard as I could to laugh. And then I started writing.
It’s ironic that something this drastic had to happen to snap me out of my writer’s block, but it happened. For the last 31 days I’ve focused intensely on the things that ground me to keep from losing my mind. I’m walking a lot every day, practising yoga, meditating twice a day like always (but for 30 min each time now instead of 20), and I’m finally being called to write again. When I was trying to figure out what to write the other day this was the message on my tea bag:
I can’t run from it anymore (and after all, now there’s nowhere to run).
Adjusting to this new normal, I’ve realised that slowing down and focusing on the things that make me feel better right now has also been kind of an “ah hah” moment for me. These are the things I should be focusing on every day, not just while I’m on lockdown. I’ve stopped watching so much news (that stuff will kill you), and am instead concentrating on things that make me feel grounded, happy, sane and connected. Writing is one of those things.
As I catch up with my loved ones locked down around the world, it’s evident that they too are doing whatever they can to feel happy and whole right now - and probably a lot of those people, myself included, should be doing those things all the time - not just because we’re locked down. Cooking three meals a day at home, daily exercise, being creative, talking to the people we love, reading books, and getting more sleep are just a few things we could all use more of in our lives.
One of my friends has started painting every day and she’s amazing at it. I hope she continues when this is all over. My other friend built a website in a week and it’s absolutely brilliant. My best friend and her husband are spending every waking hour with their two beautiful boys - something they rarely got to do before because of work. I’m reminded daily right now that writing and moving my body are things I should be doing every day, not just when I can find the time.
I don’t know what’s next or how long this will last. Obviously none of us do right now. But I do know that in this weird new normal, now 31 days in for me, I’m finding that the things making me feel better right now are probably the things I should continue to focus on when this is all over.
What’s making you feel better right now?