Making in a time of uncertainty
I have a habit of feeling left behind, seeing other people and makers achieve so much, forgetting my own achievements and feeling like I need to catch up or push that extra bit harder. With COVID-19 came new mantras – ‘if not now when?’ And ‘everything you’ve always never had the time to do – this tests whether time was the problem or if you were.’
As someone with a propensity for feeling comparatively less than this is has not been a great time for my brain and therefore my creative abilities, as I’m sure others are feeling too.
I’m so grateful and in awe of essential workers, doctors, nurses, cleaners, grocery store employees, teachers, chemists – all these ordinary people who are taking on more risk so that we as a society can be safe.
They are so very brave and caring and I am being so silly and frivolous. My job is to string up pearls, make some doodle and join expensive metals together without going broke in the process. Yes these objects can imbue so much meaning, carry so much weight and worth to the wearer, adornment has been found in nearly all civilisations since the age of man but right now when our impact is being so closely examined shockingly it doesn’t look like jewellery is going to fix any real problems.
Knowing this and needing to continue is where its starting to hitch. This is what I do and I need to be able to afford food and services because, you know human etc. I need to keep bobbing along despite feeling ashamed and underhanded in some way by emailing or posting about online shops or Mothers Day gifts when we are all on the precipice of a world shift.
This is probably the part where I remain upbeat, but I don’t really have that. Partially because it would feel inauthentic and partially because I realise that my creative block problems and weird capitalist guilt are so so so little and inconsequential to the trials that other people are facing during this pandemic.
I’m feeling split into two all the time. Happy to be able to be at home for long periods of time, distraught to be left with my own brain in what can occasionally feel like a physical prison. Excited to be able to be creative and focus on design, unable to concentrate on anything for more than a half hour. Horrified by the toll it’s taken in some places of the world and lucky. Oh so incredibly lucky.
Image credit: Artist Kai ‘Uzey’ Wohlgemuth depicted a nurse as Superwoman in Hamm, Germany, April 8, 2020