Creativity

How Covid Taught Me to Get off My Butt and Create

Is there a light at the end of the lockdown tunnel?

I remember when it began. I remember hearing that something escaped. It was an invisible menace that crawled out of the blood of a butchered animal — zoonotic was the word. They said it happened at a market in Wuhan, China.

Then one day it came closer. Someone in California got it. Then more people and more and more and more.

Then Americans died.

Then, in an instant, our lives changed forever. I remember the day in March of 2020 when my governor said - go home and stay home, everything will shut down, and so will you.

What will happen? Are we all going to die?

I decided that I would not die. I would hunker down, wait it out, and survive. I will not let this thing kill me, nor will I let it get me down.

One week, two weeks, three months, months, and months, it’s still not gone, and I miss my draught beer.

I was scared. The lockdown pulled me into an abyss. I tumbled down and hit rock bottom. Covid dragging me down like a bully that wouldn’t stop nagging me, knocking on the door everyday. I had to do something but what?

I opened my front door —and screamed “F**K you Covid!” That didn’t help.

So I shut the door and went back inside.

But I also didn’t want to wait around doing nothing! I had to get going. I had to do something!

As people on the streets were shouting “HATE!” I sat down to CREATE.

Covid made me do it. Covid made me do what I have never done before. Covid made me an artist.

I opened the flood gate, and the rush of turbulent expression flooded over me with ideas. I had to slow down and do one thing at a time.

First, I had to be practical.

While others were making cloth masks, I wanted to make the real thing.

I molded the contours of my face with aluminum foil then covered it with paper mache. It took weeks and layers of paper and glue. Then I painted it and wore it.

Okay even if it kind of looks like a Swedish ice hockey goalie’s mask, but it was my mask.

I had my mask, but Covid got more deadly. It still wasn’t a good idea to go outside.

So I taught myself how to sew.

I made my puppies toys so that they could entertain me.

Now my pups had something to do!

BUT NOW WHAT DO I DO?

I had to reassess. I sat under my pepper tree in my backyard, listened to the birds, and asked them what I should do next? They tweeted at me to write. Write it down. Write everything down.

So I sat down, at my desk and I wrote a memoir.

It was hard and painful and something I thought I could never do, but I did. And when I got stuck and felt overwhelmed, I let my puppies help me get motivated.

Those feelings that surfaced while writing the memoir were so raw that I decided to try poetry to see where it would take me.

I signed up for classes at the Poetry Salon with Tresha Hefner, a friend and poetry teacher that moved from LA to Costa Rica, but that didn’t matter because the world came together on a thing called Zoom.

It was weird to zoom around the globe with my pixelated-flat friends. Especially because I couldn’t hug them or I smell them — but maybe that was a good thing.

If I couldn’t go anywhere, I decided to travel the world through writing poetry.

Where haven’t I been?

This thing called Covid dragged and dragged.

Again I was anxious and sad. I had to speak to my existential angst and share it with the world — how could I get my feelings out to the public as fast as possible? A film or a video perhaps?

So I learned how to animate my feelings.

I created a series of shorts about all the things we miss doing while being locked down during the Covid surges.

I tuned into a Skillshare tutorial and YouTube videos. Then I picked up my iPhone and did it.

I made paper puppets at night and animated them in the morning.

Today I see a flicker of light —NY Times said positivity count is trending down and cases are down in United States by 60% in the last two weeks! YES!— we are at the end of our dark Covid lockdown tunnel. Are the surges over? Maybe? I think maybe I will try to go outside again.

But before I do, I felt it may be a good time to reflect on what these last two years were all about. I think it’s important to remember this time before we start forgetting the unwanted guest called Covid that wore out its welcome. That guest that was never invited and I hope will never come back.

Yet I guess I can thank Covid for teaching me how to express myself in so many different ways.

I’m curious — What did you do during the two years of lockdown?

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Audrey Stimson is a writer living in a green house with her husband and two dogs. When she is not writing essays and short stories she works as a television news producer. She is currently working on a forthcoming book about a bicycle trip across the United States.