I’m not one who’s ever done well with writing at home. There are far too many distractions and I’ve worked hard to make a firm distinction between my work life and my home life.
So, to be ordered to work at home, to have all of my familiar and comfortable writing haunts closed and boarded up for the duration of Plague 2020 has really been messing with me.
It’s a boundary issue. There was a firm boundary before, now there isn’t. The work is intruding on my sacred home space. And it simply adds to the already high level of anxiety and the sinister air an emptied town sports.
It’s a small concern: there are lots of people dying and in incredible agony because of this. There are people out of work, whose livelihoods have vanished in an instant. There are people who are wondering if they’re going to lose their homes, their families, and their ability to put food in their bellies. Those are serious concerns. My anxiety over not being able to write at home is small potatoes.
Yet it eats at me. It’s my new reality. And I’m sooo bloody close to finishing a first draft. I want to do this. But sitting at my dining room table, with my partner washing dishes in the next room, the cats yowling for food, and the TV on somewhere – as well as the easy five steps to the couch and the PlayStation controller – all sap my attention. My creativity is spent in bizarre and futile attempts to feel somewhat safer.
But at least I’m not up to my eyeballs in spare toilet paper.
The Painted Corner 