Suffering From Lockdown Blues?
Suffering From Lockdown Blues?
If you are an author and are in lockdown, the challenge is to keep not only physically active but to ensure your brain is mentally active too.
Lockdown trauma
We live in an era of terrible uncertainty. For many lockdowns mean the trauma of losing income, not being able to connect physically with loved ones, being unable to engage in normal social activity, and not knowing what the future holds.
It’s a time when fear can take its toll.
Unfortunately, there seem to be no real answers; people are afraid and anxious.
Lockdown means you cannot physically connect as you would normally because of social distancing.
There is the challenge of loneliness which is not good for mental health. While physical contact is not an option in lockdown areas, it is possible with technological advances to connect with others through other means than just the telephone.
Zoom, Facetime, and social media allow for a degree of connection and making contact with family and friends this way is preferable to having no connection at all.
Creative activity
Count yourself lucky if you have a creative disposition. A project such as writing a book, an article, painting a picture, making jewellery, or some other kind of creative pursuit – means that you have a project that doesn’t have to start and finish all in one day.
In the lockdown days ahead you have something to look forward to and which can absorb you.
I’ve spoken with a number of writers about their experience with the lockdown. Writing is a solitary pastime the implication being that for some lockdown is no real issue. Life in lockdown is not very different to their norm.
If you feel low because of self-isolation and are lonely, perhaps it’s possible to find comfort and satisfaction by becoming involved in some television episodes, or reading a book, or watching a movie that you can escape into.
Lockdown is the perfect time to do many of the things you never had time to do before. You probably find that you have more time, would I be right?
If you find that you have more time, lockdown may be the perfect opportunity to do all the things you never had time to do before. Doing that household chore like cleaning out the cupboard, rearranging a room, making a painting, learning a new language, writing the book you’ve always wanted to write, taking up a new hobby, putting together a jigsaw, reading a book could mean becoming so busy that you wouldn’t have time to be lonely or bored.
While the pandemic may be forcing us to be physically apart from loved ones and friends, in other ways, it has us coming together to support and encourage one another through other means like more telephone calls, WhatsApp, and Zoom.
Lockdown can be a time in which you can unleash your creativity and use these tough times as a stimulus to get that book written and do all the things that you have spent years simply dreaming about.
Author and Coach
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