The world is spinning so fast right now, while I’m standing still. It feels like a supercharged version of motion sickness, as things happen around me and I’m cocooned at home, watching.
So much has happened this year that my sense of time has become a fluid thing that stretches and contracts at will. How can it be August already, when March was both a couple of weeks and a couple of years ago?
I’ve been at home since mid-March. At first I was working from home, frantically trying to keep up with things and worrying about the changes that were taking place, as our normal roles adapted and teammates moved on to other jobs without us having chance to say goodbye. Then June came and I found myself on furlough. Since then the weeks have flown by, but I feel like I’ve done quite a lot with them. I’ve had short stories published and finally settled on a comfortable writing routine that has allowed me to make progress on my new book. And I’ve been picking up some exciting freelance work, which has given me an insight into what my life could look like, working from home as a writer on a more permanent basis.
Then last week I found out I was going to be made redundant and things changed again. It wasn’t unexpected, but it’s sent me spinning. I’d been feeling happy with my new routine and pleased at what I was achieving, but now it doesn’t feel like enough. Now there’s a pressure to make everything pay.
And it’s not only my life that’s moving fast, it’s the world around us. There’s so much happening every day that seems to seep through the walls of my consciousness, even when I try to avoid the news. The pandemic and the economy, climate change and Brexit, protests and prejudice, politicians and fear. I get caught up in it all, while I’m sitting on my sofa trying to put a hand out and grab on to something, to take action, but it’s all moving too fast.
The longer I spend at home, the harder it is to think about going back out into the world. I wasn’t particularly worried about my own health, but after five months of staying safe at home, it’s difficult to shake the idea that it isn’t safe outside. Even if I don’t think about it directly, it’s like a horror movie monster, stalking the actors before they realise what’s happening.
But if I stop for a moment and find a fixed point, things aren’t so bad. If I can shake off the motion sickness then there are reasons to be hopeful and happy. Those are the ones I want to focus on, for as long as I can, until the world stops spinning.