When the pandemic began in late winter 2020, my research job had just ended. We knew it was coming for a year and we had planned for it. But we also had planned for me to focus on Chelle Summer– which included selling at events in the Los Angeles area. The pandemic obviously changed our plans. While I had plenty of time to sew and create, what I didn’t have was the income that I hoped for.
Several years later, it’s been a roller coaster ride of not knowing what will happen on multiple fronts as everything keeps changing. I’m definitely not where I wanted to be and I’m finding myself having to continually reconfigure what I’m doing for Chelle Summer as things that worked before, don’t work now, and new opportunities arise, but not always ones that take off either.
In the midst of this, I’m also still navigating a new routine. Because of the pandemic, while I had Greg at home with me and then my neighborhood community that I see when I’m out running in the morning and then run-walking the dogs, there weren’t many other social opportunities or obligations. That allowed me to stay in my creative bubble longer and more often.
I believe that I am a balance of an extrovert and introvert. I need time with people, but I also need time alone. Now that we seem to be moving at double speed socially to make up for lost time, my challenge has been to figure out how to create (writing, sewing, painting) while also having enough time to be social and for life’s routine.
At first, I thought it was just me, that there was something wrong with me that I felt so overwhelmed because I wanted to create more, but have had to engage more socially. Then, as I took a little time to reflect back on the past few years, I realized it was because I never had a chance to adjust to life in the new routine without the job. Instead, the pandemic thrust a different routine into life.
While we’re all weathering some sort of continued change in our lives, it seems to me that the first step to lessening how overwhelming it can be is that awareness of what it stems from. As I have found that, I know the next step is taking things slowly, setting goals, and then reconfiguring them as they fit or don’t fit into my bubble and the life that revolves around it.