Monday was the official end of lockdown, and an eerie sense of sadness came with it. This isolation period had an immensely beneficial side effect on me. I almost feel guilty talking about it. I’m not saying it was easy. I was alone and far from everyone I care about, I was angry, scared, I cried a lot, I panicked, I couldn’t sleep, I took sleeping pills and had nightmares, I got an acne outbreak, my period went crazy, I cried some more, and I hated my downstairs neighbor. I will not miss these feelings. However, good things happened too, one in particular which struck me most and is the reason for my lockdown nostalgia. I’m not someone who easily sees the positive side, but this one was too strong to ignore.
The first two weeks were remarkably easy. I was used to spending a lot of time in, as I was already working from home, I had a well-established workout routine, I made my bed in the morning and everything. Nothing seemed to have changed for me in those incipient stages of quarantine. I just went about my life like before. But something was different and surprisingly liberating: the sudden disappearance of social pressure.
In a glimpse of an eye, Instagram became quiet. People had nowhere to go, no cute coffee cups or fancy meals to shoot, no more about-last-night’s and Sunday brunches, no perfectly curated life to show. In an instant, perfection could no longer be faked. No one could flaunt their better-than-yours life anymore, because we were all miserable. Thus, creative people quickly took over and populated Instagram in a way that was uplifting. And I’m not talking exclusively about artists. No, everyone got creative. It was wonderful to see this burning desire and power we hold within to create beauty around us.
For the first time since I started using it, Instagram no longer depressed me, it inspired me.
Without social pressure I started to hear my inner voice again and found a strange sense of calm in this stressful time. Because I no longer should have been someplace else, I felt free to do what I sincerely enjoyed doing, and that was to stay home. And it wasn’t just that I was home. Everyone was home. I didn’t feel I missed out on anything.
It’s important to say lockdown found me in a better place. I had met my darkest demons in the past, I sat down with my most wicked self and we became friends. Friends who stab each other in the back, but friends, nonetheless. So, you see, I wasn’t afraid of being alone with myself, and that helped immensely in coping during quarantine. Had this happened maybe a year ago or before, the outcome wouldn’t have been the same.
Thanks to two wonderfully talented women I’m following on, you guessed it, Instagram, I discovered Jamie Beck’s #isolationcreation series which had the unexpected beneficial effect I mentioned before. At first I simply liked her aesthetic and tried it for fun. I was surprised to notice how much I enjoyed the process, to the point where working on a flower setting was the only thing that cheered me up.
I had little resources at hand, I couldn’t go out and buy flowers, and my tiny apartment had textured white walls and nauseating yellow-brown furniture I always hated. In order to get a decent shot, I had to be creative, find the right angle, look for any flowers I could get my hands on. There is a lot of creativity spawning from lacking. Picking my brain to use whatever I had laying around the house greatly stimulated my imagination. And I’ve been longing for this for ages. I love it. I love having to make up things, improvise.
I started to look around for options and my eyes opened. I had been so oblivious to my environment that, after six years of living in the same place, I had to be quarantined to discover this dream-like wisteria at the back of the residence’s garden. And the more I searched, the more I spent time putting together flower arrangements and taking pictures, the more my eyes opened. This awakening spilled out in other areas of my life, not just still life photography. I understood that by engaging in this activity, I did not necessarily get better at it, but more creative overall, that I could hone the inspiration I needed in my work with a completely unrelated occupation.
Taking those pictures was so therapeutic. It felt so good, so obvious, really. I kept asking myself: “Why didn’t you do this before?” Turns out, I did do it before. One single shot, back in the summer of 2005, when I spent two weeks at my grandparents with a camera and took pictures of everything I loved there so I will never forget. Among those is a shy composition of flowers (and two tomatoes for some reason!) in an antique box iron. It’s no wonder I did that when I was there. I had been my most creative at my grandparents’ house.
I deeply desired to recreate that feeling, to be alone with no outside pressure so I can be myself, truly and honestly, and play with my imagination again. Whatever I created back then was purely for my own pleasure, and that’s what made life so wonderful. That’s what I had missed.
I don’t want to lose my inner sight again. Life is richer this way. I am wondering today how I can harvest this positive outcome and latch on to it from now on. Will I be able to shut off social pressure? Is social pressure even real? Or am I pressuring myself?
