Leveling up in lock down!





When the Covid 19 lock down began here in England in March it didn't take very long for me to start developing cabin fever. I was one of the millions of people who's workplaces were closed but also were also unable to work from home due to the nature of our jobs. The reality of not having anything at all to do for the foreseeable future started to hit me hard after the initial childlike novelty of the "snow day" mentality had worn off.

Everything was closed down by the government, from the gyms and cinema's to pubs and restaurants, we were completely and utterly locked down and our normal freedoms were gone. We were only permitted to leave the house once per day for outdoor exercise or to go to a grocery store for essential food and worse still we were not allowed any social contact at all with anyone from outside of our own household! At first I thought it would only be for a couple of weeks or so, but as the weeks passed and the numbers of infections continued to rise I realised this wasn't going to be a short term thing. I have to admit, I felt freaked out, especially as the weeks turned into months - four months to be exact. 

One obvious benefit was that I now had all of the time in the world to write.... but would the writing come? No! I think many writers will agree that our creativity can be stifled by any sort of upheaval and this was a very stressful time full of uncertainty and fear, so every time I tried to sit down to write it just wouldn't flow. I was desperate to get my WIP  finished, after all when would I ever get the opportunity again to get paid to stay at home and write my book? It was beyond frustrating. 

Being someone who heavily believes in mindset I refused to be defeated by this and instead I set to work on getting my head back in the right place. With the help of my life coach we implemented some big changes to assist me, including rectifying my awful lock down sleep pattern, my diet and my fitness. It might sound silly but believe me when I say that these things massively affect our mindset, anxiety levels and productivity! Every area of your life affects every area of your life....

Once I was back in a normal sleep pattern, eating right and working out daily (7 days per week for 30 days - I walked 200k!) and consciously making an effort to positively re-frame all of the adversity going on around me from negativity and loss to opportunity and possibility, my head was in a much better place and the creative juices started flowing again. Looking back now I'm so thankful that I didn't just accept the writers block as inevitable in the circumstances and stop trying, because I think writing was one of only a handful of things that kept me sane during this long lonely period of isolation. The ability to escape to another world and live vicariously through my characters was magical and I enjoyed writing more than ever once I broke through that initial period of blackness. Not only that but I accomplished so much that I otherwise wouldn't have if I'd let the negativity win.

Once I'd achieved my goal and completed my novel I decided that I had to continue to use this precious time and to my full advantage as a writer. I had already started to work on my personal brand, so I decided to dedicate some serious time into networking on my social media and developing / launching my website. I felt so lucky to be able to have the time to do all of these things for my writing career that I'd been planning for years but had never gotten around to actually doing!

I had made more progress than I could ever have dreamed of, having smashed all of my 2020 goals and more besides with still half of the year to spare! I really feel like going through this testing experience taught me so much about myself, about life and about how capable we are of turning even the most bleak situations into incredibly positive ones if we don't let negativity overwhelm us. I took time to reflect before I went back to work, set myself some new goals and began writing another book. With 5 months left of the year and my previous goals smashed I still wasn't letting myself off the hook! I don't want to look back on 2020 as the year of the awful pandemic that ruined our lives and stole our freedom, I want to look back at it as the year I realised just how precious our lives are and how we should never waste a single minute. I want to look back at 2020 as the year I leveled up in life and as a writer.











Comments

Popular Posts