The End of Busy - business suspended, self-isolation and social distancing - staying sane in a world gone mad…

April 13, 2020

I’ve been numb.

I’ve been avoiding. I’ve been reading, crying, playing with my kids. I’ve been full of false bravado, binge-watching news articles and death tolls, I’ve been day-drinking and napping and distracting.

It’s been exhausting.

Normally (back in The Good Old Days a month ago), I have breakfast out on our back deck, which is surrounded by beautiful gardens and birds and butterflies, nature is my re-charge space. But usually I ‘double-down’ and take the opportunity while I’m eating to check my emails, read that article i’ve been wanting to catch up on, finish the next module of that course I bought, or listen to my favourite speaker on podcast. Not really enjoying my breakfast. Not really giving my full attention to the other thing i’m doing. Certainly not really enjoying our beautiful garden.

But today, I did.

I ONLY ate my breakfast. No book, podcast, email or course. No notes to be written before they’re forgotten, no thoughts that were already elsewhere. I purposely did NOTHING and focused on just BEING. And it was the first moment of real joyfulness I’ve felt in a long time.

When all of this current Covid craziness first reared its ugly head (well, for us anyway) back in February, it seemed like a bit of an inconvenience to business as usual. It then grew into a giant pain in the ass. Then it became a nightmare, the stuff that keeps you awake at 3am wondering if you have a will in place. I moved very quickly from a space of dismissal, to incredulity to full-blown fear. My personal take on fear is that ‘that’s not for me’ or ‘I can beat that’ so I quickly countered the fear with a PLAN - I would take the time that had been handed to me forcibly - away from my work which is my entire heart and soul - and I would continue to create, despite it all, I would rise above and keep myself busy filling a need for others, yes!! Surely there were people out there who, faced with the prospect of being stuck indoors with nothing to do, would want to learn some new skills that I could teach, or have questions I could answer?? And there was my escape plan - I would make myself BUSY. And so far I have done everything except that.

I now think that being busy is part of the problem as to why we’re here now. No, I’m not going to lurch into a political rant here. I’m not pretending to know a damn thing. But I know that what makes me really good at my work is that I allow myself to FEEL very deeply. I feel other people’s emotions. It took me a LOOOONG time to own that, and even longer to be able to say it without feeling incredibly uncomfortable. But there it is. I allow myself to feel it all, and in the studio, it’s what lets me get inside of people’s real, authentic space and see their insecurities and hold that tension for them so that they can let down their guard so I can capture the real moments that happen within. But my superpower is also my Achille’s Heel. I have spent the last two weeks diving in and out of the deep end of feeling absolutely everything to numbing myself so I don’t have to feel anything. And after doing this for a while, here’s what I’ve brought back with me…

We’ve been so busy keeping ourselves so busy with the deadlines at work, with choosing between 6 different varieties of tomato sauce, and with what’s happening on that reality show or falling down the scroll-hole of other people’s social media lives - that we’ve stopped paying attention to our back garden. Our country. Our life. Our planet. Yesterday I read that the Himalayan mountains were visible from Jaipur for the first time in over 30 years, and that there’ve been dolphins seen in the canals of Venice - because we’ve all just STOPPED.

Surely if we allow ourselves - outside of our regular work and distractions - to simply stop and really FEEL the affects of destroying our forests, of climate change, of over-population, of the imbalance in our society where 1% hoard billions while others starve - we can no longer accept all this as the small part of ‘business as usual’ that we give our left-over attention to at the end of our very busy day.

I’ve seen lots of posts on social media saying about how now’s the perfect time to do that course, up-skill, write that book, learn a language. And hey, you do you. That really appealed to me at first. But now I think I want to do the exact opposite. I want to slow down. Be still. Sit, look, listen and feel. Breathe it all in. Go inside myself and ask how I can really live in a way that serves not just my own ambitions and desires and agenda’s, but that truly helps to create the world I dream of living in. The one I want my children to inherit, one where they have a chance to grow and thrive and enjoy.

I’ve been photographing people for over 20 years. Us photographers are a funny bunch, we’re drawn in to other people’s stories, and come into people’s lives at very intimate times - when there’s huge amounts of growth, when they’re joining their lives together in marriage, when they’re creating a new family, when that family is growing and changing, when they’re going through transformational change, and when they’re experiencing crushing losses. Thats where we come in. We tell the story of that time in pictures, anchor those memories of that moment in something real, raw and beautiful to be visited again and again. Over all that time, witnessing all those stories, outside of age and race and culture, I can tell you that ALL of us want the same things - safety for our families and the people we love, a sense of purpose and value in this life, and to truly be seen. Normally, these things get a lower listing behind the bigger priorities of deadlines, decisions and ‘everyday life’, but now our everyday life looks very, very different.

I can’t imagine what will come after this. Currently the talk is that we’ll all be on lockdown until November, and I’m struggling to imagine the reality of that, let alone what it will look like when things ‘go back to normal’. Maybe this is the chance to re-define what parts of normal we actually want to go back to.

I miss my work. I miss my studio. I miss hearing the stories of the people I get to create with, we’re not made for social isolation, and my normal is to go deep, I detest small talk and splashing in the shallow end. If you’ve read this far, I guess you know that about me by now. I am so incredibly GRATEFUL to be in a safe, beautiful space surrounded by my family and for all the things we have at our disposal - it’s a level of luxury (oh, the absolute decadence of perpetually fully stocked grocery shelves!!) that I’m sure we none of us will take for granted ever again. And I’m sure the time will come that I’ll want to be busy again, and I’ll be itching to create something new and different, but that time isn't now, and I’m going to be patient and kind to myself in allowing this jumble of feelings and knowings to have its way with me. I’m choosing not to be busy right now, not to show up for anyone other than me, to give myself permission to feel it all, the horror and the confusion and the quiet and the loneliness… I’m going to learn more about not being distracted by being busy, and instead simply BE.

And when the desire returns to create, and get busy, I think it will come from somewhere much deeper, and truer in intention.

However you’re currently handling this shit-show, please be kind to yourself. There are no ‘shoulds’ anymore, we get to make new rules and we’ve got time to think on exactly what that can look like. Let’s dare to dream of creating a way of living that is truly, unapologetically beautiful 🖤

Sending love to you all, stay sane keep well, hang in there…. Here’s hoping I’ll see you again real soon.

With love & light, Fiona xx