The World Came Back, But Where Did We Go?

Our days are starting to have the look and feel of prepandemic life, but everything has changed – most of all us. How do we recalibrate? Penny Brazier investigates.

Restrictions have been lifted for a good few months, foreign travel is back, and the likelihood of another lockdown seems a distant prospect. Life is as close to pre-pandemic times as it has been so far, and yet, from where I’m standing, everything still feels pretty damn wobbly.

As a home-based copywriter, I’ve been able to keep working through most of the chaos, but while my fingers kept typing, my mental health slowly fizzled. This year, at last, there have been glimmers of lost energy returning, but it’s been slow and sticky progress.

Whatever our experience of the last few years has been, it’s going to take a while to piece ourselves back together. And when we do, I’m not sure anyone will be quite the same. So how is everybody else in freelance-land dealing with 2022 life? Does anybody have it figured out yet?

Getting people back together

Emma Bearman is the founder of Playful Anywhere, a not-for-profit that brings people together to connect and create, mostly in urban spaces. It’s a business with a cheerful surface and a serious purpose and relies heavily on the nuances of in-person human connection. Is it starting to feel better now we can hold events again?

“It is getting better slowly, although you have to plan events differently. You have to prepare for the fact that your plan A might not be the one you get to do,” says Emma.

“And we’re all more aware of each others’ needs. I work with associates and most of them have families, young children, older parents that need caring for. Everyone feels more stretched, people haven’t got their energy levels back yet. So while it is definitely getting better, and I am optimistic, there’s still a real sense of before and after.”

When I try to remember my “before” self, it feels a bit like peering down the wrong end of a telescope. There’s somebody there, but they’re far away and indistinct. A perky thing who posted regularly on social media, had thoughtful things to say, and confronted every working day with pluck and pep. The “after” self is a slower, sleepier, more lumbering thing, more apt to stare off into the distance, less likely to know what day it is. And while I’m mostly pleased with how my work is going, it seems to take me a hell of a lot longer to produce it than it used to.

A call-out on Twitter revealed a lot of freelancers are feeling the same. There’s definitely a restlessness that simply wasn’t there before – a distractibility, a battle to stay focused on our work. But why?

What happens when the work’s not working?

Tech writer Craig Wright wondered “if it’s the pandemic making me reassess what really matters. It kinda made me realise what I already knew – the only things really worthwhile in life are family (if you have a good ones!), friends, nature, exercise and refuelling. Everything else is just a way to fill time until you die, so try to fill it with more good stuff and less work.” A shift in priorities to focus on things that actually matter – that has to be a win?

Meanwhile copywriter Mel Barfield puts it down to the fact our nerves are basically shot: “My theory is that being on constant high alert along with WFH multitasking for so long during the early catastrophe times (remember when people were disinfecting their Tesco deliveries?) has left us unable to concentrate. It was all frazzle, no dazzle.”

As a fellow parent-of-young-children, this hits home. It feels like there’s still a bit of my brain simultaneously fretting about elderly family members, trying to remember the latest set of rules, and bracing myself for a child to start screaming in the next room. Anxiety is a constant background whirr, like a MacBook fan loudly reminding me that my tabs still haven’t quite been restored.

One freelance foot in front of the other

Like most of us, I could probably do with at least a month off on a sunny beach. But after two years of financial yo-yoing, taking a long break feels like something I can ill afford. If getting off the work treadmill isn’t an option right now, how do we keep ourselves going?

HR consultant Kirsten Smith says keeping up with the little things that do her good is keeping her afloat:

“I have to be bang on exercise, nutrition, time for myself and sleep to achieve proper productivity. Planning the day to day – nutritious meals, exercise, eight hours sleep, a bedtime routine for myself, meditation and time out, less screen time.”

This rings true for me. I recently signed up for a half marathon (highly out of character), which has forced me to put in place a good routine of eating, sleeping and getting away from my screen at lunchtime at least once every couple of days. It has lifted my overall mood, something I hadn’t anticipated. Neglecting my physical health over the last few years has probably been contributing to my general malaise – seems pretty bloody obvious now I think about it.

Making time for ourselves

But I don’t think it’s compulsory to lace up your running shoes to get back to yourself. It’s about choosing your favourite restorative activities – things that put you in the elusive “flow state” – and making time for them.

Brand strategist and writer Becca Magnus has been shielding for the last two years. She’s starting to get back out into the world, but it’s far from straightforward: ”Recovery from such a traumatic time is hard and definitely not linear. Walking helps – give the restlessness some physicality, feel it in my body, walk it out. I find making art helps too, putting my creativity into things that aren’t client work. It can feel like a luxury, a waste of time, but it’s anything but.”

It is so hard to get past that fear of not being productive to make space for those non-work activities that will help us feel better, and work better too. Even when we promise ourselves that we’ll get around to them, they often slip to the bottom of the list. We may understand that the answer lies in prioritising ourselves somehow, but in reality, we still need to (re)balance that against our other responsibilities.

What matters most? What can drop? What isn’t serving us anymore that we can move away from, to make time for what we actually need?

Start where you are

So perhaps it’s about building a new life that works better for us, whoever we are now. Since I started to accept that I may never fully return to that perky “before” at the wrong end of the telescope, things have started to feel a bit lighter. And, actually? Things might feel different, even difficult, but we’re doing ok. We’ve been through a lot, and we’re still here, hanging on.

As somebody whose work is rooted in finding happiness in messy and unexpected places, Emma agrees: “Ultimately, freelancers – whether we liked it or not – had a fragile existence even before the pandemic. Then we managed to come out of it, still here, maybe a bit bruised and battered, but we’re all still finding ways to keep creating value.”

Taking the unexpected and rolling with it. As freelancers, that’s what we do best. ●

This article was written in June 2020. The landscape of the pandemic may have changed again since going to print (although we really hope not). Wherever you are in the world, we hope you’re doing ok. Love from the Freelancer Magazine team.

Penny Brazier is a freelance writer and copy coach based in Leeds. She’s been freelance (this time around!) for four years and still enjoys being in full charge of the office stereo 100% of the time.

@penthemighty

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