World Turned Upside Down

Like most creative people i know I enjoy spending the majority of my time in a room by myself. I prefer to order food online rather than go shopping. I'd rather cook than go to a restaurant. Give me a quiet pint in a village pub over a busy city bar any day. Most of the time I am quite quiet and introverted and just enjoy being left alone to draw. So you would think being told to stay at home by the government would fine, right? Just get out the sketchbook, stick on some questionable punk music and draw, right? Well that worked.... For the first week. Now I'm just bored. Bored with staring at the same walls. Bored with the lack of social contact. Bored with the same daily routine. Bored with the depressing media coverage. Bored with the absolute garbage being spouted daily by our ineffective, self-serving, oxygen wasting government. Bored with the journalists not holding them to account. Bored with the idiots ignoring social distancing. Bored with the fact we are all reliant on social media to keep in contact. Bored with those crazy people who believe 5G is to blame and not some guy chomping on a bat. But most of all I'm bored with drawing. Drawing has always been the thing to keep me sane. Its helped through bereavements, bouts of depression and anxiety, I can get lost in it for hours. But the problem is most of my inspiration comes from conversations with people. Not ideas, my brain is warped enough to come up with them regularly, but the inspiration to actually want to be creative and have the dedication to become a better illustrator and artist. The willingness to want to get up and be at my drawing board for 6am has slowly evaporated this week. Finding out what people are passionate about, even if its something completely foreign to me, reminds me why I want to draw. Maybe it's music, food, sport, work, their dog or being a better parent. It reminds me that we all have things that drive us in life and i find that is something I can easily forget if I'm in a room by myself for days on end. I've never really enjoyed talking to people on the phone, or understood text speak or the meaning of emojis. Why is there more than one smiley face?! It makes no fucking sense to me. In fact with my closest friends we can go weeks without communicating because we always organise face to face when we are meeting up next. Or we just drop a one word text saying "Pub?" and then meet up. So this reliance we now have on social media, Whatsapp groups and Zoom calls to keep in contact is something I am struggling to adapt to, and certainly not something that I am taking motivation from. Everyone is having to change their routines, stay home and find the best way to not go stir crazy. Thank god for the daily government sanctioned exercise. So I am just trying to keep to a normal routine as much as I can. Get up early and work until 5 ish, then sit outside for an hour with a beer to relax. Try to keep in contact with friends and family digitally no matter how weird it feels. I've stopped watching the news as it is just making me a strange mix of concerned and angry. I've stopped the punk in me getting annoyed at being told what to do by a government I have no faith in. I'm trying to find the motivation to be creative in the generosity, selflessness and kindness shown by the people working in the NHS. But most of all I'm remembering if I don't feel motivated to draw, to not beat myself up over it. Have a day off and start again the next day. We can all meet up and chat as much shit as we want once this lockdown has lifted.