What a year.
First off, I should mention that I and my family and our extended family have been fortunate through the pandemic. A few minor things along the way, but we mostly have our health and are financially stable.
I complain, and am frustrated, about how the pandemic has affected us, but I am incredibly thankful that we are in very much a good way right now.
When this was all starting I recall a number of assumptions made by folks saying that, “Well, a lot of us work from home, or are out of work, so I guess we will have a lot more time to be creative!” As rosy as that is for some, whereupon a lot of folks have been able to carve out that creative time, I most certainly have not.
My wife and I were primed and ready to, for a third time, get our home remodel off the ground right when the pandemic was spinning up. Contracts signed, projects defined, and everything suddenly put on hold. Crap!
We are doing what we can to repair our home (much needed in our 1949 brick Seattle home) and improve the living space for our family of 4 humans and 3 furry kids.
In addition to the DIY over the summer, we continued home learning from the spring for our boys in an attempt to prepare for what we saw as the inevitable situation of our kids being home, full time, for “online schooling”.
Let’s fast forward to today. Here we are in the thick of education at home for two different learning groups (3rd grader, and a pre-K child) for boys that need a bit of extra attention/work (they’re well off with language and math). My wife shut down her business in March since she lost her clients due to pandemic/shutdowns happening. I’m super grateful for being employed still in my chosen dayjob career path as well. The time to be creative is only from about 8PM-12AM most nights…Rarely during the day time.
I feel like that’s going to be the purpose, or at least one of the themes, of my YouTube videos. “Use the time you have” to be creative. “Nothing is going to happen unless you try and make it happen”. I’m sure other conversations about fear (of failure, of rejection, FOMO, etc) will be talked about.. and I certainly will do what I can to fumble my way through “this is how I do this one thing you were wondering about” or “I liked how this turned out.. let’s show what I did..” or something… but at the end of the day we will see what comes out the other end as I turn on the camera, record what I’m doing, and edit, edit, edit.
I’m using that time, right now, to do something creative. Writing in my blog again. It’s necessary, and writing (either physically or typing) always helps me put my brain at ease and organize my thoughts.
Everyone stay well out there.
-Sean