Clearly, I have not been sharing anything that I’ve been making for a while. I don’t know the exact moment that triggered me to stop, but I just did. I had ideas coming out my ears, but I didn’t really want to write any of them.

And for a long time there I couldn’t figure out why.

But today this quote popped into my head.

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.

Thumper (Bambi)

I don’t remember much from the movie Bambi, but I will always remember that.

The problem is, I don’t think I’ve had much that is nice to say.

Possible title for blog posts/poems/stories that have floated around my mind for the past weeks have included, ‘I hate lockdown, and that’s okay’, ‘why everyone needs to stop talking’ and ‘lockdown is not the time to create your masterpiece’.

I didn’t want to write any of them. Partly because I don’t even agree with myself on the ideas, and partly because they would not make for interesting reading if I did write them. They were just how I was feeling at a certain moment, in a certain place, in an unusual time.

A couple of weeks ago on the news, a reporter asked a musician what they were working on in lockdown, as traditionally during these times, artists step up and comfort the world. The musician looked somewhat confused, and more than a bit pressured at this. The reason for that being is that they were discussing a project that he was already doing in lockdown. But this reporter assumed that there must be something more. He must have been writing a new, powerful piece of music. He must have been pursuing a new, daring project.

Spoiler alert: he wasn’t.

There seems to be an assumption that artists have some untapped special reserves that we draw on in these times when life is hard, that mean we can keep on creating in the same way, if not even at a higher level, as before all this happened.

And maybe that’s true for some people. And maybe that was true at the beginning of lockdown.

But I seem to be running out of nice things to say. I seem to be running out of ideas that will be worth reading, worth sharing, worth even writing in the first place.

And do you know what?

That is okay.

It’s okay if lockdown means that in some ways you have become locked out of some your best ideas. It’s okay if lockdown has left you too emotionally drained to tackle anything new. It’s okay if during lockdown, all you manage is to stay okay.

There is overwhelming pressure to not stop. There is overwhelming pressure to prove that you are more than okay. There is overwhelming pressure to keep going despite a world crisis.

But, for me, and maybe for you, now is not the time to listen to that pressure. Now is the time to keep going when I can, stop when I need to, and live life a little differently.

And that is okay.

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Imaged source from disney.fandom