If you’re like us, the last two years have seen you bounce back and forth between luxurious bursts of creative energy and periods of mental fog. Some of us have more free time to write, and some of us have had our spare time eaten up by kids and spouses working from home, stress, and other responsibilities.
Some days it feels like the world is crap and we’re all going to die. Why bother with anything?
In a post on Writer Unboxed, Kelsey Allagood says that we can and should continue making art. “When the pandemic first started, people acknowledged the unprecedented nature of the situation,” she notes. “People sang and musicians duetted each other from their balconies. There was that viral challenge from the J. Paul Getty Museum that asked us to recreate famous works of art from home using our pets and household objects.”
Nonetheless, barring the occasional viral sensation, artists aren’t getting paid appreciably more, even though we’re providing more entertainment for more people than ever. Even if you’re getting your work out there, you might feel alone.
“And that’s where I think art really shines: for those of us who both create and consume it, art is connection,” Allagod writes. “It is a way of reaching across space and time to validate one another’s experiences, to help us process the un-processable. I look at writing as throwing out a lifeline, both for myself and for others I don’t yet know. And I know that I need lifelines the most when things are falling apart.”
So keep writing. We will, too.
