i think i can speak for all college students when i say that none of us knew what to expect when the coronavirus pandemic sent us students home from our university campuses in mid march. especially for arts and humanities students whose majors focus on connecting and collaborating with others, there was a particularly steep learning curve in the majority of my zoom semester. (side note: thank you to all of the professors, teachers, and educators who have worked so hard to keep teaching during the pandemic-- your students are incredibly grateful for your efforts!)
while the music school online learning was a large adjustment, an even bigger change was the inability to find a proper headspace to write. on campus, i had a system worked out-- during my breaks between morning classes, i would buy a coffee from the cafe in the performing arts center, sit on a sunny windowsill nearby facing the courtyard, turn on whatever spotify playlist piqued my interest that day, and write. in the evenings i might have sat on the floor in the hallway of my dorm and said hello as friends passed by, or scribbled lines in the margins of other class notes or whatever sheet music i was studying. for someone who struggles to write in their living space, it was fairly simple for me to find a good working environment on campus that i didn't have access to upon returning home.
so then, where did i write before i moved to maryland for school, back in massachusetts? essentially, i hopped around coffee shops in my hometown-- there was nothing that a cold brew and three free hours of internet connection couldn't accomplish. however, as a night owl, sometimes inspiration would strike long after closing hours, and i had to think of another way to create a writing space where i could work with a clear head and also feel safe as a young woman after dark.
and thus, i turned to: my 2007 mazda 3.
now, hear me out-- this actually works shockingly well. affectionately speaking, my little sedan (named mario for his beautifully blinding cherry red paint job) is an absolute piece of garbage. i mean, seriously, he starts in neutral about 30% of the time, the check engine light turns on when nothing is wrong, and occasionally, the brakes simply just stop working. the entire frame shakes in the wind on the highway. imagine driving a go-kart at 70mph into the city, and that's what driving my car is like. how did this junker pass inspection? i have no idea. and yet, he lives to see another year.
so yes, when i got my license the summer before my senior year of high school, i began to write in the car. usually i would drive to whatever parking lot was convenient-- the local pond, my high school, even a friend's driveway once or twice-- and scribble in my notebook under the streetlights until i had gotten all of my ideas out. at the time i still insisted on writing in a notebook (i have since switched to digital drafting), and something about putting pencil to paper and watching the yellow-orange light flood the page underneath my words felt incredibly powerful, like i was writing spells that only i knew about until i chose to share them. after a year away from home, i nearly forgot that i had done this-- sitting in a crowded cafe with my headphones in had become a daily staple that i had grown so used to that the idea of writing in my bedroom at my parents' house felt foreign and unwelcoming.
however, when winter curse of new england finally lifted in may, i discovered again just how nice it can be to sit in the car and write as i did in high school. i have developed a new system-- pick up an iced coffee in the late afternoon (it is never too late for iced coffee), drive the backroads through the woods of my new hometown to the one i grew up in, sit in the parking lot of the library where i first found my passion for words, write until sunset, and drive home as the lights fade across the trees. i have found that my little office-on-wheels is not only a great means of productivity, but also allows me a little taste of therapy in being able to get out of the house in a safe way, enjoy the sunshine, and think about something other than everything else going on in the world.
it's a bit trickier to navigate this balance when the weather refuses to cooperate (curse you, thunderstorms) but i have managed to find a funny alternative in my own home. i present you: the egg chair.
as silly as it may sound, this patio chair from target has actually revolutionized my ability to work productively in my own living room. when i first began to write from home, we entangled a string of fairy lights through the top arc of the chair and draped a large blanket over the top, creating near-total separating form the rest of the house and a cozy little nook to create in. if i'm ever struggling with an idea and don't have time to leave the house, i can just run to my chair for a moment to process and call it a day.
ironically, the things that have inspired me the most concept-wise during the pandemic haven't been related to the pandemic at all; instead, i've found myself evaluating everything else in my otherwise "normal" life, especially the things and individuals that i miss. it has also given me a great opportunity to go back through plethoras of ideas i've had in the past, think through everything with a sharper focus, and reimagine them through a different lens. some of my more recent work even looks deeper at things that i had never thought of when i was writing about them at the time, or processes everything backwards from how i had initially thought. it's been a really interesting and exciting process to watch myself grow through over time and seeing the way that my ideas have developed differently through the pandemic.
with all of that said, as we continue to adapt into our "new normal," please take care to protect yourself and your loved ones by social distancing, wearing a mask always, and of course, taking care of your own body and mind.
~m.j
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