On day three of having to work from home, my team gave up video-Skyping in favour of audio-Skyping. The argument was that everyone’s broadband was struggling but I suspect most of us preferred to talk from behind our smart profile pictures rather than reveal what we really look like in our spare rooms or at our kitchen tables. This is fine by me as I’m approximately six years younger and half a stone lighter in my profile picture than in real life, and in real life, my hair is about to go out of control so I’m on the verge of looking like Captain Caveman or Cousin Itt.
The risk of being seen less than groomed is only one problem for current video-Skyping. The other is when the team-member has young offspring, since all the schools are shut. A child suddenly appears with something which to them is far more important than any coronavirus-related crisis which their parent is trying to deal with and then, faced with the horror of complete strangers cooing at them from their parent’s laptop screen, go very shy and lip-wobbly.
Life is very peculiar just now isn’t it?
I’m lucky that I can work from home and maintain some sort of structure to my week.
I’m sort of glad I’m not also home-schooling my children as I’m sure that I’d be going quietly bonkers by now, but all the same I’m sad that mine aren’t still small enough for me to be doing keep-fit or making dens or playing games or doing craft everyday as some of my colleagues are.
When my own children were little, although I did those sorts of thing, it didn’t always work out the way I intended of course. Once, my three-year-old son and I copied art from TV using paint and old toothbrushes. We were disappointed at the result until we looked up and realised that while the paper was nearly blank, we’d made a lovely spatter pattern on the wall and … also on my baby daughter who was asleep nearby.
They’re now no longer small enough to want or need me to entertain them and I’m not sure either would want to make a big creative mess like we did when they were small even if I asked them.
But there are advantages to them being older now.
Last weekend, when the impact of coronavirus was making me feel disinclined to try anything new, or indeed, do anything at all, I was invited to join an online group in which members were encouraged to live-stream themselves reading a story.
I thought ‘Blimey.’
Now: I’m capable of talking (as many will testify) and I’m more than skilled at making a fool of myself, but I don’t usually record myself doing either.
I thought about it for a bit and asked my son for advice. Most of what he said went over my head but having got the general drift, I chose a story and practised videoing myself.
I observed a number of things:
- Everyone is right about me talking too fast and too quietly.
- My face is even more asymmetrical than I’d realised.
- I need to do my hair.
The following day, I decided to be brave.
I did my hair to the best of my somewhat inadequate abilities and I read ‘Dust’ from ‘Weird and Peculiar Tales’ as a live-stream, even remembering to have a piece of vacuum cleaner as a prop. Immediately after, while I was in the ‘zone’ I live-streamed it on my author Facebook page too (although I forgot the piece of vacuum cleaner). My face didn’t really stop burning for an hour afterwards.
I definitely got a real buzz from doing it even though I found my lips weren’t quite in synch with my speech. (I sort of assume that was my technical incompetence rather than that’s what I’m like anyway.) And so naturally, going off at a tangent, I then pondered about whether I should start a YouTube channel (with videos rather than my face) or do pod-casting (which wouldn’t require anything to replace my face).
All of this of course, took my mind off the fact what I’m supposed to be doing in my free time, which is edit a book. What with one thing and another, most of it out of my control, I’m a long way behind and having decided I needed to re-write some of it hasn’t helped.
But this weekend, my daughter came into her own. In a general chat about creativity and the psychological impact of the current situation, I told her I was finding it hard to get on with the edit and she said she’d been blogging about PROCRASTINATION and shared her conclusions to me. They made a lot of sense.
She put up with me making one more excuse, then repeated the key bit of advice and sent me went off to get on with the editing. I’m still not there, but I’m near enough to feel like I’m getting somewhere at last.
And going off at a tangent again – I intending to write this blog about something else entirely but writing about doing the live-stream made more sense somehow. And while my consciousness was streaming as I wrote, I thought – why do you need a small child to do messy craft with? If the weather’s good enough and you can find some paper and some paints – go in the garden and make a fool of yourself. No-one need ever see the result but you’ll feel a lot better and maybe your daughter will come and join you.
So do you know what, I think I shall.
Words copyright 2020 by Paula Harmon. Image copyright 2020 Zoe Harmon. All rights belong to the authors and material may not be copied without the authors’ express permission.
If you’re looking for things to do while socially distancing, here are some links:
Closed Visitor Gardens Virtual Tours