Tag: coronavirus

  • Working Away, or My Experience with Workaway

    The COVID-19 pandemic has led many people to make decisions and try things that they wouldn’t have otherwise. With this summer’s travel restrictions, it led me to Workaway, a website that facilitates cultural exchanges where “workawayers” stay with hosts, trading labor for room and board.  I spent two weeks on a workaway this summer on…

  • So You Want to Write in Lockdown?

    How are you all doing? Here in London, we’re well into lockdown #3. Remember lockdown hobbies, and the optimism with which some people took up making homemade sourdough bread and learning new languages? If you’re like me, enthusiasm for indoor activities has waned a bit by now.    Writing is one of the things keeping me…

  • Books I Read During 2020 That I Wouldn’t Have Otherwise

    In 2019, I read a lot, partly thanks to gift cards that let me buy harder-to-access books I’d been wanting to read for years. I’d thought that in 2020 I’d spend less time reading and more time doing things. Then March happened. The gist of it is, lockdown left me with a lot of reading…

  • What to Do When Your Brain Just Won’t Write

    According to coach and author Alexis Rockley, the lack of focus and creative blocks that many of us are experiencing during the coronavirus pandemic stem from the uncertainty arising from this situation. We don’t know what’s going to happen next, and our brains are overwhelmed. In this and other stressful situations, it can be hard…

  • Taking Care of Ourselves and Each Other

    The coronavirus pandemic has affected all of us, though not equally. Those communities that are most marginalized have been hardest hit. Different parts of the world are facing different trajectories of recovery and reinfection. Here in the UK, some restrictions remain (there’s no skating at the skating rink) while others have been lifted (some travel…

  • Creative Coping

    I write this from home, where I now do my full-time job, giving new meaning to the term “in-house”! A spider plant from work sits on my kitchen table. I grabbed it in a panic when the UK government announced that all non-essential workers would henceforth be working from home. I didn’t want it to…