Here we go again…

Yesterday lunchtime, I was sitting in my lounge reading a BBC article. I think it was about the horrendous experience some self-isolating university students are currently going through. Needless to say, if it wasn’t that article it was definitely one about the pandemic – it could’ve been about the dire state of the economy, the rising positive tests, the areas under ‘lockdown’ or our blind walk into a second wave. The scope is just endless.

Halfway through I had to stop. It was just too much. I could feel it in my stomach – the feeling you get when you’re about to go over the top of something. Like a roller coaster. Not that I’ve been on many roller coasters…

I thought about the feeling for a while and wondered if it’s something I could paint. I imagined a blank A5 canvas and thought about what I’d create if I just started painting. I decided in the end that my creation probably wouldn’t look very interesting – I think it would’ve just been black by the end and that was far too dark for a Friday afternoon.

So I carried on staring into space and thought again about the feeling. The next thing I pictured was that familiar wave. It’s the wave that I feel I’m about to ‘go over the top’ of. 

I grabbed some paper, pens and pencils and got ready to start a cartoon. I knew what I wanted the piece to look like. Rather than the style of my past doodle storyboards, I wanted to be in the picture itself. So I drew it from the perspective of the crest of the wave and imagined I was a fish, sharing the same thought as my other fish friends: ‘here we go again’. 

Looking at this today, I kinda wish one of the fish was laughing. Not a spiteful or inappropriate laugh, but more of an incredulous laugh. Because I really think that’s all we can do at the moment – laugh or cry. I definitely flick between the two. On some days I look more like the fish in the cartoon (like yesterday when I was reading the article). On other days, I just have to laugh. Both approaches are definitely dealing with the same thing – how to make sense of such a chaotic and unpredictable situation.

And laughter is important. There’s no denying that the next 12 months still look pretty rubbish and I know others have worries beyond anything I can comprehend, but I’ve promised myself that it can’t all be doom and gloom. When I chat to friends and family, for example, I think it’s important to have a laugh alongside the more serious topics of discussion. I even treated my grandparents to a glimpse of my cat-pizza apron this week (photo below) – I mean, they’re not exactly fans of cats but who couldn’t laugh at that???

Finally, I hope my cartoon fish can remind us of something else. Though we’re not all affected equally (and this inequality is definitely NOT ok), I think it’s safe to say that none of us would’ve chosen this. We all ended up on this wave against our will. Blaming each other for it is really not going to get us off the wave more quickly – it’s just gonna make the journey worse.