Take your average family of four during the pandemic, look in their fridge, and you are likely to find pandemonium, even in a household where mom is like a drill sergeant with every meal and snack planned. The challenges are epic. The storage is finite.

Take the flip-side of that. Feeding one person during the pandemic. Look in the fridge, and you are likely to find pandemonium. It is not that much different than feeding a small mob. One person depends upon only one person to feed herself/himself. You can’t send anybody else out the door at 9pm when you must have popcorn for movie night. Then you need fresh produce for Taco Tuesday. Who goes to the grocery again? You must keep the fridge stocked for any eventuality.

We have all, by now, refined and improved upon our original pandemic survival plans. Things keep changing and we must be adaptable. Creativity inside the pandemic is revealed every night on the local news with people who are clever and resourceful while confined at home.

The emotional aspect is a whole different story. Sometimes the friends and family that you thought would weather the storm like champions surprise you with their vulnerability. Turns out that these more practical people fall apart easily when structure is absent. Others, who are ordinarily all  loosey-goosey in their daily lives on any given day are the ones who begin to crave structure and orderliness, cleaning closets and garages, tidying up the yard and the cars. Things are a bit threatening for them when life gets out of control and crazy and organization helps. Chances are that you fall in between those extremes but that keeps you on a roller-coaster ride of hot to cold, black to white, up to down in a 24/7 day that you wish could be more even-keeled.

Humor, when living alone, becomes a stand up comedy routine playing to an audience of no one. Sarcasm falls flat. Dark comedy is no longer funny because people really are dying. Even Ellen DeGeneres is not funny at home. People’s underbellies begin to reveal themselves.

I have no advice. I am not writing this blog because I know any answers. I am all over the emotional charts myself, laughing at something on tv one minute and crying at something on tv the next. I have been, for all practical purposes, uninspired and unable to paint. The art gene has gone pandemic-ly dormant. I moved all of my supplies onto the dining room table, out from their studio space,  thinking that a change of scenery might break loose the blockage. We (me and my art gene) are into the second day in a space with more light, open to the terrace breezes, closer to the fridge, but so far no miracles have happened. You know what they say when this happens – do not wait to be “inspired” by some stroke of artistic lightening. JUST START MAKING MARKS WITH PAINT and things will begin to flow…..

I have accidentally read some books that took me deep into the universe and deeper into my own soul. Deepak Chopra’s book titled METAHUMAN is profoundly stirring and I had to read some passages several times until my own personal light bulb went on, but that’s OK. I have dedicated myself to following the 30-day workbook journal that will unleash my infinite potential and reveal to me my one-ness with the universe.  I figure, if you cannot go wide, then of course go deep. I already knew I am made of star-dust, thanks to the explanations by Carl Sagan and Deepak, but now I know how and why that is absolutely true. Did you know that the universe has conscientiousness?

http://www.artistjoannbrown-scott.com

FB – Jo Ann (Rossiter) Brown-Scott

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