[EDIT: if you’re looking for my lockdown mission to run every street (in a nerdy, obsessive, Strava kind of way), you can find that here.]
Everything has changed. I have spent much of the past few months hoping that it wouldn’t, disbelieving that it had, and unable to imagine what comes next. For more people than at any other time in history, the Coronavirus lockdown has been a fallow time of paused plans, loss, and unravelling routines. I have never in my entire life spent so many consecutive nights in one place. I do not like it one bit!
At first, I approached the situation like most other things in my life: by denying it, and charging around madly, like a dog on a chain. By the time I had exhausted myself (and my orbit) running every single street from my front door, lockdown was still not even close to finishing.
In other words, attempting ‘business as usual’ with all my usual answers -in a world very much shut down to business as usual- did not solve the situation!
Now I am trying a different approach. The world is slower and more restricted than before. And I no longer seem to have any answers, only a carousel of questions.
I decided to pause my usual late-night manic runs and rides, and go for an evening walk instead. (A walk! With no challenging destination or mission involved! Just a measly walk! I’m not sure I have ever done such a thing.)
[Scroll down for photos.]
This situation is a chance to live differently, to stop hurrying, to liberate myself from habits and assumptions, and to sharpen priorities. What do I want to spend the rest of my life doing? These are not questions to rush.
To make sure I kept moving slowly and resisted beginning to run or rush, I carried my heavy DSLR camera with me. To keep things simple (but not easy) I carried just one prime lens [no zoom], fixed on just one setting [f3.5]. To remind myself that I’m looking for new perspectives in a once-familiar world, I shot the photos in black and white. And because I have less time than in the good old days I would not allow myself to edit or photoshop the pictures. This is not a time to be seeking perfection.
My hope was that these walks might help me to ask myself questions, in contrast with my usual runs and challenges and missions which all demand solutions.
Going out at dusk to take photographs is a good exercise in noticing, slowing down, being curious, resourceful, and adapting to your limitations and constraints – perhaps even turning them into positive virtues. All of these things felt timely and helpful right now. (And perhaps, even, it might simply be fun – god forbid, Humphreys!)
- What questions have I been asking during lockdown?
- What old assumptions and habits have I reconsidered?
- How has lockdown impacted my adventuring?
- What will my adventuring life look like after lockdown?
- How has all this changed my creativity?
- Does exploration feel important or trivial right now?
- What does ‘exploring’ mean to me now?
- How can Coronavirus be an opportunity?
- What do I look for from adventure, and how can that be applied to a post-lockdown world?
- What is the future of adventure for ‘professional adventurers’?
- How has Coronavirus altered my opinion of climate change and my role in that?
- What impact will flight restrictions have on local adventure – both positive and negative?
- How can I welcome a new audience to adventure?
- What is legal / what can I get away with? What is appropriate / what is right?
- What part do I play in the ‘tragedy of the commons’?
- What have I been doing for years?
- How have I been doing it?
- Why have I been doing it?
- Everything has now stopped. When the music starts again, which things do I want to pick up again?
- What will I be inclined to resume out of habit / expectation but which would be better left behind?
- What things have I been doing too long?
- What beliefs/plans/goals now feel out-dated, out-of-kilter?
- What should I let go of, regardless of how much I have already poured into it?
- What exciting prospects are there in this fresh start?
- Which things would I continue, regardless of what they earn/cost?
- Which things would I stop if they paid nothing?
- What has changed in my approach to fitness/adventure/challenge? What should I wave a fond farewell to?
- What positives can I take from this?
- How can I make the world better?
- How can I reduce the hard that I do?
- How can I help?
- Would I prefer to help more people, or help people, more?
- In which direction lies happiness?
- In which direction lies purpose?
- Is there a common path where I can find both?
- How has the adventure world changed?
- What good aspects of adventure have suffered?
- What less-desirable aspects of the outdoors community is this an opportunity to change?
- How can this change my approach to creativity?
- How can I be more original, insightful, energetic and prolific in my creative ventures?
- Is this a time to become less prolific and become better?
- What different media can I learn to tell stories with?
- How would I like to earn money?
- What new ways can I earn money?
- How can I improve my passive income?
- Which aspects of my working ‘pie’ are winners and which are losers?
- What makes me content?
- What is enough?
Thank you for sharing your questions, many thought provoking answeres . Things to do in lockdown… Darn adventure socks, repair mouse eaten sleeping bag, donate excess of any type, sharpen tools, draw maps from memory of my favorite adventures, edit photos, read your blog posts. write old fashioned letters to …. someone special, perhaps even yourself. cultivate grattitude for everything that happened up till now, and train my mind in readyness for what is just about to happen…. Plant an indoor garden…. Thank you again for keeping me sane! Regards keith
Great photos, and great post.
When the lockdown started, here in Italy, I said to myself things would not change much for me – as a writer, I normally spend hours or days alone, indoor. I even thought my productivity would increase – no distractions!
Turned out we need the distractions. My productivity actually decreased, and the stress was hard to manage.
Now the sensation of being in free fall is still strong, but the “strange time” during spring and summer helped me change my rhythm, so I think I will cope by slowing down and focusing on those things I can control.
My life did not change that much, but possibly my attitude towards it did.
We have always faced unexpected change in our day to day life. The main difference is, this time change hit us all at the same time.
And after a few dry months, I’m writing again, so it’s good.
The greatness of this text, and of its writer‘s palpable heart & mind, shining through it all, is how essential these questions have become, and how much they ring true – whether you find yourself at the crossroads as an adventurer or experience a forced stop in the middle of the adventure that is life.
Thank you, Al. Once again. While working on my own answers,I am dying to read some of yours, in case you‘ve found some, that is, to mull over during my measly walks…