Gone fishin’ on Zoom

In this SCAB I’m going to take a pretty unpopular stance: I prefer working remotely. I enjoy doing creative work over Zoom. 

I know this is an opinion not shared by many. I know a lot of people are counting down the days until they’re back in the studio, longing for Marc to once more stare right into the soul as opposed to out of the window of his home office. And part of me feels that way too, I desperately miss the energy of POP – the solidarity, and the feeling of all floating away in unison to beers at the end of the week. But equally I’ve come to enjoy working from home, and I don’t want it to end (just yet).

What follows might come across like an ad for zoom, and I apologise in advance. But it seems to me that Zoom calls almost have the power to serve as vortexes, in which all distractions and pestering thoughts fade away, and all that remains are the ideas at hand and the words coming out of my partner’s oh-so-distant mouth. I find it much harder to do this in person, I find I’m more easily distracted by the annoying tapping of a pen on the other side of the room, or some lingering angst from my morning’s tube journey, or my internal crisis about what’s waiting for me in the fridge back home. 

I’ve been eating up David Lynch interviews recently, and one thing he said that stuck with me was ideas existing in the world like fish you have to patiently wait to catch. From this I think it follows that a big part of creative work comes down to finding the perfect fishing spot. For now, mine seems to be at home: my stream being the peculiar virtual gulf which flows gently between me and my partner. Of course, everybody knows that the best fishing is really done in bookshops and pubs, but we’ll have to wait a little longer for that. 

Beyond the tranquil imagery of fishing, I’ve also been thinking a bit about mania recently. When I was at university, I was incredibly lazy almost all of the time, except on those rare weeks when I had an essay due or an exam to prepare for; at which point I would procrastinate until the very last minute, and then snap into a pure, caffeine-induced frenzy letting my mind go into complete overdrive. At SCA those once rare moments of actually using my brain have become the norm, and each morning I welcome that headspace rather than fear it. I guess I’ve come to realise that mania and excitement are not necessarily anxiety or stress, even if it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference. It also helps that thinking about the useless BS which is advertising is simply a lot more fun than thinking about the useless BS I used to concern myself with.