Lockdown looks … a bit like uni life and a bit like grown-up life.

My name is Rachel Frances Craig, I turned 33 a few weeks ago, and I’m currently in lockdown in Taranaki with my wonderful friend Guy.

I work in people development, to enhance social and community outcomes. Our project has actually just been canned, it was a bit too innovative and weird for the bureaucratic environment we were in. Plus, there were relentless budget pressures which have grown exponentially now given Covid … so, I’m actually on the hunt for new mahi. It’s a good time to reset.

I usually live on Waiheke, so a normal day for me would involve walking past beautiful native bush and hopping on a waka for my morning commute, then into an office environment for the day. I don’t work directly with communities - we already know about what is broken and what needs to change from those that do - my job is to work with the people inside the system, whose work impacts community. The real challenge is to work within the bureaucracy, work out how to make those changes happen. So that’s what I do. I love it.

Lockdown looks … a bit like uni life and a bit like grown-up life. We wake up, have a hash cookie, then do some tidying and a bit of yard work. After midday I do some resetting, like what is my place in the world, how do I apply my skills, what kind of jobs do I look for … that sort of thing. Oh, and we do some stretching! Also, I’m focusing on trying to increase Guy’s vegetable intake. I’m a vegetarian and he’s a meat lover – there was not a single fucking vegetable in the fridge when I arrived. That’s my life.

It’s been great, we’re having a nice time and getting into a good routine. We’re in the beautiful Taranaki, in a really nice neighbourhood with lots of lovely gardens. There must be so much admiration and criticism of other people’s houses and gardens at the moment. Everyone walking the streets, peering into their neighbours’ yards. All the knackery old girls will be loving it.

I actually came down to Taranaki for WOMAD. I loved it here and decided to come back the following weekend. I thought it would just be for a short time, so when they announced the four-week lockdown I was like, but I don’t have any of my things! My hobbies, my garden, my books – I only brought a handful of books with me. I freaked out. But there’s been real benefit in being away from my things. It’s given me the space to reconnect with my spiritual practice, instead of filling time with the things I normally do. Guy also lives in his own company, so it’s nice to share this time with him. I keep thinking about the poor extroverts who are stuck inside. They’ll be losing their minds, not having that connection with others. Whereas little introvert weirdos like us, we’re very happy pottering around the house.

The thing I’m finding the hardest is the uncertainty, for sure. That lack of control. We’re so conditioned to control everything, it’s so rare for us to be in an uncontrollable state – so our skills for managing these kinds of situations haven’t been getting developed. I think it’s a really good opportunity to get to feel more comfortable in the grey. Flex some of those spiritual, mental and emotional wellbeing practices we so often learn about, but don’t have the space to apply.

I’m a super self-reflective person, probably to my detriment, so this feels like an explosion of time for me to be able to do this. I just need to remember to be kind to myself. If we’re not kind to ourselves, we’re often not as kind as we could be to others. I wasn’t very good at this to begin with, but I’ve tried to do a 180 and think – kind of like the privilege chat – what’s my role in this? How can I make this better for others? Rather than getting into a selfish bubble of ‘Poor me, I’m not going to have a job in a few months.’ We are privileged as shit. I’ll never be homeless, I’ll always have a roof over my head and food on my table. That’s a luxury. I’m trying to always be thankful for that.

What am I feeling most positive about? Well, the work I’ve been doing was essentially trying to break the system for the benefit of community, and when our projects didn’t get funded I thought, ‘Fuck the system, the system doesn’t want to change.’ So, it’s exciting to me that this is a significant disruption – perhaps what’s required for transformation across the board in terms of how we work, how we empower community, as well as economic and environmental transformation. The world is facing some really gnarly challenges and unless we can harness the people power that sits in our communities, I don’t believe we’ll be able to tackle them.

And people are doing what they can, which I love. It’s not about ‘We all need to do this one thing,’ it’s saying, ‘Do what you can. If you have the space, check on your elderly neighbour. If you have some extra kai, share it with someone.’ It’s allowing people to help and support in ways they can, without making anyone feel shit. Why judge a fish for not being able to climb a tree? A fish can never do that. But a fish can swim really well, so if you task it with swimming it will thrive. I like how we’ve got this open opportunity to be of service to our communities right now.

Also, how well the planet is responding to us doing nothing. Perhaps it’s saying to the naysayers, ‘See? If you consume a bit less and support local, Papatūānuku can breathe again.’ Some people try to close their eyes to shit but this is such a kick in the face, it’s undeniable.

The worst thing to run out of would be … you should ask Guy this one as well, there’ll be a very different answer for us both! Probably, weed of any variety would be the shared one we’d have. Then for me … we don’t have a puzzle. We ran out on day one which was a real fizzer. We also ran out of coffee for a few days which was no good, but we got more this morning which is probably why we’ve got such scintillating chat! I miss fly fishing – I brought down my waders and everything but I obviously can’t use those. I wish I had a cross-stitch. But hey, we’re painting and reading and we have heaps of Lego, so we’ll be ok.