It’s all catching up.

Hey Alice, thanks for putting into words what a lot of us are feeling so elegantly! Also being totally new to Rugby, had to look up the meaning of ankle-tap which suddenly made me see the meaning clearly 😝. Ankle-tapped my understanding of the post, if you will! (Does that’s work? Maybe not!) You’re a source of comfort/inspiration/joy in these dark times! Hope you’re doing well!

I started reading this post and comment thread about 20 minutes after my most recent lockdown breakdown. There haven't been many, considering, but today's was definitely fuelled by the worry that I'm not...doing, creating, helping... Basically, the worry that I'm just not BEING ENOUGH. Thank you (for many things) but today for articulating the thoughts so well and making me feel less alone.

Lawyers, man, they’re a dime a dozen 😄

I’m telling you because I think it’s an interesting feature. I’m not depressed or worried, just conscious that the brain’s an interesting place to be, and it throws up fascinating things to the world

Hah! That’s a good approach.

I had that at the beginning when everything was moving and I had to relocate countries and get my family safe. (Maybe a touch of those holocaust survivor genetics coming through the blood). Now it’s just the waiting game

Thankyou so much. It would sound arrogant to agree with you, but I definitely didn’t feel like I could bring anything particularly interesting or unique to the legal community.

Oh yeah. I’m doing well - this isn’t a despairing thing so much as it’s an interesting symptom of this order of doing things

I’m pretty hopeful that there will be a nice shift in the way people deal with each other after this!

Reading all the thoughtful comments, wanting to add something to let you know this didn't just wash over me. It stopped me from feeling how I was feeling just before I read it. And the comments were beautiful. I froze in the certainty I have nothing meaningful to add. But if I don’t add anything, then I’m not anything. Clicking a little heart icon doesn’t quite capture it. Lockdown gives us far too much time in our own heads, even when we’re doing video calls with our friends and family. Once we can be social again, I hope I can be less distant than I was before all this started.

I really appreciated reading this. With a lot of the usual appartatus and patterns that I had built to regulate my emotions now no longer around... it's definitely been an interesting ride of thoughts and feelings coming and going in strong bursts. In it's way it's kind of good to know I'm not the only one dealing with.. a lot of what you previously had managed coming back to haunt. Hope you're doing will through all the vistions (and prophecies?), Alice!

This is very simplistic, and I don't at all mean to devalue your qualities as a lawyer, but - lots of people can be lawyers, and good lawyers at that, as I'm sure you were. But very, VERY few people can make the kind of art you make. I think in a way you're giving more to the world by investing your cognitive labour in reflection and mental gymnastics and then sharing the results with people who are buoyed, or educated, or comforted, etc by it. Certainly I am personally very glad you quit legal practice (although I think you still practice many legal skills!) - you definitely make the world a more comfortable place for those who connect with your work, and that's just, god, so immeasurably valuable right now... thank you for sharing with us :-)

Thank you for sharing <3 Personally, I've actually been feeling something that might be the opposite, in my mind its now life or death mode (which is a bit dramatic but the mind thinks what it does) and when its such a time, just staying healthy is the only responsibility to worry about and caring for each other, so its all about that, and if you get to the end of the day where you and your loved ones are ok, that's a win.

Amir

This is what I try to tell myself when I am where you are: We can't all just do ONE thing in our lives and we can do more than one thing well. As a generalist (journalists) I have to deal with impostor syndrome daily. Also, I try to hold myself just above white male levels of perceived "laziness" i.e. if I wash the car twice every year and keep my fishing gear out of the hallway I have done my chores.

Anna Östman

So many wildly interesting and intelligent responses already but this really resonated; I’ve defined myself by my work for so long, being good at it, being the best, and now suddenly my work is utterly meaningless. It will have meaning again, when the world starts up, but in the meantime I’m struggling to work out how to define myself and shocked at how hard I find that. It’s compounded by the fact I’m forced to behave the way I do when I’m at my worst with depression and anxiety; stay home, worry about being around people, watch things to distract me. It’s almost like performing as a depressed person is tricking my brain into thinking like one. But then maybe this is the best time to explore those more difficult feelings, when i have time and are maybe mentally stronger than i am when depression is clouding my more rational thoughts? Sorry, no answers here either; probably a bit of an early morning ramble I’ll feel embarrassed about later, but you’re not alone with the weirdness.

So are you telling us because you want to contradict you or agree with you? Only you know you as well as you.

Just a small thought - you are more than what you do. But - in a Descartes sort of a way - it's only to yourself you can prove it. Which is a lot more important than it sounds. We only know the part of you that you share, and the glimpses of your vulnerability are, I think, what makes what you do for us as impactful as they are. But they're still only a tiny part of the whole. My view is that you're one of the good guys. I've listened to enough Teas and Bugles and Last Posts to be reasonably sure of that. So if you occasionally feel insecure and vulnerable, at least remember that there are plenty of people who think good things of you.

Tim Parsons