Back in the days of the Girl’s Night Out, it seemed that every GNO had a theme. Girl’s Sabbath Out. Conservabration. Biblical GNO. Mormon Inquisition.
The GNOS have fallen off of late. Now that the Covid makes them impossible, of course, we want them.
Initially the Friends wanted a socially distant in-person get together. Six feet apart, masks on except when eating or drinking, so, masks off, essentially. I said unless you can put me in an iPad and prop me up on a table I am not interested.
So Saturday was the Girls Night Out / In / Covideo Conference. We covered the standard complaints, and then talk turned to our various Covid coping mechanisms. Friend #2 wins, because she’s occupying herself with charitable works, yoga and biking and other forms of self-care, and meditation. She didn’t put it that way, of course, but that’s the deal.
I mentioned I was being somewhat meditative when I paint or play the guitar, in that I’m not dwelling on negative thoughts, but it wasn’t like I was being helping myself or anyone else.
“But you’re creative,” they said, “That’s a form of self-care.”
“Well, it’s meditative, because it turns off my mind, but most of what I’m doing isn’t creative at all. I’m just plunking out a song that someone else wrote. I didn’t create it. I’m not even good enough to put a creative interpretation on it. And each painting is either a step-by-step copy of a painting someone else made, or a copy of a photo I took.” Try to compliment me, friends! Hah! I’ll show you!
So what did I do the next day? I worked on the novel and created all kinds of nonsense.