Haylee Carlyle

Creatively Quarantined: Creative Writer As part of a new Mulji Creative Group series, we’re talking about best practices for creative self-care. In each post, a member of our team shares their own means of mental, emotional, physical maintenance during the COVID-19 outbreak. Haylee is our creative writer. She says quarantine affects everyone a little differently and as a creative, it can be simultaneously good to have the space isolation provides to work, and hard to be creatively stimulated, especially with so much stress and anxiety about the pandemic. Q: Where are you currently located? A: Brooklyn, NY Q: What’s your current status? A: State mandated shelter in place Q: What's one thing you’ve implemented in your daily routine to care for yourself during the outbreak? A: I’ve tried to strike a balance between normalcy (breakfast, dog walking, phone calls with friends) and invigoration. I’ve been trying to remember the things I did when I first got really passionate about writing, like reading poetry, learning about my favorite authors, listening to really bad 2007 pop-punk. The familiarity of these activities is comforting, which I definitely need right now. But they also keep me inspired and wanting to produce, instead of feeling like creating is a chore I ​should​ do. Q: How is creating in isolation differing from your normal creative process? A: I’m an extroverted introvert and honestly, I could be alone for a minute and feel ok. I am absolutely of course not a fan of the circumstances and I do have to do regular self-care activities like meditation to keep the fear and uncertainty at bay. Right now, I have much more space (and time) to create, which I can appreciate, and writing is a perfect means of sorting out all the feelings that come along with this situation. Trying to complete a work project with as clear a mind as possible is extra difficult right now, but I’d say that’s the biggest difference absolutely needing, routinely, to do something for me before I can do something for someone else.