It was the first time in my life that I had doubted the creative path. Maybe my teachers had been right? I couldn’t really shape my destiny, follow my dreams, at all. Those ideas were a big lie.

The months rolled on and the future looked increasingly uncertain.  I wondered: should I retrain? What was my future going to look like? I felt overwhelmed by these huge questions. So I hit the sofa. Switched on the telly.

Flash forward to 2021, and for many of us the end of the pandemic is in sight. Buzz phrases catch like wildfire in the media and are often repeated in headlines and on the lips of newsreaders. Return to normality, is one such phrase. But are we the same people coming out (of lockdown) as we were, when going in? I know I’m not. Are you?

For me this year has been about confronting disenchantment, particularly when I was forced to stay with my parents in Somerset for the duration of the first lockdown. It was like going backwards in time, being in exactly the same spot as five years previously, just before leaving for London. I had never dreamt I would end up back there, only this time unemployed.

What brought me out of my disenchantment was my partner, who believed in me. Together we made hard choices about what we wanted our future to look like and what steps we needed to take. Coming out of that first lockdown ended up being a rebirth for me and the last six months have been my most productive and rewarding. I have no intention anymore of ‘returning to normality’. Instead, I want to imagine – and produce – a better future. So who will join me?