I don’t like being still. It’s why I don’t like yoga. Or meditating. It’s too slow. It feels lazy. Like you can’t be arsed. The lack of pace makes me anxious. I am the only one in the yoga relax section of the class folding my mat and leaving. I’m like ‘ Nah, I’m good – I’ll close my eyes and breathe in the car on my drive home’. I speed off at 100km an hour screaming out the window ‘Pussys!’ Because unlike that cohort of slow mat-rolling, deep breathing, bamboo-pant-wearing, clear-eyed ones ambling off to sit on a crate and drink a turmeric latte – I have shit to do! I love being busy. I love my full diary. It makes me feel safe. I feel powerful and in control. I love watching how I can manage to fill every hour of nearly every day. Not a spare moment for even a dot of introspection.
This week I went through two bottles of liquid paper painting out gigs. My hands trembling as I realised that she-who-must-be-in-control has had the thin veneer ripped away. The vast expanse of my diary, which usually confirms that I am achieving – I am moving forwards – has stopped.
I check that I’m still here. I take a selfie. Will Mandy Nolan be Mandy Nolan if she’s not being seen as Mandy Nolan? Who will clap for me now? Not my family – my home-based hecklers. A lump forms in my throat. It’s not cancer. It’s worse. It’s disappointment.
Where there were crowded scribbles, now there is space.
It’s so creepy. It’s a kind of quiet that gets into your bones. It gets inside, into that space where the real you hides; the shadow self. It’s the quiet place where the you that you’ve curated falls to dust – where there is no past, and no future, and no point paying the mortgage. Something monks love, and manics, like me, fear.
I am not that person. I don’t want to face my darkness – what if I face it and it goes? I am a comedian – it’s the insight into the battle that powers my creative juices; not the enlightened mindfulness of true acceptance. That’s for people at healthfood shops. I don’t want to be that person. I am like a shark. I need to keep moving. If I stop, I die. Or other people do…
I noticed how happy my husband was this week. I’m home. I’m doing the washing. I’m cleaning. I’m cooking. I’m here. I’m back to being a 1950’s housewife. I’ve started wearing lipstick to bed. Next week I’m cracking out the rollers.
This first week of not working hasn’t been fun. I love working. I have made work out of what I love doing, so having almost six months of dates disappear brings, not just economic, but a creative grief. And fear. Not fear of dying. Or of the disease. Or of the ensuing anarchy once capitalism has toppled, and we’re wearing short shorts and leather boob tubes, and I am killing zombies with a samurai sword. What I truly fear is myself.
It’s why women used to hit the Bex – long periods of confinement send some of us around the twist. I’m already pre-twisted. I’m not a sit-back-and-smell-the-roses kind of girl. I’m a plant the roses, tend the roses, pick the roses, paint the roses, sell the painting of the roses, write a book about painting roses… and then try and find time to plant some more roses so I can sell some new paintings to pay for the books I’ve just ordered.
I know what you think – you are running away from yourself Mandy. Absolutely. How else would I get fit? Isn’t that the human condition? And I actually like doing stuff. ‘Being’ isn’t one of my highlights. ‘Being’ makes me agitated. Depressed. Angry. You don’t want to be around me when I’m being. It’s not pretty. Being actually stresses me out. I get bored. Then I get annoyed. Everything annoys me. The way someone puts away a tea towel. The teaspoon left in the sink. The way you breathe, or how you pronounce a word.
When I’m busy I’m at peace. Thanks to COVID-19 we’re about to enter a global Vispassana. Fuck it, I’m done with being. I’m back to doing. I’m getting a job at Coles. That’s where you’ll find us creatives now – me and Chris Hemsworth, doing the nightly shelf-pack at the local supermarket.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
