BEHIND the FINISHED PHOTO
At the beginning of the pandemic, when everything was in chaos, no one knew, truly, what was happening to our country, or the sheer magnitude of it… the media started reaching out to Designers and Architects and Insiders. They wanted to know ‘How we were coping?’ ‘What were the strategies for survival? What did our WFH situation look like… oh, and, SEND PHOTOS!!
Looking back now, more than a half year later, I am amazed at the distance we have traveled to adapt to this ‘new normal’… In fact, before Shelter in Place, I didn’t really spend all that much time at my house… if I’m being honest… and I didn’t have a tricked-out office area, because, like so many, I had never needed one before… I didn’t have the answers to their questions because I too, was just trying to figure out how we were going to get through it. How would my kids actually learn? What will I do if I get this virus?? Would my business be able to weather this storm?
All I knew was that my upstairs loft was my new WFH situation… and it was FAR from camera ready!
As more inquiries came rolling in for my ‘best advice’ I was drawn back to 2008 when the markets crashed… ‘this’ had a significantly familiar feeling to that time in our country’s history. Like so many, the fallout from the Great Recession left my husband and I wondering ‘what was next’ for our family…
He had been the CEO of a global construction and development firm, specializing in retail, and I was ‘happily at home’ with our two littles. As you might imagine, or are familiar with, Construction and Retail were two of the hardest hit industries during that time. Tasked with downsizing 1300 employees to 20 and rightsizing the company for the new (very different) annual revenue outlook, my husband spent a year of his career travelling the country and the globe closing down offices and letting his workforce go. It was painful and exhausting to watch, and I can’t even begin to imagine what it felt like to live through. He needed a break.
Around this same time, an opportunity presented itself, to me, to do a large project for a well-known bachelor in Chicago… I had hung up my Interior Design hat three years previous in order to ‘be a mom’, yet this… this project… was SO tempting! The craziness and uncertainty of the year we had just been through made me honestly wonder if what we both needed, was for me to GET BACK TO WORK!
This current situation has felt so much like that time, more than a decade ago now… the uncertainty and anxiety of it all is stunning, and yet, I know that it will all be ok. I know this with absolute certainty, because, in a way, I’ve lived through it once before.
The challenge to creatively reinvent my life out of seeming necessity became a gift… and over the last decade my world has exploded with the most amazing people, places and opportunities…
I am not sure if I ever would have pushed myself to get back in to the game, if I hadn’t thought that I ‘needed’ to, and for that, I am forever grateful for the lessons learned during 2008… and now, just like then, there are new opportunities to be pushed in to realizing.
With the time to reflect, I feel, it is those people, places and experiences that I would love to talk about and share with you now… ‘Behind the Finished Photo’.
I finally knew what my advice to others could be, and so, when asked again, I knew what to say…
‘The amazing thing about human nature is that people find themselves gravitating toward things they innately know how to do. For some very lucky ones, they will discover a passion that now has the time to be realized, which may inadvertently become a new life’s work. Great things come out of crisis, often because they have to.’
Alison Pickart – Architectural Digest