On Crafting History in a Time Without Craftiness

Presently, it’s difficult to envision how to do research, let alone conduct it. A few days after I type this introduction, the city in which I now live, Melbourne, will have gained the unenviable status of having spent the longest days in lockdown – 246 days, with more to go before restrictions are lifted – of any city in the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. 1 Commentators compare long lockdowns like Melbourne’s to a marathon, and describe the psychological strategies that marathon runners use to push past ‘the wall’ in the last kilometers. 2 During the pandemic, I have quit secure, stable employment. I have been unemployed and spent my savings compensating for income no longer coming in. I have taken a new job, not knowing, thanks to COVID-19 travel restrictions, when I would actually be able to start. I have moved continents. I have lived in an empty flat for months, sleeping on a borrowed camping mattress and pretending it was all an exciting adventure for the sake of my daughter. I have done all of this during lockdowns. After 18 months running sprint after sprint towards an unknown, indefinable and always shifting finish line, carrying a child on one shoulder, a marriage on the other, work commitments and expectations on my back, ageing parents on another continent in my heart and myself, buried somewhere in my gut, I am exhausted, and have nothing more to give. In this context, the idea of having the capacity to reimagine research seems laughable at best, and a hurtful taunt at worst.