From the editor
As I write, the sun is shining, lockdown restrictions are finally easing (hello, beer garden!) and after more than a year of bad news, it seems as though there is more and more to feel optimistic about. So why do I feel as anxious as ever? Jesy Nelson might just have the answer.
There were many factors in Jesy’s decision to quit the world’s biggest girl group (p66), but one in particular has resonated with me over the past few days. “[Lockdown was] the first time I could have a break and be at home around people I love. It was the happiest I’d ever felt,” she says. But, as her return to work approached, anxiety set in, and with it a realisation that the way she’d been living life before lockdown wasn’t healthy.
It’s a realisation many of us are grappling with, along with a fear that while we’ll thankfully lose the negative parts of the pandemic, we’ll also lose the positives. Time with family, a focus on self-care, a better work/life balance… yes, there have certainly been lows, but there have also been moments of clarity and balance – or, as Jesy puts it, an awareness that “the only person I should have been trying to make happy was myself”.
The important thing to remember is, while we didn’t have much control over lockdown, we can exert control over our own route out of it. We can decide what we want to take from the last year and carry into the future with us, and what we want to leave behind. Those choices will be different for us all, and that’s alright.
As Jesy bounced onto set the day we shot her cover, it was clear that this was a woman who had taken her happiness into her own hands. And while she’s still a work in progress like the rest of us, she’s a reminder that it’s OK to forge your own path. FOMO will undoubtedly abound in the post-pandemic world. But what if, rather than convoluted social plans we don’t even want to make, the things we feared missing out on were happiness, balance and healthy boundaries?