Unlocking Doors in Lockdown
Lockdown has been filled with happy moments and moments of hard times. For us all, in varying degrees. As a freelance broadcast journalist, I haven't worked at the BBC since April. I haven't been in a radio studio (aside from the one I made in my shed) or been in a newsroom since a month after lockdown because the coronavirus meant a reduction in numbers.
I still get the emails. It's like catching the photos of an ex on Facebook just after you've split up. "Maybe they'll have me back if I lose weight or get a better job." (The analogy falls down on that last point.)
It wasn't just the BBC who were cutting back hours. I think there was something in the news about that being the case across all industries. I'm sure I caught that "on the 6" as they say in journo parlance. (Even the Royal Family had a couple of members looking for work elsewhere. Well done on the Netflix gig by the way, Sussexes.)
I am one of the lucky ones. The really, really lucky ones.
My daughter was born a week before lockdown and I have been able to spend a summer with her and my son that ordinarily I wouldn't have had the chance to. I have watched my daughter grow from a newborn to a porridge-guzzling baby of 7 months. My son, a toddler when all this began, is currently in his 3rd week of pre-school. He has a uniform and has had a growth spurt in personality. I have been there every step of the way (or clumsy roll, in my daughter's case).
As the news on all channels reported doom, gloom and confusion, I lived in a sun-kissed bubble of domestic bliss. As a family we've walked in fields, we've picked brambles, we've made so many memories.
We'll all have lockdown memories of our own, won't we?
Then I'd look at my bank balance. (Or rather, I'd get a text from the bank to save me the effort of having to look. Yeay!) I'd get frustrated that I have these skills and experiences and they had nowhere to live.
Like a sculptor in a world of sand. Or something far less dramatic.
The downside - and I feel guilty claiming there even is one, but we all have our own barometers - is that a month after my daughter's birth was my last shift. I've had virtually no income since. (Thank nature for breastmilk!)
As I say, I am one of the lucky ones. The really, really lucky ones.
I also believe you make your own luck.
Or rather, you can add to it. Over my career I have built up skills as a broadcaster, a writer and an audio editor. With a lot of time, and a focus on parenting intermingling with a need to be creative and to do what I do well, a little plan started bubbling.
During the night feeds, I started watching YouTube videos about websites, content writing and podcasting.
I became a bottle-feeding SEO geek, thanks to the turned-down voices of Income School, Alex Cattoni, and Jorden Makelle's Writing Revolt page.
Feeding with one hand, I filled a notebook with others. My partner, seeing I was sliding a little way back into the bad days of my mental health ways, coped with the kids (enjoyed... enjoyed time with the kids!); I would learn more and speak with people I knew about how to turn my experience into something away from what I'd always known and done.
The result of this period was to update my website - Albooth.co.uk - with examples of my writing, of interviews I'd done, of audio I'd produced. It was a chance to have something to show people, and to give me a sense of purpose, truth be told.
Through learning about content creation and writing, I learned that having a niche was a great thing to have in the content world. But what would my niche be? Here were some niches that crossed my mind:
- Boybands and girl groups of the late 90s/early 00s.
- Mead
- Cheese
It's not as easy as you'd think. Especially when you're on lockdown and there's nowhere for boybands or girl groups of the late 90s/early 00s to gig.
If you had to focus your ability to make content on one subject alone, what would it be?
And now to get to the point...
Now, this was originally going to be a quick post with a link. I intended to write a quick few lines about how something will always come from the times when you think you've run out of options. How when one door locks, another unlocks.
Instead, I ran out of words in the post and decided to write on here because I liked where it was going. I wanted to know if other people had had similar realisations during lockdown. (Or any other time in life, really.) That's why I have written this.
The other reason is to say that as a broadcaster, a writer, an audio producer and a late-night-feeding Dad who drank in SEO and content knowledge as my daughter drank in breastmilk, I found that niche.
Because I am a Dad who looks for help and products on many, many sites. So, to mis-quote Shayne Ward: That's My Niche.
Here's The Dad Booth - where I share my services as a creative talent to share brand messages in a way fellow parents understand.
Thanks for reading. And if you're looking for parenting content for your brand, please get in touch.
The same goes for if you have any questions about boybands and girl groups from the late 90s/early 00s too. Obviously.