What a bizarre time to be alive!
I must admit I have very mixed feelings at the moment. Sometimes I feel scared, worried and anxious and at the same time, everything feels so surreal. I say surreal as I know what is going on outside and all around, however, it seems so far away while I and my family hide away in our bubble.
I also feel incredibly grateful. I am grateful for many things. I am grateful for the warriors we have working in health sector, education and public service! In addition, I am grateful for this time I and my family get together. Even though the reasons behind us staying at home are devastating, I really value the fact I got a second chance at a maternity leave. I am so thankful I and my whole family gets to spend all this time together without any stress or things that pull us away from quality time together.
I also feel sorry for those who are alone or lonely. Those who are far away from the ones they love. To begin with I could feel the distance from my extended family. It was heartbreaking to have this pandemic going on and being so far away from my siblings, my grandparents, my aunty and my dads etc. However, I realised even though I would be in Iceland I would still be keeping my distance anyway.
In all this absurdness I really wanted to do something for ME, something I always tell myself and others I will do later, when I have the time. Now that I have time, I have no excuse!
Or do I??
This thing I want to do is write! I love writing. However, I have not done enough creative/freestyle writing for ages. I have blogged and I have done academic work. I have also done copywriting while I did my internship.
My excuse now is that I don’t know WHAT to write about. I feel like I have a block. As I did a creative writing course, I do know this hypothetical idea dam can be dissolved, I just have to get back on the horse.
Therefore, I have set myself a challenge. I will write a little something Monday – Friday. It doesn’t have to be the best, it doesn’t have to be completed but something creative, some play with words. It can be a poem, a short story, a beginning/middle/end to something bigger, it can be a comic. There are no limits, it simply has to force me to sit down each day and put some words down.
I will have themed weeks and delegate a certain quote, task or word to each day and work from there. Interpretation is completely optional! This way I do not have to start each day by sitting down with a COMPLETELY empty canvas.
If you are creative, bored or would simply like a challenge I, personally, highly recommend it. Writing works as meditation for me and it is great to use times like these as a push to do something different or something we may have put on the backburner for a while.
Next weeks theme will be “Feelings” and I will divide the days up as follows:
- Monday: Regret
- Tuesday: Delight
- Wednesday: Anger
- Thursday: Suspicion
- Friday: Nervousness
I have come up with the following themes for the upcoming weeks:
- Places
- Images (I provide images each day or you can find an image that provokes the Muse in you!)
- Tabloid headlines (Find the gossip columns, or any thought-provoking headline and make your own story around it, sometimes the most boring ones can surprise you)
- Random word generator (I will set the bar at 3, 4, 5 etc words and then find a random word generator and write something that contains those words)
- Song titles (how about getting inspired by others creativity?)
These are only ideas and I welcome any suggestions, both to other themes and for individual tasks under each theme.
I saw a similar thing going on back home for those who paint/draw and think it is a great idea!
Anyway, this is my plan while the coronavirus blows over and I would welcome any company! I will be using the hashtag #corativity20 on Twitter and if anyone decides to join in it would be awesome if they could share under this hashtag so I can read it. I would also like to share it on a platform I made for these posts which is
I would appreciate if you would share this post as well so more people can join in or get inspired 😊 If you do not have a Twitter account but would like your material to appear you can also send it to me through email: corativity20@gmail.com and I will publish it on: https://www.corativity20.com/
Reading passes time as well as writing and I know I would welcome other reading material than the news at the moment.
Above all, stay safe and do not let your spirit get down, this is only a period in our lives! Make it count!
Heiða Ingimarsdóttir 