Hello everyone!
This post was written on Saturday, but I fell ill, so I’m sending it out today instead!
We are at week 3 of our Creative Challenge and the last week of January. These last two weeks have been a powerful revelation of creativity. In our community chats, we have been sharing poems and pieces of freewriting the prompts inspire in us, and since last week we covered grief, this week, we will be covering how to build joy.
A large part of why I began this newsletter was because joy building is hard work in a world where we are constantly inundated with bad news. One of the many things that social media and the internet has done to our brains is hypervigilance. Whereas once you got the news from television screens and a newspaper, we now have an hourly updating system that we carry around in our pockets via our phones. We are ALWAYS connected to whats going on and constantly anxious about the next awful thing thats going to happen. It doesn’t help that so many news outlets have turned to clickbait type titles that are designed to evoke a strong emotion - whether anger or grief.
No human brain was created to process this level of grief at all times, ask anyone who has ever been through any kind of war or radical movement and they’ll tell you what kept them going was joy, hope, things to look forward to, a way out, an escape - each of these things is an action. My friend, the brilliant poet Salena Godden says “Hope is a Group Project“, and I completely agree. Hope is indeed a group project, which is why we are going to build joy and hope together with this week’s prompts.
Once again, you do not have to be brilliant at any kind of artform to participate in these creative challenges! You just have to want to open your mind and exercise your creative muscles a bit. The prompts are just a way to guide you into a different kind of perspective, and help you reflect and recognise the beauty in your life, just as it is and just as you are.
I have such a special week of joy planned for us and we will have our subscriber chats going to talk about how and where we found joy and hope. I am so looking forward to seeing you there and talking about what you have made!
If you would like to join us on our monthly Creative Challenges, you can do that here.
Are you read for your newest joy building prompts? Let’s go:
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