27 Day challenge Challenged

Sometimes the things we planned for are the same things we had no plans for.

This past march marked my 3rd annual 27 day writing challenge. The month of March marks a personal turning point, a shift, a place of transition from what was before to what is after, a very introspective, somewhat lonely winter season. March has also become a reminder of a dark time, an anniversary that we never thought we would be reflecting on. Last March, we entered into a contract we thought we would quickly come out of. The authorities said three weeks tops; then a lockdown, a pause in New York, that brought the city to a halt. I spent my 42nd birthday quarantined with my flatmate in Brooklyn. 14 days into a global shut down New York was the most quiet it had EVER been. It was post apocalyptic how silence and New York just don’t mix. My world became the 4 block radius around my apartment. My anual 27 day writing and post challenge was for lack of a better word, challenged. My love of writing however never wavered, I made countless notes, wrote small poems, and elaborated on thoughts. Ideas cropped up in my writing journals, my pen however had better days. I am feeling the urge to share my viewpoint a year on, as I’m entering into my 43rd circle around the sun.

In those early days of the lockdown like pretty much everyone around me, I felt panic and fear that for the first time there was no plausible way out of. There was no explaining or theorizing a way out of it. Patience, writing, meditation, more patience, rinse and repeat. I’ve since blurred the memories from the seismic shifts, big or small and now post aftershocks upon aftershocks, there are times when I’m still in shock. I blink my eyes everyday in gratitude to be alive. March of 2021 seems like a decade and a split second has gone by. The collective and personal thunderstorms that uprooted our lives, have somewhat passed and now we collect what is dear to us and reconnect in ways that we may have never explored before this past year.

This year the challenge continues, beyond the constraints of the 27 days of March. Writing, commentary, poems, thoughts, and discussions are refreshed in a way that goes beyond the limits and constraints of a formula. The bar has risen, the lines have been blurred, and the content will explore the ever changing and shifting world that reveals itself to each and every one of us. I choose to write because it’s a way of making something unique out of something mundane. I choose to share because we’re not alone.

Thanks to all who’ve supported, read, commented so far.

cheers.