#pandemicwriting

[grouchydairy]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and stories, ones that I could see myself in. I felt less lonely through your words despite living a year that’s been more physically isolating than before.

#PandemicWriting

[eggwhiteswithspinach]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and stories, ones that I could see myself in. I felt less lonely through your words despite living a year that’s been more physically isolating than before.

#PandemicWriting

[rascalnikov]

Hello! I am in loooovveee with your aesthetic! Could you tell me which blogs you follow? I would love to fill my timeline with more content like yours!

aww thank you, that’s really nice to hear! 

here are some of my favourites:

@laclygrantham @classicalsociety @kaafka @didoofcarthage @moreautrbl @levrathan @faultypoet @oylmpians @jawnkeets @pushkin-a @therepublicofletters @perpulchra @chansondegeste @homerically @aegyptische @rxquiescat @ithvka @metuospero @kallipareion @papillon-de-mai @amurder-ofcrows @literaetures @henryclervals @alowadamantine @wuuthering @mrcutio @ravnking @evphrosyne @iphigeenias @unfavourables @victorianaest @die-rosastrasse @periitspes

some of these are purely aesthetic blogs, others are an aesthetic/personal mix, but all are lovely, and hopefully the ratio is enough that you can fill your feed with pretty content!

hope this helps x

[theycallherkore]

To you, with love. (a tete e tete with my pre-pandemic self.)

You and I sit face to face, one on the desk the other on the floor. Where we are, I don’t know. Standing on the tip of a knife, balancing paradoxical realities and existential dread. I am you, and you are me, and time is a skipping rope tangled around my ankles. Reality shies away

Somehow we are no longer the mirror images of one another. Your hair is longer, glasses thin wired, and you’re surrounded by notes and loose sheets, the highlighter ink staining your fingertips a bright neon and a pencil tangled in your hair. You look how I feel, hazy, tired, and a little disoriented, maybe not so different after all. 

A pandemic? You ask. The word stretches uncertainly on your tongue like something you’ve read but never spoken aloud. I hum a little in agreement telling you how empty the highways were the schools and the railway stations. Bhaiya stopped delivering the newspaper, and the protestors were forced to go home. A state of lockdown. It was as if the world had held its breath. You try to picture it; it sounds apocalyptic, you say. I hum again.

So how was the year? I toy with the idea of telling you that it felt like being rubbed raw, that it felt like pinwheeling through space, jigsaws, and anxiety. Instead, for once, I decide to be kind to myself. It was a humbling year; I settle on, at last, one of resistance and defiance. Of realizing, the more time, we have on our hands, the fewer books we will read.

So all this time and we waste it? You’ve joined me on the floor now, nervously braiding your hair. I ask you to turn around, hand me the brush, and part your hair into three strands. Mine are too short to braid now. I suddenly feel defensive even though it did feel as if I’ve wasted time, skipped through it, and used it to open stubborn jars and dusty windows. 

We learned how to bake, cleaned the library, saw every single star wars film (you wrinkle your nose at that, and a laugh breezes by). We realized the house is too crammed and spent hours tracing the crack and stains on walls that we had never noticed before. 

I brush back your hair. Right strand over the middle, left over right, middle now becomes right and repeat the dance again.

We picked up origami. For a while, the bed was covered with paper swans; we sat underneath tables and had conversations that begun oh too often with the words ‘when corona ends’. We got over our anxiety of video calls too. I don’t think we wasted all the time. I ask you for a hair tie, and you slide off the one around your wrist. Face to face once again. I begin to speak, but something makes me hesitate and look at you, really look at you. Despite the tired glint in your eyes and the slump in your shoulders, you look happy—a little stressed but happy. The simplicity of the word and the emotion sways me and my weary acceptance of the future. Finally, I’m able to grasp the English language just before it vanishes teasingly in the air. Be patient, be hopeful, and try not to get irritated too quickly.

Your face doesn’t betray anything, but I don’t need it to. After all, you are me, I am you, and everything in between is confetti, right?  Okay, you exhale, so what do I do now? I look around, think about what I’ve been doing all this while, and the answer is simple, maybe too simple.

 Nothing, just wait.

That’s it?

That’s it.

[anonymouspandemicperson]

Pandemic Breakup

This is personal writing on a break up during a pandemic crisis - Covid-19. And hating men obviously. Oh! Also wine.

Day 10 Post breakup during isolation

Fuck me.

I have been crying every night binge watching Grey’s Anatomy. I don’t know if it’s because I love the programme or I know it will make me cry?

I mean I fucking love Grey’s Anatomy but why binge watch this show?

Is it because I just need to feel pain and punish myself, like they say let it in, let it hurt then let it go right?

I feel I am solely doing this because it is a phase I need to go through and this isolation is my only company. AND wine..

I mean wine is fucking great, who doesn’t like wine it’s a girl’s best friend, and when I say best friend.. It is always there when you need a friend during this pandemic crisis.

I live with a couple and I appreciate them so much for letting me stay I mean I OWE them one literally. But seeing them together just upsets me because they are happy and both trying, WHY COULDN’T HE TRY.

Can you imagine what it is was like living, spending day in day out with a man that doesn’t love you anymore? Like he does not, want me anymore and sure as hell doesn’t see a future

I mean this man I have been dreaming and fantasying a marriage and life with has decided that he doesn’t want to make it work. He doesn’t want to try and will not change who he is as a person.

I DO NOT WANT HIM TO CHANGE, as a person let's make that clear. I just want him to make effort in date nights etc. I mean was that so much to ask?!?

You know what the most annoying thing is though, he is my best friend and I know he is selfish he is the most selfish person I’ve ever met! I've known him for 10 years and I have accepted his flaws and his detached emotional issues and been there. FOR HIM.

I know this sounds kind of Sex and the City writing,

I am Sarah Jessica Parker writing about my relationship problems in the same way she would write them with question marks and just telling it how it is. But the question marks are needed, I mean why did he decide to give up, why did he decide to let go?...

Did I really truly get closure or did I just accept a shit excuse?

He cares about me I know but he doesn’t want me. It’s fucking heart breaking and he’s an arsehole and yet still I’m here crying over Grey's Anatomy feeling sorry for myself wondering what is wrong with ME

Fucking men. Or is it fucking me?

All I need to say is it is day 10 in apocalyptic world and I need MORE wine.

[afterlyonesse]

Back On Old Ground

Back in the apartment and remembering a lot of bad choices. Holy ground, where different versions of the same person, or the same problem, walked in bare feet, late at night, early in the morning. I wonder if their skin cells are still there, settled in hard-to-reach corners. 

During the pandemic I woke up and realised that time had passed. It was startling. I did not like it. All of the stories I had embarked on seemed very embarrassing. And I had told people about them, people knew. That was really embarrassing. 

If the brain “in love” is similar to the brain on heroin, then what is my brain like when it’s procrastinating? I did not make those choices out of a need for love or as an attempt to feel like I was complete. I made them to keep myself away from my responsibility to myself, from the blank page or the blinking cursor. I did it to fill up the empty space looking back at me with other people’s tedium. Choose someone extra-ordinary and build flimsy expectations around them like a cowboy contractor and before you know it, you’ll have wasted so much of your finite energy on being annoyed with them, there’ll simply be nothing left to put into worrying about what you should really be doing. Easy. 

There’s a part of my brain that’s waiting for the morning when I wake up and discover that it’s all ok, I am in fact still 26 and there are vast expanses of free time stretching out ahead of me, no need for accountability anywhere in sight. Thank God! 

[jcmorrows]

Coronavirus... Worldwide panic... Angry people everywhere... Forced isolation... Social distancing... Having my social media hacked... Concussion... Various other injuries... Loss of income... 😫😷😤😷😲😷😵😷😬😷😱😷 Yeah... It's been a rough year. And, unlike artists and actors and some other writers I know, this much stress and anxiety is not a good thing for my writing. ✍ 😱😬😵 Nevertheless... I will do what I do every November... in the hopes that the community spirit and weekly pep talks will help get me through. ✍ And... if I can pull it off... hopefully, it will get me back on track... for the rest of the year anyway. 🤗 #NaNoWriMo #GoNaNo #Write #Author #AuthorsSupportingAuthors #authorsofinstagram #Writing #writersofinstagram #50Kin30Days #NaNoWriMo2020 #JustKeepWriting #NationalNovelWritingMonth #PandemicWriting https://www.instagram.com/p/CHDJ1_lgFJk/?igshid=1ieszpzbc7oei

[liveeatwrite]

Grief is Welcome Here.

“My grief is worthy of a safe home – just as I am.” @natasha_writestuff

Grief is isolating. We feel we are the only one that feels this way. Grieving alone is even more isolating. Getting the message that our grief isn’t valid, further isolates us. Society tells us we need to get over things, to move on, to forgive, to get back to “real” life. Our culture, one that is obsessed with youth and anti-aging, does not grieve well. Grief is a reminder of growing old and ultimately death. For a culture that is appearances-based, this is an uncomfortable feeling, so grief is swept under the rug.

At the end of March, a friend gathered us together for an informal memorial to remember the Asian women murdered in Atlanta. We stood outside in and around a gazebo in a park on what turned out to be a cold evening, physically distanced, emotionally standing together. We were a diverse group of people who came to remember, sharing a Cree blessing, an Islamic prayer and a Buddhist song. We went around the circle sharing our thoughts, or prayers or wishes. When it came to my turn, I spoke of the beauty of coming together to share our grief. I remarked that grief is an emotion that needs to be witnessed; grief is a communal feeling, it needs to be seen, to be heard, to be acknowledged in community.

I’ve been thinking about that ever since; and how sometimes our grief isn’t seen for what it is nor given its due place. It isn’t allowed a funeral because it’s a different kind of grief, one that is not recognized nor condoned, or it was a loss so long ago that we couldn’t possibly still be grieving it.  In a webinar on Coping with Special Days for the Grieving, Dr. Patti Anewalt, Director of the Pathways Center for Grief & Loss, describes grief as the reactions you have after a loss and mourning as the experiencing of it, what you do with your grief reactions. Until we acknowledge the validity of our grief, we cannot get on with the task of mourning, and some of us get stuck in that first step if we aren’t given the space to grieve.

Society hardly recognizes death grief, let alone any other flavors. Yet if we stop to think about it more, our grief and our associated rituals of mourning can bring us so much peace with the loss we are experiencing and in coming to terms with our own mortality. Platitudes like don’t cry, be strong, forgive, move on, are bandied about in an attempt to separate us from our grief/trauma/pain so as not to make others uncomfortable. We all need to sit with discomfort a bit more, our own first, so we can sit with others’. What I’d like to say to people who try to separate me from my grief is: “I’m comfortable with my grief so let me sit with it. Please take some time to work on your own grief before advising me or inserting yourself into mine.” Those that don’t acknowledge or even deny us of our chance to grieve, are those that have not faced their own. They’ve buried it so far down that it often comes out on the other side in the form of anger at others, for having the gall to share theirs. It’s too tender, too vulnerable, too much; another casualty of a society that is more about show than feel.

Everyone does grief and mourning in their own way – some cry, some laugh, some sing, dance, paint, write, walk, run…many simply run away. I do and have done all of these at some point in my grief journey. I’d recommend them all, especially crying - crying is always good. Doula, coach and author, Jessie Harrold says, instead of telling people not to cry, we ought to be asking them, have you cried enough? She says that “untended grief will find other ways to get tended.” Grief must be acknowledged and given space. Grief doesn’t want to be relegated to the corner of the equivalent of the Sears bargain basement bin. It wants to be given a prime spot at the end of a grocery store aisle, where you can’t miss it – where you will be more likely to pick it up.

We can’t begin to accept what we don’t acknowledge. So pick up the grief and tell the truth about it. You must tell the truth about - and more importantly to – your grief. Grief brings us to our knees, because grief needs to be heard and seen. Grief is waiting for us to invite it in for a cup of tea. And a cookie. It wants you to see all the crumbs. Grief wants to be told, you are welcome here. It’s painful, it’s hard, it sucks. And it is necessary. Acknowledging it and working with it, instead of against it, helps us integrate it. Grief fades in and out as we go through life, more gets added to it, and even when we can’t see it, it’s there – it’s part of who we are. Welcome it in, give it a home, share it in safe spaces, a safe community and ultimately it’ll show you how to become who you want to be.

~ Natasha Kureshi

[femmeacademia]

Hello! So I began this blog in April (as pandemicwriting) just to scroll mindlessly while listening to my online classes and rant about personal stuff, never thinking of maintaining an aesthetic, but as the months in quarantine have passed I’ve found myself completely drawn to the Dark Academia and Cottage Core community. Honestly I’ve felt really welcomed and comfortable, so I’ve decided to stay and I’m now officially beginning this blog as a Feminist Dark Academia Blog & Cottage Core (which I’ve seen a lot of people mix together). I want to have a bit of more focus in feminist academic subjects because I’ve seen that Dark Academia focuses a lot on male writers and male-centered aesthetics, so yeah, I’ll try to that. And that’s pretty much it! I hope to have a fun time!

[ramyeongif]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and stories, ones that I could see myself in. I felt less lonely through your words despite living a year that’s been more physically isolating than before.

#PandemicWriting

[outragedtortilla]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and stories, ones that I could see myself in. I felt less lonely through your words despite living a year that’s been more physically isolating than before.

https://medium.com/illumination/celebrating-my-top-nine-pieces-of-2020-ad6381b791a2 / #PandemicWriting

[grouchydairy]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and stories, ones that I could see myself in. I felt less lonely through your words despite living a year that’s been more physically isolating than before.

https://medium.com/illumination/celebrating-my-top-nine-pieces-of-2020-ad6381b791a2 / #PandemicWriting

[ohtheplacesblog]

Attended a virtual editing workshop with #flourishwritersacademy today! #WritersDoing #communityofwriters #WritingCommunity #pandemicwriting #writingprojects https://www.instagram.com/p/CFxgkRQBBsL/?igshid=1hophb94aiadd