Day 5 of My Creative Streak: 21 Poems Later

If anything, this quarantine period has got me bouncing around from one “extracurricular” activity to another. The first couple weeks, I felt so heavily invested in some technical office work that I had to complete for my first-year promotional review. The following couple weeks, I found myself programming until past-midnight, trying to finish two courses on C and Python at the same time. Strangely enough to me, I surprisingly… enjoyed it? But unfortunately, before it even finished, somehow I was already overwhelmed by a surge of inspiration to get creative and start looking into my dusty websites to make changes here and there. Yes, websites in plural, as in all three of them that I currently try to maintain, lol.

In the last five days, I had re-curated some of the photoworks that I held most dearly, that I felt connected with the most, to be showcased here. Not only that, I had also committed that I’d write a poem for every photoset there is. After all, the website was supposed to be called Photographs and Poems initially, which I eventually had to change because apparently I never had enough time and motivation to write poetic captions for every single one of them. But with this quarantine, look who’s starting to get all the time in the world to do so! Welp, partially owing to my having my period in the past week so I couldn’t practice fasting and other forms of Ramadan prayers as well, thus being kind of unsure on how to waste my time a bit more productively. Long story short, the original title of the portfolio has come back with some edits, hence poetry and selected photoworks.

Apparently, it has been more than a year since I felt inspired enough to write something whimsy. I usually wrote that sort of narrative in here, but now my photography portfolio gets similar touch as well. 🙂

If you click each image on the homepage, it will bring you to the inside of that particular photoset, where I’ve featured a poem I wrote recently, based on the recollections I’ve had from each journey. (Which, trust me, for a highly visual person like myself, felt like everything just happened very recently.)

So yes, all 21 poems from those 21 photosets were written in these past… five days. Indeed, in my years of nurturing my writing appetite as a self-taught enthusiast, never have I ever felt this “motivated,” thus composing that many poems within less than a week. Especially considering the amount of passion I’ve put to literally every one of them. Every single one is my favourite, although my ultimate liking would probably be this one about a perfect afternoon I spent strolling around the VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver during my last couple days of 40-day solo travel across Canada.

Nonetheless, since I’ve never really had that community of fellow writing/photography enthusiast – except the film club I joined back in my university year – I realize that these works that I’m doing may not be as amplified as I would’ve loved them to become. But honestly, I’m not even bothered. Nor do I even remotely care, I guess. This is something that I enjoy doing, and whether or not they end up being as noticed or appreciated as I hope them to be, I will just keep doing it. While many had left blogs for YouTube or podcast, I guess this old-timey format of creative outlet suits me and my enthusiasm just fine.

Well, I guess, there’s a silver lining amid this whole quarantine practice – although I understand I’m just very fortunate to be able to say so while many others may not have been able to have a similar experience.

On a last note, I’m also excited to see what I’d feel like doing next. Maybe going back to analytical mode with my unfinished programming courses, or fixing my French as I will be having an upcoming exam as well. Maybe even exploring something new I’ve never expected to enjoy before. Who knows?