Hello!
The month of January is always a bit strange. You can either feel extremely motivated to follow ‘New year, new me’ resolutions or you might feel a bit down because all the nice holidays are behind you. We can relate to both. That’s why this month we tried the 64 million artists January challenge. Every day in January there is a new creative challenge to try and the best part is that it is accessible for all!
We have asked our Duke of Edinburgh volunteer Olivia to participate in January challenge and here’s how she felt after doing it.
‘It was really fun, especially since I am normally so busy that I don’t have time to do many crafts / mindful activities: doing the potato printing gave me a reason to sit down and relax for a bit. I remembered doing something similar when I was a lot younger (probably primary school!) so it felt a bit strange to do the activity again so many years later, but I enjoyed it even more than I thought I would.’
Olivia
Another Duke of Edinburgh volunteer Sophie chose a completely different challenge. She did a blackout poem about kindness and here are her thoughts.
Whilst doing this challenge I was thinking about how people could benefit from little acts of kindness especially during the pandemic. I enjoyed channelling this thought into a poem because it allowed me to get a bit creative which is something I like to do.
Sophie
Our colleague Amy wanted to try this challenge herself. The challenge she chose was to recreate a famous landmark using nearby objects.
As I was doing this Challenge in the library, books were the obvious choice of building material and I thought Stonehenge would be fun to make! I loved doing this challenge as it reminded me of being a kid when you would put your mind to doing something completely random for no particular reason, yet you would then obsess over it until it was perfect. It was definitely something I would not have thought of myself but I enjoyed making it!
Amy
There’s a couple of days left in January to try this challenge – you can even choose to start from the very beginning and receive an email every day for the next 31 days! Alternatively you could mark your calendar for next year as this happens annually. We hope you enjoyed our entries.
Katie’s recommendation
‘I have been finding it quite hard to focus on reading recently – my mind seems to be constantly flitting – also I have become slightly addicted to playing ‘WordsWithFriends’ (basically online-scrabble) on my phone before I go to sleep. Recognizing that this is not the most healthy of bedtime routines, I picked up ‘The Lies I Never Told You’ by Valerie Tong Cuong as I had never heard of the author and having read the first couple of pages I felt like I could ‘get into it’ quickly. Plus, at 150 pages, it promised to be a quick read! Set in present-day Paris, the central character, Pax, makes a questionable choice early on – which, much as he tries to justify it, haunts him with guilt, as he and we, the reader, come to understand the catastrophic implications of his failure to ‘do the right thing’. I found him a flawed, and therefore relatable character who, unlike his name, was unable to be at peace with himself. It is not a fast-paced thriller or a whodunnit, but a more nuanced and gentle-paced story focussing on the central characters’ human frailty, shame and guilt. The reader is immersed into their inner emotional turmoil and can understand their motivation and potentially sympathise with their struggles. Although a translation from the original French, I feel it has been very well done as the prose flowed smoothly and did not feel awkward. It did feel a bit other-worldly/quirky – not sure if this was because of the writing style (which reminded me a bit of Patricia Highsmith) or the subject matter. Overall, I would recommend this book as it was unusual and thought-provoking. It was a quick read as I got swept up in the story but not a light-hearted one! Also, bizarrely, it was something of a homage to Matthew McConaughey (yes really!) And made me want to watch The Dallas Buyers Club – which I have now reserved and am waiting to watch one cold, rainy evening… if only I could get off my pesky phone!’ – Katie
Thank you for reading this post and see you next time. Please subscribe to our newsletter if you don’t want to miss the next post! – Ieva
Dorking Library 