June 2023

The month I’ve spent in residency at KuBa has been a month of structure for me. I’ve been doing a routine where I’ve done several specific things every day. I have been doing the same meditation every day, the same walk through the forest, the same type of writing exercises. I’ve done this because I wanted to see if having a daily routine with some quite monotone elements would lead me to be able to think more creatively in other areas; if having a lot of things already decided for me during the day would free up mental space to use on what I really want to be doing, which is writing. I found that the routine was able to make me feel a lot of different thing: some days I would love doing the routine, finding it calming and almost soothing, other days I would be really bored with it and sometimes even angry with having to do the same things over and over. But I also found that my writing was loosening up. Suddenly, I was able to write in a different way than I had been in a long time, suddenly I found myself embarking on new projects. And that has been wonderful. My month in Klein Warnow has not ended up in any closure, but rather it has opened my creative space. I feel now that I am writing more freely than I have been in a long time. The dedication to the routine had not been able to happen if I hadn’t had the privilege of spending time in such a calm environment as KuBa. I’m thankful for the opportunity and I am returning home with a renewed playfulness in my creative embarking.