Did You Do Something Positive Thanks to Covid?

Translation: Högna Sól Þorkelsdóttir

The idea was brewing all throughout 2020: to do my BA project in connection to these strange Covid times, but focus on the positive things that happened, and are still happening, in the wake of Covid - or, as I named the project, Thanks to Covid. You could say that society completely changed in the spring of 2020. Many things came to a complete stop. I’m a very active person in my daily life and I usually have several things going on at once, but the situation got me to think outside the box. In leisure studies, we learn to work with all sorts of people, how to reach them. Sometimes I feel like it’s a sort of applied psychology. We learn to help people better themselves, to organize all sorts of events and trips, and through it all, we better ourselves as well. We learn leadership skills and how to be leaders in our own lives by being active, and last but not least we often end up discovering our passions. I find that people usually discover their passions in their free time, in fact. One of the biggest questions I had was whether or not we had more free time during Covid and what positive things we were doing with that time. I thought that since I got to experience half of my university years “regularly” and half of them, including my graduation, during Covid, I could make use of the pandemic and see what positives it has left people with.

Now I’m collecting various results from people which will be put together in a collection of shared knowledge of the positive things we would like to hold on to. The stories I have already received are characterised by general health, positive thinking, more serenity and creativity, all of which are positive. The main goal of the project is to spread positivity, preserve the good things that have happened and are happening, and hopefully inspire people.

Unprecedented situation a time for new approaches and opportunities

So many things became possible thanks to Covid, when all of society was put on pause, things we probably would have never done otherwise.

Examples of questions I want people to contemplate:

Was there something positive you started doing in 2020 during the pandemic?
Did you make any changes for the better due to Covid?
Did you have more free time outside of school and work?
Did your interests or habits change?
Did your interaction with family and friends change?
Did your home change? Did you make changes in your home or daily environment? I’m wondering, for example, if you cooked different food, baked, or went outside more? Did you learn something new? Was there anything in your relationships that changed? For example, did you talk to different people than you usually do, did you go to online events, etc.

Making use of social media

The results will be collected and shared on the Þökk sé Covid (Thanks to Covid) Facebook page and the Instagram account under the same name. I welcome any Facebook messages from you on Messenger, DMs on Instagram, or emails at takkcovid@gmail.com. No story is too short or too long. The messages can be about something that happened in your family, among your group of friends, or at work. For example, they could be descriptions of events, hobbies, short stories, photos, short videos, or music clips.

There’s just one condition: it has to be positive.

As my instructor for the project once said, it’s good to let yourself be bored, which can often lead to creativity, but being bored is not the same thing as being sad. Therefore, I want to be clear that I am aware that the pandemic has had a wide variety of negative effects and has brought with it sorrow and hardships, but for this project I want to call for stories, examples, and pictures of the positives and preserve them so we will also have positive memories to look back on.

#thankstocovid

Did You Do Something Positive Thanks to Covid?

Unprecedented situation a time for new approaches and opportunities

Making use of social media