The New Normal
So far, since the chain of lock-downs started, our social media platforms have been in hibernation. We have refrained from posting any new content because frankly, there are more important things in the world for everybody to worry about. It did not seem right for us to be spamming your feeds with filler content while the world struggles to combat a deadly pandemic. Now, however, we find ourselves in a very different circumstance — not one where the pandemic has disappeared as one would have hoped, but where we have been forced to accept the current circumstance as the new status quo — a new normal!
Each one of us has reacted to this whole situation differently. Each one of us has had to make peace with what is happening. For each one of us, this is a completely new experience. Among ourselves, there are those who take this pandemic as seriously as it should be, there are those who believe the public is over-reacting to this whole situation, and there are those who are demanding for stricter actions to be taken. While it is beyond our capacity, and indeed, authority, to address these views, we can provide a platform where each of these voices will be heard, shared and for some of these views, even endorsed. And so, we bring to you a writing series called The New Normal where you can do exactly that — express your views and be heard.
There are no real restrictions to what you can write. It could be as simple as telling us how your daily routine has changed since the lock-down, or something more serious such as the government’s action/inaction (depending upon which spectrum of thoughts you fall in) during this pandemic. You could also write about something you learnt either proactively through online courses, or something that you learnt along the way from the events happening around you — like discovering that our country owns a piece of land that was never documented in any of the maps we had to draw during our school days, or coming to the realization that our political leaders are as competent as the Western ones, or even discovering that our country still has journalists and not just TV anchors. You could also write about a series, movie or game (more likely, plural) that has kept you entertained, or about how the entertainment/sports industry is struggling to stay relevant. You could mourn over the good-old days (where the worst thing we had to deal with was the Game Of Thrones finale, as one tweet reads). On the flip side, you can write about what a wonderful vacation this has been. You can write about the fear of exams (that is looming over [y]our heads), or how irrelevant the SEE exams have been all this time. In short, there is no limit to what you can write!
Over the past several months, we have seen people on social media actively talk about their dissatisfaction, their observations and their experiences. As we are locked inside our homes, our voices have become ever more free as we, as a society, gravitate towards the next big controversy or topic to talk about. The point being, the things mentioned in the previous paragraph are already out there in disparate channels, scattered through the web of social media platforms. This writing series is our attempt to provide them structure and consolidate them into a single platform, to do what art has always done throughout history — mirror the society.
So, email us your writings to write@zeronemag.com and each week, we shall feature some of them on our website and share them across our social media platforms after we have edited them (at least, grammatically). There are no deadlines and no limitations to the topic or theme. It could be an essay, a story, or a piece of poetry, so long as it pertains in some way to the current situation. If you have any queries, you can write to us at info@zeronemag.com or reach out to us through our social media channels.
Happy writing!
