Your February Creativity Mini-Challenge + New, Exclusive Short Story by Me!
A quick, 5-minute creative hit to take you into the weekend
Hello, Protagonists! In this post, you’ll find:
❓ Q&A: Do I need to use the Substack app to read this newsletter/get the podcast?
🤓 What I’m Reading This Week
🎉 5-minute Creativity Mini-Challenge
✍🏼 A new short story by me (published exclusively here on CREATIVE. INSPIRED. HAPPY)
📸 Where is the photo from?
❓ Q: Do I need to use the Substack app?
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🤓 What I’m Reading This Week
“France Has Met the Enemy, and they are ACRONYMS” - (article, Wall Street Journal) - For all you language and word nerds, this is an amusing (yet informative) article about a country that might love acronyms even more than we do.
“The Balloon That Wouldn’t Come Down” — (Substack, Everything is Amazing) - This piece about a hot air balloon that kept going up and up and up (with two aeronauts trapped in it) is one of the best things I’ve read so far this year. The writing and storytelling are wonderfully engaging—a perfect balance of lightness and fact.
🎉 Your February Creativity Mini-Challenge
It’s a common myth that creativity has to be a huge undertaking. I actually believe we can spark it with just small moments, and anyone can do it, not just professional artists.
Also, these little bursts of creativity can lead to larger inspiration or simply bring a smile. Both are wonderful and enough in their own ways.
So here is your Creativity Mini-Challenge for this month. It’s based on a picture from my life and will only take you five minutes. (Below, you’ll find my take on it, although I admit time gets away from me once I get going.)
Look at the photo below (alt text available for accessibility).
Tell yourself a super short story or doodle something about it.
(optional) Share your story in the Comments below!
REMEMBER—This is supposed to be whimsically rough! It’s not about perfection. It’s five minutes to dream—just for you. Have fun!
CREATIVE.INSPIRED.HAPPY is a warm, vibrant community of thousands who believe that EVERYONE can spark creativity and build an inspired, happier life.
✍🏼 My whimsically rough, super short story
It would be easy to hate Valentine’s Day. Love was supposed to be pure, and everywhere Lindsay looked, it seemed like love had been commercialized, commodified, and crammed into heart-shaped boxes of cheap chocolate.
But the thing was, Lindsay had always been a believer in love, and nothing could ever change that. After all, she’d been born at 2:14 a.m. on February 14th. Her destiny in life was either to go all-in on love, or to become its worst enemy, because that kind of birth was also a fitting origin story for a comic book villain.
But Lindsay had no desire to be a bad guy. The world need more uplifting, not less of it. And she believed in love in all of its forms—romantic, sure, but also the love between friends, between siblings, between grandparents and parents and grandkids. Even love that hadn’t yet been discovered.
So on every February 14th, instead of celebrating her own birthday, Lindsay gave away her love to anyone who crossed her path. She planted herself in the park near her apartment, at the base of cupid’s arrow, and handed out heart-shaped lollipops to every runner who jogged past, every parent or nanny pushing a stroller, and especially to the people whose shoulders were slumped and who could use a little burst of “hey, I see you” in their lives.
Because isn’t that what love really was, at its core? It wasn’t greeting cards or expensive dinners or bouquets of red roses. It was just that very gentle act of caring for another.
Every little bit—and every lollipop—counted.
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📸 Where is the photo from?
This is Cupid’s Span, a sculpture in San Francisco, California. Even though I live in the Bay Area, I don’t go into “The City” much, because driving in SF stresses me out, haha (the hills! the one-way streets! am I allowed to drive in the bus lane or not?!)
However, on a clear, bright weekend a couple years ago, Tom drove us there (I am a good passenger), and I took this photo. Happy Valentine’s month, everyone!
Short story from the picture:
The kids all fought each other for a spot at the front as their feet dug into the grass. The teacher was trying to get them to calm down and stop chattering as they all looked up at cupid’s arrow sculpture.
Sarah could hear the kids talking as she kept an eye on her daughter. She wasn’t a fan of helping chaperone school trips, but her daughter had begged her saying she never came like the other moms. After those words spilled out of her daughter’s mouth, her mother's guilt made her take a day off of work to come along.
Her daughter wasn’t one of the children trying to get to the front. She stood her ground in her place and let others push past her. The teacher asked the class what they thought the artist had in mind when creating the sculpture.
“They wanted it to look like a huge arrow that shot the bad guy out of the city.”
The teacher smiled as she looked for more hands in the air. She pointed to the boy in the very back of the crowd waving his hand wildly.
“It’s supposed to make you think that you can fall in love anytime.”
Sarah smiled at the sweetness of the answer as she felt a lump catch in her throat. If only love was that easy and not so painful. She closed her eyes for a second to feel the sun on her skin while she took a deep breath to push the lump back down.
When her eyes opened, she saw her daughter’s hand up trying to get the teacher’s attention. Sarah wondered how often her daughter raised her hand in class or if she was witnessing a newfound confidence due to her mom being in the group.
Her daughter spoke as the teacher called upon her. “Maybe the artist wanted to show a mommy’s love. Maybe the mommy worked hard and she couldn’t be there for everything, so she made a big love bow and arrow to show she was always there.”
Sarah’s lump in her throat overflowed as she felt a tear fall down her cheek.
Breathe. Be brave. Concentrate. "And just let it..." The words come out as a whisper. "Fly." The last word comes out of my mouth as a strangled cry, as I release my knocked arrow. Crap. How am I so spectacularly bad at this? I hear my sister doing her best to stifle her laugh.
"God's, Anna. How did you even do that?" We both wander over to the target and peer into the mayhem I've caused. The tiny magical biodome, meant to resemble a thriving tiny city, has come alive with shrieks and teeny tiny people running in all directions away from the aftermath of my disastorous shot. Not only did my arrow miss it's target entirely, but I've managed to release the entire bow along with it. I've embedded both the limbs of the weapon, and the arrow itself, into the green grassy area of what appears to be a park, placed in the middle of tall business buildings.
I can see little people scurrying away from the structure, terror on their faces. Others stand a good distance away, staring up at it like its comical plop art they are trying to comprehend. A tiny dog the size of my pinky fingernail is barking insesantly at the spot where he must have been walking just moments earlier.