Today I woke up feeling positive and I still am. I had written a headline yesterday, ‘How Stella lost her groove’, and that same headline was on the front page of a local newspaper.

The headline was about our communications minister breaking the lockdown rules and disrespecting the President’s orders and us citizens. Why has she not been arrested? She’s basically been ordered into lockdown like all of us. She’s not going to go to work for two months - one month’s salary will be docked, but she can go to the shops and watch DSTV like normal. HOW is that fair? Other people are getting arrested for getting married, running on the road etc. Why are the rules different for her?

I’m a rules girl and it’s quite simple in this case. Stay at home, don’t visit anyone, don’t let anyone visit you. And if you’re an essential worker you do your work and go straight home afterwards. There’s no hidden message, no cryptic clues to something weird - nothing is unclear. Stay. At. Home.

The Minister’s disrespect upsets me and now that the lockdown has been extended I am even more worried. I’m worried about the number of people who are losing their income because their business cannot go online. What happens to the mechanic working from home? Or the handyman who has a carpet cleaning business? Or the home bakery around the corner… What happens to these businesses?

There’s a lot more people wandering around these days than there was two weeks ago and it’s disturbing. The President is right - this lockdown extension and further extensions rests with us. If we move around the virus will spread. But if we just stay at home and only go out when absolutely necessary maybe, just maybe the curve will flatten. I think it will.

We just have to be patient and find it in ourselves to be innovative with our exercise and exciting with our time. Earlier I spoke to an incredible woman from Port Elizabeth. Her name is Charlotte Raubenheimer. She has a friend named Philip who has cerebral palsy. This gentlemen needed a specialized wheelchair so Charlotte raised the money by doing a full Ironman in her garden. IN HER GARDEN Y’ALLL. During lockdown. I think she’s incredible.

She swam, rode and ran around her house and after 13 hours she hoisted a family-made IronMom trophy made from an ice-cream tub, a coke bottle and cut outs from magazines. This incredible athlese raised more than R100k through back a buddy and if you have the time - and I know some of you do - take a listen to this inspirational interview. I hope that it will moves you and spark something creative within.

We may be in lockdown. That lockdown will last until 30 April. But now is the best time to create and come up with goals, projects, games, whatever it is… Now is the time to create because there is no distraction or noise holding us back.

PICTURES COURTESY: CHARLOTTE RAUBENHEIMER