New Year. Same Me.
Recovering creatively from the holidays.
I haven’t written or shot anything in over a month. I want to say I took the month off, but shit was still getting done. We moved from our cute but cramped luxury apartment to a much bigger home. Still renting, for now, #2022goals. My better half slogged through a fairly big writing project that became an all hands on deck situation. She wrote more words in a month than I wrote in a year. In the midst of her trial by cursor, I was there to help with ideas and to make sure the dog was walked, and the kids stayed alive. She did the damned thing, and we all survived.
Oh, and the “we” in this story got married. It was a small affair as a global pandemic requires. Our kids were the only in-person participants, with friends and family joining via Zoom (but that’s another story for another day). So my time away from writing and taking photos was not a vacation.
I’m not one for resolutions. Resolutions are flawed. They set lofty stages admirable from the seats below, but they are often built without stairs leaving us to feebly jump and grasp at something that we cannot reach. Resolutions also often require us to change ourselves principally. At forty-three years old, I demonstrably am who I am.
I’m anxious.
I have self-esteem issues.
I sleep poorly.
I don’t dream with the level of audacity that I see those that I admire do.
These things will only change slightly, if at all. That said, I don’t need resolutions because I am resolute.
So, what’s the plan?
The first step in my plans this year is to not talk so much about my plans, which is hard for me. I like proclamations. I like announcing projects and endeavors. In my mind doing so holds my feet to the fire. I have realized that this doesn’t work for creative endeavors because of the unpredictable nature of creation. The poem becomes a song. The novel becomes a movie. The short story becomes a play. Proclamations like “I’m going to write a book!” immediately binds down the creation keeping it from its ultimate being.
The other problem with proclamations of creativity is that you end up answering to non-creatives. “When is the X going to be done” is the bane of a creator's existence. We often don’t have a time, a day, or even a year to offer up as postulation, much less promise to complete a project. While it may be easy to estimate planning and preparation, it is much harder to sort out procrastination and daydreaming, all of which are essential to creation.
The second step in my plan for this year is to learn more. My wife (I can say that now) gifted me a subscription to MasterClass. If you aren’t familiar with MasterClass, it is essentially everything Trump University pretended to be for way less money. I began my MasterClass experience with seminars by Walter Mosely and Annie Lebovitz. Both classes have been beneficial to how I think of my own creative process.
Sidenote: Neither class has been inundated with how to’s, no silver bullets or gadgets or tricks to make you immediately better. It’s all been about consistency and simplicity. Wake up in the morning and write. Grab your camera and go outside, but with more informed intention. It’s been refreshing.
This brings me to my last step. Do the damned thing. 2020 was not conducive to doing anything with any level of regularity. At least not for me. Between home feeling too crowded to get any real writing done and COVID making outdoor exploration feeling a bit ominous, it was often difficult to do either. So this year, the plan is to write and shoot as consistently as possible. With this comes the effort to not be paralyzed by the need for every essay and photo to be amazing. If I’m honest, this post is a prime example. I’m writing this with the goal of consistency. I need to keep my fingers moving. This, by no means, will be the most interesting thing I write this year (I hope).
I have already half-written future essays (there I go proclaiming again) and have ideas for various projects, but as are many things with life, the fun is in the discovery. I’m looking forward to the things unplanned and the opportunities I might not be ready for.
At the very least, it's another story to tell.
