"She was a January girl"
Happy New Year, y'all! Today's post title is taken from a song. Spot the lyric, win a pony. (NB This is a lie. I have no pony to give, but if you know the song without Google assistance I'll like you even more.)
One thing to get out of the way first of all: progress on new work will likely be slow over the coming weeks and months due to a family crisis. It's hard to know exactly how much to say in a forum such as this, especially as I know from my stats that not everyone who reads this blog is a relative of mine and therefore they do not want or need to know what's going on in my private life. Suffice to say that Christmas for my family was not merry, and the foreseeable future for our little clan has an awful lot of hospital visits in it. We're all hopeful that the outcome will be positive.
So, yeah: ordinarily, my feelings about the New Year are massively optimistic, and that's what I want to focus on. Yes, it's an arbitrary date, and yes, every day, every moment is a new beginning, and yes, we could make a resolution any day to improve ourselves, we don't have to wait 'til January 1st, and yes, it's futile to think that we're going to change our routines, change ourselves, just because we write it on a note and stick it to the fridge on a particular day, blah, blah...go check your Facebook feed for January 1st, I guarantee you, some pedantic miserablist has posted something along those lines, chiding everyone for their idiotic intentions to join a gym, learn Spanish, get a new job or improve their lives in any way. (Self-betterment - the very idea!) But for me, the feeling of a fresh start, of boundless possibility, a clean slate to scrawl on, is very real.
I don't care that New Year's Day is an arbitrary date, any more than I care whether or not Jesus Christ was actually born on December 25th - Christmas to me has very little to do with Christianity (nor even the pagan festivals that preceded Christianity / were stolen by the Church [delete as applicable]). Christmas to me is Jimmy Stewart's bleeding lip, Carol Kane's toaster, cutting down shrubs in Hyrule, arguing over Trivial Pursuit. What Christmas means to me is constructed out of the images of my own childhood. What the New Year means to me is a collage of possibilities from a thousand futures. You can choose to remember the best parts of your past and you can choose to focus on the best future you can imagine. Right now I can't think why anyone would want to do anything else with the time they have.
So, Janus-like, I'm going to look back and forward at once: post some old artwork to (hopefully) inspire myself, and then I'm going to go to my happy place. On the sofa with a drawing board, and my family, to get some work done.
The days are getting longer again, as they always will. Happy New Year and love to you all.
M x x
One thing to get out of the way first of all: progress on new work will likely be slow over the coming weeks and months due to a family crisis. It's hard to know exactly how much to say in a forum such as this, especially as I know from my stats that not everyone who reads this blog is a relative of mine and therefore they do not want or need to know what's going on in my private life. Suffice to say that Christmas for my family was not merry, and the foreseeable future for our little clan has an awful lot of hospital visits in it. We're all hopeful that the outcome will be positive.
So, yeah: ordinarily, my feelings about the New Year are massively optimistic, and that's what I want to focus on. Yes, it's an arbitrary date, and yes, every day, every moment is a new beginning, and yes, we could make a resolution any day to improve ourselves, we don't have to wait 'til January 1st, and yes, it's futile to think that we're going to change our routines, change ourselves, just because we write it on a note and stick it to the fridge on a particular day, blah, blah...go check your Facebook feed for January 1st, I guarantee you, some pedantic miserablist has posted something along those lines, chiding everyone for their idiotic intentions to join a gym, learn Spanish, get a new job or improve their lives in any way. (Self-betterment - the very idea!) But for me, the feeling of a fresh start, of boundless possibility, a clean slate to scrawl on, is very real.
I don't care that New Year's Day is an arbitrary date, any more than I care whether or not Jesus Christ was actually born on December 25th - Christmas to me has very little to do with Christianity (nor even the pagan festivals that preceded Christianity / were stolen by the Church [delete as applicable]). Christmas to me is Jimmy Stewart's bleeding lip, Carol Kane's toaster, cutting down shrubs in Hyrule, arguing over Trivial Pursuit. What Christmas means to me is constructed out of the images of my own childhood. What the New Year means to me is a collage of possibilities from a thousand futures. You can choose to remember the best parts of your past and you can choose to focus on the best future you can imagine. Right now I can't think why anyone would want to do anything else with the time they have.
So, Janus-like, I'm going to look back and forward at once: post some old artwork to (hopefully) inspire myself, and then I'm going to go to my happy place. On the sofa with a drawing board, and my family, to get some work done.
The days are getting longer again, as they always will. Happy New Year and love to you all.
M x x
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