String Notes

Somehow the three-day weekend has completely gotten away from me. Here it is, Sunday afternoon, and all the things I was going to do are undone. I read a novel, and played games on the computer, and watched Criminal Minds, and chatted with friends and enjoyed Irish music. I guess that’s what people do on holiday weekends, isn’t it? I wrote for a while, did some yoga, baked bread for the first time in ages, started in seriously on a big important project that has to be completed this year.

But I’d intended to blog about the blue moon, and about the palindrome day, and missed both of them. I suppose as long as I get my photo essay on 2009 done sometime this week they won’t be too out of place.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the closing weeks of 2009 and the first days of 2010 organizing things. Files, thoughts, ideas, plans. None of this work is the kind of thing that I can take a photo of, or hold up and point to, but it should provide the foundation for a whole host of tangible results.

I didn’t make any resolutions this year. Instead, I sat down and made a list of the things I want or need to accomplish this year. More in the nature of an over-arching annual to-do list than a detailed list of proscriptions and prescriptions. I’m not sure there really is a clear distinction between goals and resolutions, but nonetheless mine are the former and definitely not the latter.

Some of these goals are small but important things that I’ve been dawdling on. The biggest ones require me to get serious about a couple of big projects I’ve been idly poking at for a year or two, to commit the time to actually get them substantially underway, if not entirely completed. I’m exceptionally good at coming up with ideas and starting projects, but not so hot at finishing them. This year is a year for organizing and dealing with all of those remnants, even if the correct answer is to pitch the project. Organize, get rid of things that do not contribute to happiness and productivity, add only things that do.

My major goal for the year is twofold: make more art; support more artists. I’d like to encourage everyone who reads this blog to adopt the same goal. Bring something into the world that is new, that never would have existed had I not laid hand to it. The second one is crucial. There would be no art if there were no support for artists. If you can, try to buy more books, or jewelry, or prints. Visit a museum, gallery, see a play, hear live music. If you have no money to spare, like so many right now, there are other things you can do. Request your local public library to buy a book by an author you like, so that lots of people can read her work. Write a book review for your blog, or Amazon, or GoodReads. Tell a friend about something beautiful you saw, or read, or heard. Support doesn’t require money, though that’s the easiest approach. Your time is valuable too – word of mouth is a powerful tool. Tell someone that their work inspired you. Most authors, musicians, painters, photographers have web pages or blogs or LJ accounts, and would love being told that their work touched you.

Then go out and make something of your own.

Postscript: I honestly did plan the larger part of this post before I saw Neil Gaiman’s New Year’s wish. He says much the same thing, only more elegantly.