Little by Little
Happy New Year!
I don’t think I’m saying anything new or surprising when I say 2016 was a volcanic clusterfuck of a year. It seemed like an unusually large number of creative people, including some of the most creative people of our age, left us. We in the US had the most degrading, most disappointing, most frightening presidential election of my lifetime (and the results will affect the rest of the world, probably not in many obviously positive ways). My goal of moving to Milwaukee didn’t come to fruition, which sent me into frequent bouts of frustrated, restless anxiety and depression.
But it’s a new year, and while it may not be a better year all around than 2016 was, I’m determined to make it a better year for myself. Part of that is encouraging myself to share more little things in public. I have a tendency to let both of my blogs go silent for periods of time because I don’t feel like I have the energy to write big, important posts. But my life isn’t made up of only big, important things. I grow and change, explore and experiment, in small bits that add up to big bits. In the spirit of Austin Kleon’s terrific Show Your Work!, I’ve decided to post something every day, either to this blog or my writery blog. It might not be anything big, maybe just a short anecdote or rumination or memory, a link to something that inspires me, information I’ve researched, discoveries I’ve made, sparks of ideas, plans I’m making, notes on something I’m working on, reviews of and reactions to things I’ve read or watched, poems, flash fic, fragments of longer pieces…posting pieces of the puzzle instead of waiting for the puzzle to be finished and posting only that.
I can’t guarantee everything I post will be interesting to anyone but me–but that goes for the big stuff I post, too. But in the interest of feedback and conversation, I’m reopening the comments on my blogs and welcome input from others.
I don’t know if I’m ready for this–there’s a certain amount of fear and pressure when it comes to posting something every day–but why let that stop me? So…here we go!