This Year will be Your Best YET
We are ticking down the hours and the minutes to 2024, and the yearly introspectiveness trickles like a fresh stream into our minds. We ask ourselves, “WHO am I going to be in this coming year? WHAT am I going to accomplish? Perhaps we continue to the WHEN, WHERE, WHY and HOW. WHEN will we accomplish these goals and HOW? WHERE will we travel? WHY do I care to make a New Year’s resolution at all?? Is the pressure too much of an additional mental and physical load to bear?
Maybe there is a way to grow and “do all the things” and love the process. The stream in my own mind is bringing me to thoughts of self care and growing my art practice. Although, truly, my art practice could actually be considered self care. When I’m making art I’m taking care of me, but with the end goal of finding an income stream through that work. I will say that the clarity around the work and the process to create it is encouraging, exciting, and it’s strengthening!
But speaking of strength…
Even before I became a mother I had started to struggle with my exercise regimen. I had injured my rotator cuffs rockclimbing and couldn’t climb anymore pain-free. Planet Fitness was my replacement, but my joy around exercising my body began to dwindle. Then, becoming pregnant and the chronic pain that came with it stopped my exercise routine for a while. Now I’m done making babies and my desire to bring the joy of engaging in “a sport” is not only palpable, it’s necessary.
Yoga has been really enjoyable for me lately, and I’ve been going about once a week with a friend. It’s certainly not enough, and that’s item #1 I need to address in the New Year, FIND THE JOY IN CARING FOR YOURSELF. As other mothers might relate, it’s not necessarily that there isn’t the time or a willing partner to watch the kids, it’s the permission that you give yourself to take that time that you need to be your best self. I have to remind myself that the secret to success is all in the scheduling and the shared calendar! Which brings me to item #2… TAKE THE TIME YOU NEED.
Now that my physical health is taken care of, my art follows in short pursuit. #3 MAKE THE ART. This may seem obvious and nearly unnecessary to put on the list, but for a long time I had a fear of making the art. I had every excuse in the book for why not- I don’t have the space, I don’t have the time, I don’t know what my voice is yet, I need to focus on the things that make money. As I get older, and dare I say wiser, I realize I was just gaslighting myself. With thoughts like those I could never reach my goals, and precious time was slipping by. My sadness now comes from all that wasted opportunity! So I suppose, even though it might be another obvious one #4 DON’T BE AFRAID TO FAIL, should be another resolution. Or perhaps that should be my mantra, my drumbeat to follow forever onward.
Something I wrote for myself, and for this blog, a while ago but never published seems relevant to mention now…
Your art comes from a place within yourself that is truly unique. Your art is a manifestation of something that cannot be defined, and is so profoundly human… so by all means, CREATE. Whatever else that needs to “get done” in a day is important, yes, but feel justified in the making. Revel in the mere moment that you are alive. OBBSESIVELY communicate what it means to be human, and allow yourself to be vulnerable.
If you’re having trouble with this just close your eyes and imagine being a child again… you are running naked through the sprinkler under a hot summer sun. Let the joy permeate you. In this moment, you have no responsibilities. Naked vulnerability doesn’t exist. The responsibilities, the societal pressure, the personal expectations that flood you now, have no home in your childhood self.
Live in that moment. In that moment, nothing else matters but your humanity and your freedom. Breathe. Live. Let the light come in. Because the artist knows they will become dust again someday. The time to tell this story is finite.
