Thursday 31st December 2015
Farewell, good 2015! It's been a glorious year, and a perilous year, a creative one and a frustrating one. Like all good years, it was full of all the intricately woven threads of life. On this New Year's Eve, take the chance to look back over the past year and think about how it's changed you, and how you changed the world around. Not the world at large, for few of us are lucky enough to manage that with our art, but we can always change our own smaller worlds; the world of our friends, families and fans, or even just our own personal views of the world.
As you look back, remember Janus, the god with two faces, who looks backwards and forwards at the same time, and rather than focusing too deeply on the split between years, consider it as a signpost in a constant flow of the creative experience we call life. What you've created in the past will inform and shape what you create in the future, because even if you decide to take your artistic career in a completely new direction this year, that choice is still informed by everything that you've done and everything that has happened to you up until this point.
We've also got a fun little project that you might want to consider trying over the course of 2016, in preparation for next New Year's Eve (or sometime around then, it's your call, of course). Take a glass jar, perhaps a pickle jar size, and grab a stack of post-it notes or something similar. Over the course of 2016, every time you have a creative idea, whether you act on it or not, write down a quick note with the date and pop it into the jar. On New Year's Eve 2016, the eve of 2017, open up the jar and take a look back at all the ideas and watch them unfold in chronological order. Not only will you get a better sense of how your ideas progress over the course of the year, you'll probably find some great ideas that you forgot about that you can keep in your back pocket for the next time you find yourself in a bit of a creative slump.
No matter how you choose to celebrate, here's hoping that you have an excellent, creative, inspiring and beautiful 2016!
Posted on December 31st 2015 on 02:42pm
