To Begin: A Beginning
I hate New Year’s resolutions.
They’re so much! Start doing something. Stop doing something. Achieve a Goal (capitalization fully intended), and so on into oblivion. In my very personal experience, there’s a lot of pressure for very little reward, and no incentive to carry on. Other people who don’t take the resolution route change their framework to use a theme instead, or center around a word for the year.
For me, to probably no one’s surprise, I decided to think about how I want to feel this year. (Props to Em for being the person I tried this on first, in classic 11-minute-long voice note fashion).
When I thought about this year, I wanted to feel more creative. I got accepted into a creative writing program, and I’m just about to go on a three month sabbatical - it felt gloriously aligned to this pursuit and particular time in my life. But being creative can mean a lot of different things, and part of learning more about myself was knowing that I needed a little more structure. That translated into a couple of subcategories, to pull this idea for a feeling outside of myself, which are: discovery, and community.
Because “feel more creative” is pretty broad, discovery for me in this sense is being open to learning, and finding different things that work for me. That also means embracing things not working, even though the idea of failure in and of itself is horrifying. I want to try other crafts and hobbies and explore thinking of new ways in which to create.
Part of the reason I chose this particular creative writing program was its emphasis on building and learning in community. It’s not something I’ve actively sought out before, besides online in different fandoms (fanfiction is one of the first loves of my life), but I’ve found that I value supporting and facilitating space for others so much.
Through it all, I’m going to be keeping sustainability in mind, as a way to honour myself and my future, and encourage others as well. We’re finite resources! I want to do this shit for as long as I feasibly can! Take care of yourself!
Anyways, that’s what kicked off this newsletter - sharing moments of creativity, the difficulties and joys that come with it, and maybe some other stuff that I don’t even know yet. That’s discovery, baby.
Now, I’ll leave you with the same question: how do you want to feel this year?