Last year it took me months to come up with a new years resolution. So much had just changed, I had only been in Boston for three months at the beginning of 2012, I was in a new relationship, I was enjoying my graduate school, and my most important unconscious resolution was just to get my life in order.
But now I’ve got it down. I’ve been living on my own for almost a year and a half (not including that strange middle phase of half living on your own in college). I don’t spend more money than I make, I’m making art again, I’ve got this website looking much more bad ass (if I do say so myself), and I’m building a place for myself in my job.
Because everything is settling down I now have my resolutions. I’m no longer just trying to stay afloat, I’m pushing forward. At lunch the other day I was discussing my resolutions with my friend Emily. I am going to write and at least self-publish Don’t Make Art, Just Make Something, I am going to record a CD just for the hell of having a CD, and I am going to finish and attempt to actually send my current book to a publisher.
I have my more traditional resolutions about staying healthy, exercising, managing my money, continuing to make art and write this blog, but those three big projects are going to push me through this yea.
As Emily and I talked about resolutions she looked around the table, grabbed a napkin, and feverishly asked me for a pen. I fished one out and she immediately began to write down everything that we had talked about (as shown in the photo). If she hadn’t written them all down at that moment it’s possible that they might have slipped through the cracks or been pushed aside, but there’s incredible power in just writing something down.
Once you put pen to paper, or marker to napkin or whatever variation you have close to you, suddenly a fleeting idea is visual. It’s out of your mind, on a piece of paper, and has a life of its own. For this reason I try to always carry a notebook around. I’ve also started texting myself when I come up with ideas while walking. But there’s something inexplicably romantic and wonderful about an idea grabbed from air and written down on a napkin.
Just think about it for a minute. How many wonderful ideas were first captured on napkins. New songs, poems, books, resolutions, solutions, and any number of fragments of inspiration that our minds create. It makes me want to leave my notebook behind and start carrying around a stack of napkins instead.