June was the last blog post that I wrote this year, which might seem like I fell off the face of my own planet, but it's understandable why that was a breakpoint in 2023 for me.
June was so different than I could have imagined going into 2023. I spent ~3 weeks on the back side of June in Connecticut, house/cat-sitting for a friend.
Things I experienced:
- the idea of living on the east coast
- the idea of living in a small town
- being able to go for a wide variety of hikes
- solitude
- homesickness
- new art experimentation
- cats
The trip wasn't something I knew was on my horizon going into 2023. I had had this daydream during the pandemic that I could just pick up and go live anywhere for a while. My work was fully remote, so the world was legitimately my oyster.
The part where I got stuck and never took the leap is the fact that I'd be paying rent at home, and also at whatever romantic location I chose to relocate to temporarily.
So when I was asked by a friend if I wanted to stay in a beautiful location, rent-free, I jumped.
I drove out with my boyfriend and for a few days we explored and got used to the location. We took a long hike on the Appalachian Trail, which I feel like makes me sound very badass. We discovered what the local town had to offer - grocery store, bars, restaurants. Honestly, there wasn't much, but what it was was good. The house had a large yard and solid wi-fi.
I had this dreamy dream going into my stay that this would be the chapter in my life where my fiction writing was really going to take off. Without much around me, and no friends to distract me, I'd be able to spend hours, just focusing on writing. I'd had a "novel" novel project that I was scoping out and starting to write.
But plans like that never really seem to come to fruition. I wonder if I'll ever "get into" writing in a serious way. I'd like to, but who knows.
What I ended up focusing my creative energy on while I was there was creating a series of self portraits. Starting with a prompt from an online art group, the challenge is/was to look in the mirror, and without looking at your paper, draw a blind-contour self-portrait. Afterward, color it in, looking.
In August, I took a stab at creating electronic music on the computer. That's probably something I'll hack away at from time to time.(SoundCloud playlist.)
August also brought me back to art classes, taking a figure drawing class, learning about the human body and the muscles that make up its structure.
In September, I took a family trip to Greece and did some art, though I wish I'd done more.
In August and December, I brought back my love of Looney Tunes that started in March.
If I'm going to wrap of 2023 with a bow, I'll say that this year was actually a creative success. I did not stick to my "One Project Per Month" ambition, but by starting the year off in that headspace, I was able to propel my creativity forward and continue to create.
I need to figure out what kind of goals I want to set for myself in 2024. Not resolutions, but goals. I learned in 2023 that it's perfectly okay not to actually stick to those goals. Live throws you all sorts of obstacles, and emotions. Sometimes you just don't feel like doing a project each month. It can be exhausting. But setting that goal keeps the pilot light on.