This IS next year.

How many times have you said to yourself, next year I will.....

I decided when I woke up this morning that I was no longer going to look to next year or next month or next week and hopefully not beyond tomorrow to do the things I want to do. Mind you I am not talking about buying some extravagant thing-a-ma-bob or do-dad. I'm not talking about flying off to Paris or anywhere for that matter for the time being. Rest assured, no fairy came in the night and left large sums of money in any of my accounts. I like most of the world still have to budget.

What I AM talking about doing is living in the moment and being in the here and now. What I am talking about is rowing my own boat and not feeling obligated to row the boat someone else choose for me. What I am talking about is doing something that makes me happy each and every day. Even if that something is something as simple as soaking in a tub filled with bubbles up to my nose until I have prune skin at three in the afternoon if the mood strikes me and not talking myself out of doing so because... IT IS THREE IN THE AFTERNOON.

From today forth I will do what makes me smile and what makes me want to get up in the morning, no matter how bad my body feels or how loudly it says, "Oh please, can we just lay here a little longer?" And when sleeping in makes me happy I will do so without guilt.

The last few months or so I have done a lot of reading, and sketching and looking at all types of visual arts and practicing. Today as I look through the pile of tops in my studio I realized that there are none that made me smile while constructing them and only two or three that have me anticipating the quilting of them on this first day of 2007.

Today, more than ever I recognize that constructing and creating are two different things. Lately, I wasn't creating. What I did was a lot of constructing and making tops that did not make me happy. Construction is work. Creating is fun, playful, happiness.

I know this because more often than not as I was piecing all of those tops together I was frowning and saying to myself.

"What are you doing?... This isn't you... It looks to much like the work of too many other's.... It looks like stuff that has already been done before. Why can't you think of something new to do with these square, these stripes. This looks to much like----, and too much like so-n-so."

Get my drift.

My thought were not the result of me not liking the work that others have done or are doing. Not at all. I truly marvel at how their minds work. But as of today I an honoring the fact that my mind twirls in a different orbit than theirs. And that's a GOOD thing.

I will admit that my time spent practicing wasn't a total waste. Acquiring knowledge is never a bad thing. Because I spent time practicing I can sew stripes that are straight. Because of the time spent,I am more conscious of how fabric behaves and will use this knowledge to my advantage in the future
Because I practiced I can sew precise 1/4" seams and 1/4" wide stripes. I can sew very fine 1/8 inch wide or less stripes if I care to, which is what the fine white stripe next to the pink in the black square is, less than 1/8 inch wide.

But with time spent exploring I also realize that compositions designed with stripes, and squares alone are not enough for me no matter how much I keep saying that my art is about my love of color. Today I determined I have explored the square and answered the call of the stripe without acquiring a burning desire to do more with them than I've done already.

So as of today I resolve to make work that makes me smile. As of today I will design and create with the elements I love. As of today I will explore the themes that excite me the most. I will work in the size and scale I love. As of today I will use only the colors in combinations that sing to me. I will use black and white in my compositions if black and white are called for, ot because I told myself that I must.


As of today I am more aware of and celebrate the me in my art because today I finally get what isn't.

As of today without apology, no matter what, I will be who I am. My only resolution for the New Year is: I will try every day to not forget this.