Now and Then

When looking over your year, be sure to give yourself credit for any accomplishment. 2021 may have been much more fraught with difficulty than the average year.

Going into 2022, if you set goals, be gentle with yourself. Have a baseline with a fallback plan. You may want to set ambitious goals, but only with alternates.

If your schedule increases with less free time, do not overfill your leisure with personal projects. Rest and recreation are crucial to well-being.

Do you have research to do? Try to include this requirement within your reading goal. Take notes to leverage in creative work. Wherever you are, take pictures that may lead to innovative developments. Try to make your life a multi-use platform.

Find ways to share your endeavors with a broader audience. The world is a smaller place than in the past, but sometimes there seems to be distance between us. Any way you can find for real-world personal exchange, do it. We still need face-to-face contact. Of course, take necessary health precautions, and if video conferencing seems better, you call the shots.

Be open to new things and new methods and tools to do familiar tasks. There are so many ways to bridge the problem gaps. If need be, ask others online how they solved a similar conundrum.

Share your expertise when you can. Learning from one another is still an excellent way to overcome the fear of failure and unwillingness to jump into taxing possibilities.

If it appeals to you, keep a gratitude journal. This tends to make you more aware of your blessings. You may especially find it suitable to trace the hopes and dreams coming true for you.

Ah, I hope your new year brings you closer to your cherished position, currently only a dream.

I have not fully decided, but a new Creativity Project seems to appeal to me. Stay informed, check back for updates and planned details.

Ready, Go Create

Sometimes creating is hard. Life intervenes, or feelings get in the way. When you find yourself unable to practice your art, here is some encouragement:

Pick up a book, turn to a random page, read the first entire paragraph, create a work inspired by the whole, or just a word. You do not have to relate your creation to the meaning of the paragraph at all.
Think of a place you would like to go, Google it or use Wikipedia. Do some searching; when you find something that intrigues you, create whatever you are inspired to do.
Go somewhere nearby and see it with new eyes, like a stranger. Take your impressions and create from that starter.
Create an ad for an item, band, show, or movie you love. Probably change the names involved.
Give your pet, or one you had, an adventure backstory. If you are a visual artist, create from there.

I hope those give you some ideas. All the best to you always.

Tanka Triplicate

1.
As moments run down
Falling like foaming water
I become crystal,
Reflecting reasons to be
Light refracted endlessly.

2.
Creativity
Project, shall I once again?
The heart is willing,
The mind less, always objects;
Ability whispers, “Try.”

3.
Lay the burden down,
Fear consuming too much soul,
With Faith become whole,
Trust days will continue by
Storms calm; hope, peace, love abide.

To you readers, would you like to have me post every day in 2022? Would you read it? Would you interact, at least some?

PROMPT

With this year ending soon, write some haiku or tanka on endings and beginnings.

Haiku have three lines of 5-7-5 syllables. Tanka have five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables.

Elective Activities…

Seeing with new eyes
All the times we almost had
Ahold of the precious prize,
But our gaze was called astray
Fingers slipped over broken edges
And sudden walls blocked our way.
The question justly arises,
Can we grasp new horizons
Getting our self-satisfaction
With blatant mediocrity
Over to the side, out of our lane?
Trouble speeds like a missile
Targeted to do incalculable damage
Causing fatal amounts of pain,
But our vision is alive again.

Writing seems the entree today. Not accomplishing much else, and I can live with that circumstance. This poem has a political edge to it, but it is also about the simple actions of continual living.

I hope you will take some time to create something today. Most often, it is the way I keep myself from spontaneously combusting. As a prompt, you might think of the state of the world currently and create something which provides your take on it, either from a personal perspective or more wide-ranging.