January felt very long, and yet, already it is over. It began with a kiss and a NYE outing to celebrate the year and my new book, and ended in a frigid night where even the radiators and the space heater were struggling to keep the apartment warm. In between, I wrote about churches and goddesses and all manner of randomness. I was sick for a week and stayed in watching dinosaur movies and eating delivery food and sleeping late into the afternoon on occasion. I finished a series of poems and made progress on a set of collages for a zine. I worked on edits and contracts and cover designs for upcoming chaps. Still ,I felt slower and less energetic than usual. As if everything, the lens of this first month, was dragging the bottom of a lake. But such is January. It's less heavy than December, but still a weighty month.
February, however, is obviously a chance to start over. I realized today waking up that it has been exactly one year to the day I finished my job at the library and began this past year's exploits on my own. It called for a celebration of some kind, so I am settling for a pint of chocolate peanut butter pretzel ice cream with my grocery order. Today, I spent most of the day slowly drafting a lesson the lengthy history of tarot cards, which was fun, then playing with an AI app for possible collage and cover design purposes. (I don't like the lack of control, obv. but I do think there might be ways to make it work for me for certain elements I can then use in collages. ) I also fiddled with a possible cover for GRANATA down the line, though the publication of that project is possibly more than a year out. I am not even sure it's actually finished but will be reassessing this spring with edits and something toward finalizing and maybe sending some of the work out to journals.
I am still hovering over several possible things I want to work on next and will likely just pick one and dive in. I find myself stalled out when this open space happens, unable to commit. Once I've chosen a path, I can drive it to completion. It's sitting at the crossroads that makes me immovable.The weather, however, has improved slightly and each day, the daylight lasts a little bit longer...
