Remember that Postcard Project back in the innocent days of 2015? Maybe one landed in your mailbox? That was me, making a thing every day and feeling pretty dang proud of myself a year ago.
Remember last year, how I purchased a cool daily agenda, came up with a kickin’ project name, and then failed? Well, you might not remember the Quotidian Bones fail because I never really talked about it. I kept hoping I’d get my QB mojo back. I let the unexpected loss of a good friend derail me. I gave in to the glum, the ennui that sometimes follows loss. I’m not here to bring you down, though. Nope. It’s a new year, and there’s a new project.
A project born from the lessons learned by 2016’s fail. It’s not like I didn’t meet up with loss in 2015. The difference was that in 2015 I used my project to help me through the loss. Last year? I didn’t want to tell the stories of losing Kurt. I shied away from them. I have weeks where I drew a thick black line on the page.
And you know what? I wish I’d kept doing that. Kept making marks. Because I know eventually I would have been bored by the thick black lines and would have wanted to make something else. That’s how freewriting works, and I’m a fan of freewriting. Even if I have nothing to write, I just keep writing. Sometimes I write “this is dumb” a zillion times before my mind softens and something more interesting emerges. In 2017 I want to remember to transfer the principles of freewriting to my project.
Oh, the project? It’s a doozy! I’ll tell you all about it on Friday (the Quotidian Bone picture is a hint!).
And you call that a fail??? Sounds like a big move forward to me. . . XO
I try to tell myself that if I learned from it, it really was not so much a fail.