the curtain draws down

there’s no reason that the end of the year should cause any particular soul searching. if you’re not searching your soul all year long, a bit of cramming isn’t really going to do you much good between the night of 12/31 and the morning of 1/1. but i happen to have chosen a sort of fiscal year for STILL blog that more or less corresponds to the calendar year, and so i am faced each january with a decision about how the last year went, and how the new year should go. i feel that i probably didn’t do justice to my black backgrounds last year, although i was getting the hang of it by the end. i got behind on posting my collages, which did not in the end amount to my original goal of a collage a week. i spent a lot of uncompensated time serving as editor, first reader, and illustrator for my husband’s writing, and i did a lot of dishes and driving to soccer. on the other hand, i acted as a competent general contractor, project manager, and co-art-director on a major national photo shoot for better homes and gardens in our house, which was enhanced by a substantial rehab, the first in our 12 years of occupancy. i gave a well-received talk at the sea change conference in spring, and a creative mornings talk in the fall.  i watched a daughter find her feet at an elite university, and a son more or less gracefully navigate another year of the morass that is 21st century male adolescence. i saw interest increase for my images. i found a collaborator who could match my intensity and work ethic in liz gardner of bodega ltd. and, i’ll be damned if i didn’t create one new image every single day, without missing a single one, for another entire year, which now makes six years in a row, or 2,191 straight images. it’s hard for me to see the big picture sometimes, when my obligations are daily. but six years of still blog is something i will take to my grave. if you are what you do every day, then i am still blog, as much as i am anything else. thank you for being here with me.

dried lily blossom