I don’t like making new year’s resolutions. When I have set myself targets, I’ve been notoriously bad at keeping to them, and then I just feel bad about failing. I think many people, including myself, would benefit more from seeing the annual tradition of ‘resolutions’ to be a verb, not a noun. Something to be working on, and continually striving towards, a doing – not something to achieve, with concrete outcomes.
For 2022, my ‘resolutions’ (though I don’t like to see them in this way), are about reconnecting a little with things that have fallen by the wayside in recent years or months – poetry, fine art, reading, blogging, and runecraft. I have no particular goals in mind. I just want to make more room for these things this year, and in the years after that. I want to rediscover what it is about these things that makes me identify them as a part of myself.
Over the past few years, I have not been completely uncreative – in 2020 I was probably the most ‘arty’ I had been since my undergraduate in creative writing. Furloughed from work, with the stresses of redundancy and the pandemic looming over me, I found comfort in being outwardly creative. Making things with my hands, rather than inside my head. Writing poetry was far too cerebral, at a time when I wanted to feel ‘in my body’ as much as possible – I didn’t want to feel trapped in my mind, as well as my apartment.
As life is picking up and I am more or less working full-time, I want to continue to carve a space for that creativity. I think I am ready to get back to poetry and writing, too. I have a few precious ideas, which have sprung out of the blue and which I am holding tightly onto. I still feel hesitant to get back to putting pen on paper – and that is why I have booked a place on a poetry course. Through five Zoom workshops, I hope I will rediscover a little of that spark, that enjoyment which I recall so fondly when thinking back to my undergraduate degree, and the writing of Bella.
Being outwardly creative is not something I want to have to put down, in order to pick up poetry. In fact, I think each would greatly benefit from the other – in developing the confidence to simply put pen to paper, make mistakes, begin over again, learn what works and pick out the treasure. I have used a voucher for Domestika, a gift from my brother, to take a virtual illustration course. The lessons are a mixture of guidance and experimentation, to simply try out different mediums and art forms. I have currently completed the first lesson of the course, and have practiced different ways of working with ink. Below are my experimentations!
I am very much looking forward to continue to be creative, and to see where this journey will take me. My wish is that I will overcome being daunted by experiments in creativity, that I will be more ready to simply jump in, and won’t be so concerned with any final, concrete outcome.
Nellie Cole 