As we head into another year we wonder what it will bring. 2011 was probably the best year of my life. One year ago I was on vacation from my weekend job at the cookie factory. The website was doing well, and my novel was in it’s procrastination stage where it’s been for some time. Life was …life.
A week later the cookies crumbled and the factory went bankrupt. I had it in my mind since the controversy over funding for Drayton that Cambridge could sustain a small art magazine, so we went for it. The rest of it you know.
Now on January first of a new year we find ourselves with a new paper that is being very well recieved. The columnists are already working on their February columns, the four interns have 2 assignments each, my articles are well on the way and advertisers have started renewing. Sue Taylor is taking over the office duties, and Rachelle is ready to start layout. The guys from Thinkalee are going to redesign the website. I have no desire to increase the frequency of print, although we will be increasing the amount of content. At some point soon we hope to incorporate and put an editorial board in place.
Everyone keeps remarking on how much I have done, when I haven’t really done that much other than put the pieces together I was given. Any time the angels bring you an artistic “gift” it is a burden until you share it. (The artists know what I’m talking about.) It’s not difficult, it’s just a matter of finding proper places for the positive energy that is sent your way, and dispelling the negative.
It’s something I’ve been through before, and although the burden was bigger than anything I have experienced I think that the rewards are going to be equally rewarding, not just for me but for writers, artists, aspiring journalists and especially readers across the city.
The bottom line is I have very little to do. Sometime in the next few weeks I hope to go back to a factory job, at least part time, for a rest. It’s kind of funny how your can perspective change in a year!
For those of you who have been thanking me for what I have done for you as an artist I haven’t done anything but give you faith in yourself. All I ask is that the next time an aspiring artist says to you “I want to…” you take the time to listen, and help if you can.
With that, I’m going to leave you with a snippet from one of my favourite books.
I’m going to start the new year off right. I’m off to city hall to see who I can piss off!
Thank you everyone, and may your 2012 be as good, or better, than 2011 was for me.
From “Illusions” by Richard Bach
Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river.
The current of the river swept silently over them all – young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.
Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks at the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.
But one creature said at last, ‘I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.’
The other creatures laughed and said, ‘Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you shall die quicker than boredom!’
But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, ‘See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!’
And the one carried in the current said, ‘I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.’
But they cried the more, ‘Saviour!’ all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Saviour.
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