As has been the case with most of these letters, I wrote one version, and now I’m writing a second more honest version. In order to serve their intended purpose, I think these need to reach a certain depth of honesty. This takes a fair amount of digging. There’s the idea I think I want to write about, and then there’s the underlying thing that’s really going on that, with time, emerges through the combined acts of writing and of living.
This was supposed to come out yesterday, December 31st, 2023. The December issue of my monthly newsletter. The fact that it didn’t come out on the 31st meant that it also didn’t come out in December, and heck it didn’t even come out in 2023. Triple fail! Way to end the year.
The reality is that creative work takes the time it takes and the amount of time it takes is often more than we scheduled for. And so the actual time it takes starts to overlap with time allotted to other commitments and hard decisions have to be made. Last night I wasn’t quite finished version 1 of my letter by the time I had to pack up my salad ingredients and head out to my New Year’s dinner. If you can believe it I brought my laptop with me and thought maybe I could finish it during the New Year’s festivities. I was that person. Until I came to my senses, shut the laptop, and surrendered to fully enjoying the night.
It goes back to that letter on trust. That moment of giving in, that sinking feeling you get when you haven’t managed to do something you set out to do, is more complex than just disappointment.
Most of my successes and points of pride from this year were the results of small actions performed regularly. Journalling one page a day. Building muscle by going to the gym a couple days a week, no matter what. Making a huge dent in my digital decluttering, a task that had loomed over me for ages, growing larger and more daunting the longer I put it off. For 15-30 minutes every day, I organize and delete files. SO satisfying to see movement on this front, even with such a long way left to go. Committing to stitching every weekday has been monumental both for making progress on the work and for my mental well-being. Just four months into the stitching ritual, it’s been transformative to the point that the tagline I chose in July, “a newsletter about trying, desperately and imperfectly, to revive and maintain an art practice,” doesn’t feel right anymore.
This newsletter, however, is not something I can tackle in small bursts. It demands long periods of intense focus. I’m not going to lie; it’s been a huge challenge. Writers: the already very high level of respect I had for you has skyrocketed!
But it’s important to me and has been an immensely valuable exercise. Because it means engaging in the focused work of reflecting every month. I care deeply about the act of making and what it offers. Always loved a good Making Of featurette included on a DVD. Always thought the study or sketch was more interesting than the finished piece. The process is the meat. This newsletter is in accordance with the values of my practice because it’s a record of the process; putting the “messy middle,” as Glennon Doyle calls it, on display.
What I’ve discovered through writing this issue is that in 2024, I need to figure out a system for defining and protecting the long stretches of deep work that are required for what I do. I have a rhythm going for the regular execution of small tasks toward a larger goal. But the deep focus sessions are harder to fit into the puzzle of life. The benefit will be twofold as social time will correspondingly be defined and protected from the pressures of work, allowing me to be fully present when I’m with others. We’ll know if I’ve succeeded if I don’t bring my laptop to New Year’s Eve 2025...
So I reflect monthly by writing this newsletter, but I don’t really have a ritual for reflecting on the year as a whole. To reflect on 2023, I looked through the camera roll.
One of the most incredible experiences of my year (and of my life) was a visit to Mauritius and Madagascar. During my camera roll rewind, I found an @aredotna Instagram post I had saved in anticipation of the trip. It features the following text pulled from a Business Insider article by Richard Lewis called How Different Cultures Understand Time:
Cultures observing both linear and cyclic concepts of time see the past as something we have put behind us and the future as something that lies before us. In Madagascar, the opposite is the case (see Figure 4.7). The Malagasy imagine the future as flowing into the back of their heads, or passing them from behind, then becoming the past as it stretches out in front of them. The past is in front of their eyes because it is visible, known and influential. They can look at it, enjoy it, learn from it, even “play” with it. The Malagasy people spend an inordinate amount of time consulting their ancestors, exhuming their bones, even partying with them.
For me, in an artistic context, this echoes one of the excerpts that stood out from the book Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, the one that I shared in full back in this July letter. A condensed version:
“What you need to know about the next piece is contained in the last piece… Put simply, your work is your guide: a complete, comprehensive, limitless reference book on your work.”
Looking back at photos from 2023 led to:
seeing where I should have stopped some pieces earlier than I did and making a note to unstitch some stitches
furiously sketching out plans to use shapes from unresolved textile pieces I was working on in February to resolve paintings I started in the fall
putting books on hold at the library that I’d screenshotted and then forgotten about
making a list of artists whose work resonated with me this year
re-reading and finally writing down the passages from books that I’d taken photos of while reading on the bus/metro
making a list of all the major events of the year and being blown away by how full and varied and challenging and significant 2023 was
observing the glorious passing of the seasons through 12 months of walks to and from the studio
What are your rituals of reflection?
Paid subscribers, I invite you to check out the lists below of my 2023 highlights including books, YouTube, movies, podcasts, and exhibitions.
Everyone else, thank you so so much for being here. Happy New Year!
xx Clara
“We’ve had pianos that could play themselves for years, for decades, and guess what? Nobody’s watching them because we don’t care how precise and how perfect a piano can play itself. We want to hear the broken human play it in its broken way. And it makes me have hope that as a society we will realize that art isn’t about impressing people; it’s not about how perfect you can do something. It’s about how much humanity can you transfer from you, through your art, to somebody else.”
— Creative Pep Talk “Episode 419 - Should We Keep Creating When the World is Upside Down?”
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