Creative Alchemy

New Year's Unresolutions

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. The reasoning behind this is pretty simple. Usually (this year being no exception), I spend the first few days of the New Year paralysed by fear. I’m talking serious no-sleep, nails-dug-deep-into-the-palms- of-my-hands terror. I don’t sleep or eat properly (unless you count chocolate and toast as one of the major food groups). I stop writing, painting, communicating with the outside world on any kind of deep level, and I waste countless hours glued to trashy geek sci-fi (the more escapist the better) or chat shows (other people’s problems are so much easier to solve by shouting at the TV). All of this usually takes place from the safety of my sofa, in my pyjamas.

No failure only feedback

What do we do with things we don't need any more? Ideas, images, thoughts, approaches, names, abandoning the ones which don't seem to work is an essential part of the creative process, if we don't leave something behind its pretty impossible to move forwards at all.

We go through a similar process in other areas of our lives. Some people move on quicker than others, leaving redundant relationships, jobs or homes without so much as a backward glance as soon as they lose their sparkle, become too difficult or get boring, or simply because something better turns up which distracts their attention. Others resist change desperately, or simply hoard everything, accommodating the new alongside all the accumulated junk of years. There's security in accumulation but it's easy to drown completely in all the excess information.