Beginnings

Absolutions and Resolutions

“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want and all that is left is compromise.”
—Anaïs Nin

ChimaeralEyes2015

And so another year has come to greet us, Dear Reader.

Two years ago I made the decision to devote more time to my art – words as well as images – and try to make some form of living off of it. Then life happened. The struggle to live up to my own expectations and goals repeatedly took the back seat to balancing the rest of my life. Things have been rough and chaotic; my life has changed in ways I never expected and wasn’t prepared for, and as a result I have neglected my creative pursuits. But no more.

Things are about to change.

There’s little point in regretting the past or feeling bad about opportunities I did not take. The past is gone and it has made us who we are today, after all. But it is never too late to change. I’m not usually one for New Year’s resolutions – any day is a good day to start changing for the better. But considering that today is already the 7th of January I guess these aren’t really New Year’s resolutions anyway.

So, Dear Reader, my resolutions for this year are as follows:

– I will make it my goal to write a minimum of 300 words a day, on average.
– I will make it my goal to produce a minimum of one piece of art a week, on average.
– I will make it my goal to finish a minimum of one project a month, professionally.

On the chance that I can live up to this schedule, I should end the year with 12 professional projects, 52 new pieces of art, and nearly 100,000 words worth of story. I shall count this week as the starting point, counting from January 4th to January 4th 2016.

Now, let’s hope that this year is more cooperative than its predecessor!

 

Happy New Year

“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
―Theodore Roosevelt

ClockSketchHappy last day of the year, Dear Reader! 2014 was a pretty good year for me.

Artistically, I have branched out, improved, and taken a few steps further toward something resembling an actual career. I haven’t been as productive as I would have liked because I kept myself busier with personal issues than I had expected, but we all struggle to manage the limited time we have each day.

Professionally, both my writing and my visual art has been well received, though it has not yet led to many paying gigs. I have made new contact, though, and my followers on her and twitter have grown from zero to over a thousand. As I ease toward 2015 I feel I have a stable platform to stand on and that I am on my way in the right direction, at least.

Personally, I’ve made a number of new acquaintances, a few new valuable friendships, and I have grown incredible close to an already very valuable friend – a friend who has been invaluable for my personal growth this year. I’ve done a lot of work on myself, dealing with life and personal issues, and I’ve slowly begun sculpting myself into a new and improved me. 2014 has also been the first year of this millenium that I’ve been completely single – something that has been good for me, I think.

Not everything has been all sunshine and roses, of course. It never is.

The year has seen me struggling with my sense of self worth, my self confidence, and my self image – there’s been a lot to deal with on many levels and many of my friends have suffered this year. It has been no small feat to avoid slipping into my old behaviours and patterns, but for the most part I’ve done well.

All in all, though, I can’t really complain.

The good outweighs the bad by a fair measure, which is pretty darn amazing when you think about the state of this world.

I’ll leave you with a little insignificance I penned recently, after an idea I had years ago: In Passing

Happy New Year, Dear Reader – thank you immensely for this year, and I hope to see you in 2015!

Rebuilding

“Everybody needs a place. It shouldn’t be inside someone else.”
—Richard Siken

Maze

There comes a time in most of our lives when we have to rebuild ourselves.

Regaining stability and finding secure footing after our foundations have been torn apart, flooded and ruined isn’t an easy process.  We spend all our lives patching and building new platforms on top of the old broken ones, but sooner or later everything comes crashing down like a house of cards and we find ourselves half-buried in the rubble. Once free and on the path to healing and recovery we start sifting through the debris for salvageable pieces of us and our lives, realizing that there is no easy fix this time around.

We need to start over.

So we clear the rubble down to the still intact lower levels and try to use only the strongest stones for our new foundations. There might be a place for the smaller, more fragile pieces we have gathered later on, but putting them in now will only undermine everything. Build too fast, use the wrong pieces, or try to patch things together by including the pieces of someone else and it will all just break apart again. Sooner or later.

I’ve been trying to rebuild for a couple of years now.

However, I’ve been so blinded by the task at hand that I’ve used all the wrong materials and ignored the blueprints, only to tear the walls down again when they won’t hold up. And lately I have kept myself so busy with other things that I’ve almost entirely neglected the most important project – myself.

But I’m getting there.

The world around us has a tendency to supply most of the things we need (if not all) if we only keep our eyes and minds open to it and are willing to put in the work. These past few days I’ve come across people, writings and resources which not only inspire me to get back on track, but come with the added bonus of new ideas on how to build myself up.

All too often we incorporate other people and other people’s wishes into the foundations of the life we build for ourselves, instead of first making a strong and durable foundation in the person we are, on our own.

Coffee and Heartbreak

“Believe me when I tell you: Life will not break your heart, it’ll crush it.”
―Henry Rollins

Photo by DannieThings end, and there is preciously little we can do to prevent it.

Once again I find myself at the end of something; in a place of transition. Changes are happening at the coffee shop I’ve frequented for the past 8-9 years. The new manager is making stupid decisions, relocating and firing some of the best, most hard working people on such tenuous grounds that it seems impossible to not see it as a personal vendetta.

One of the people who has to go happens to be one of my best friends, and her case in particular has been handled with such sloppiness that I simply cannot ignore it. Now, I have a choice to make. Do I continue to give the coffee shop my – not insignificant – business, or do I find another way to get my caffeine fix? I’m leaning toward the latter.

For one, having already lost four of my favorite baristas and now losing two more, frequenting the establishment won’t be as joyful as it once was. Also, keeping up a happy face to the manager is not going to happen – my sense of loyalty forbids me – and as a regular it really helps if you get along with the proprietor. But it’s not an easy choice to make.

Coffee shops hold a very special place in modern life.

For the creative of us, they have become nearly religion – I know many people who work out of them, balancing privacy and social life, income and expense, familiarity and change of scenery. They are so much more than a place to go buy coffee – they are a place for dates, pit stops during busy days, breaks and relaxations, study and work. They are life and romance and friendship.

Back when coffee first reached Europe, men would go to coffee shops to discuss politics and business and philosophy. In the 19th century, they increasingly became the gathering place for local artists and writers – along with pubs and cafés that served absinth, of course. Many artists and thinkers have turned to coffee as their drug of choice over the centuries – Voltaire and Balzac are reported to have imbibed over 50 cups a day, at their worst (or their best, maybe), and both Bach and Beethoven were big coffee drinkers.

This particular coffee shop has really been my home away from home for the past seven years. I’ve seen seven managers and scores of baristas come and go; I’ve made several friends and many more acquaintances; I’m known by staff and regulars alike and I have never once been mistreated. Even though the recent rebuilding took away part of it’s charm, and even though stricter policy from the main office and the new management has further dampened the atmosphere, it is still part of me. I was there first.

At a modest count, I’ve spent over 4,000 hours at that café – talking, writing, drawing, laughing, crying, meeting new people and old friends. I’ve given it more business than I care to admit, but it and its staff have given me so much in return. I know its workings in and out and I’ve even helped out with things on occasion. This current turn of events make me angry, sad, upset and even hurt.

Regardless of where I go now, it will be with a heavy heart.

I do not particularly like change – at least not when it is forced upon me. However, I do realize that it is a necessary part of life – without change there will be no growth, no progress. And we need progress, all of us. And come to think of it…

How much progress in this world has not been fueled by coffee?

Stock photo by Dannie

Thyme and Tyde…

“The key question to keep asking is, are you spending your time on the right things? Because time is all you have. ”
―Randy Pausch

GrendelCurse

This past week has been busy.

I’ve finished, polished and submitted a new short story – I’m not truly happy with how it turned out, but with a limited time frame for submission and no clear vision of how to change it I had to make a decision: submit as it was, or keep it and rewrite later. It was an easy choice. Since I will never ever be truly happy with anything I do, it was better to send it out and let it try it’s wings now. I can always patch it up later if it crashes (or give it a proper burial, if need be – we will see).

I got a chance to meet one of my favorite writers and other good friends, discussing work and possible collaborations, receiving hints on exciting things to come, sharing stories and just generally catching up. Like always, it was a good day and an inspiring day – I left with a few new seeds germinating in my mind and a signed copy of a new book (perhaps not of the highest literary quality, but one I have been looking forward to regardless to satisfy my inner adventure-seeking child).

Lastly, I have welcomed a dear friend into my home for an as of yet unspecified period of time. Despite sharing a fairly small apartment and having different schedules it has been entirely pleasant. The arrangement has raised a number of eyebrows and furrowed a few brows, but I am confident that this will work quite well. As an added bonus I have received honest, valuable critique on my work and (perhaps paradoxically) more time to write. If nothing else, I’m hoping to come away from this experience with the ability to use my time more efficiently.

This trio of events have all contributed to my next project – telling a story that is very dear to my heart. This short story will likely be the most emotional, cathartic thing I’ve ever written, but I need to get it out. As of today, I have done most of the necessary research and the first group of words have been committed to page. It feels good, but at the same time I’ve been forced to think back on my life and contemplate the man I’ve been and the man I have yet to become.

These thoughts are, of course, not all roses and sunshine: there’s plenty of darkness and thorns in there. Have you ever tried navigating a thicket of thorns in darkness? It’s not entirely pleasant experience, let me tell you. Revisiting some of those moments have made me think about the present and what I can do to better myself. I may have a few regrets about how I have spent my time thus far, but one of the beauties of time is that you can never spend more than you have. Time and tide waits for no man, and so every hour you start on is fresh and unspent; a blank page to be filled.

How are you going to fill the next page you are given?

Just another step…

“You’ll need coffee shops and sunsets and road trips. Airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs, but people more than anything else.”
―Jamie Tworkowski

Time to get this show off the road, don’t you think?

If I have anything to say about it, this will be the first of a series of regular posts on this site. I’ve been meaning to build this place as my ‘Face to the World’ for some time now, but have only ever managed a small sporadic effort. The time has come for that to change.

This is where I will showcase my art; build a portfolio of sorts – where I’ll publish story projects, talk about what I’m working on and where I am headed, ramble about life and art and nspirations, and whatever else strikes my fancy. Like most of my online presence, I will keep this page mainly in English (my apologies to those of you who may have difficulty with the language), BUT I will occasionally put things on here that are in Swedish. It is my native language and I do write a fair amount in Swedish as well (again, my apologies to those of you who may have difficulty with the language).

This isn’t really a new beginning, it’s just another step along the way. I’ve been headed down this road for a lot longer than I have to show for it – all of my life, really. About two years ago I made the decision to stop mucking about and get some direction in my life; start focusing my creative energies into something useful. Then life happened, and for the past two years I have been trying to pick up the pieces of my life and put them back together in new and exciting (and hopefully useful) ways. It hasn’t always been easy; it hasn’t always worked the way I had hoped; it’s been rough on some of the people around me. For all that I have lost these past few years, I have still gained a lot: friends, inspiration, insights – a whole new life, in a way. It’s high time I rolled up my sleeves and really got to work on making it the best life I can.

So with that I welcome you to this site, to this journal, to this window into my soul – and through it share in the next step on my life’s journey. Like the quote up top here says, I’ve needed coffee shops and sunsets and road trips; I’ve needed airplanes and passports and new songs and old songs – but people, more than anything else.

I still do.

Chimaerallogograd

  • Read – Desolation Angels;  Jack Kerouac
  • Watch – About Time;  Richard Curtis
  • Listen – I’m Still Here;  Mindy McCready

 

A New Life

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
―Anaïs Nin

So, here goes nothing…

From now on, my day job is only part-time. With a bit of luck and a whole lot of effort, this means that I should be able to focus more on my writing, as well as other creative works. Though knowing myself, and knowing what I have to deal with besides work and creating, it will probably be awhile before I get any semblance of routine into my life.

It’s a leap of faith and there’s nothing in sight below this edge but jagged rocks and churning water, but I’m airborne now. I should be able to grow wings or build a hang glider or something before I’m crushed against the rocks, right?

Right?

And so it begins…

“I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.”
―Jack Kerouac

Hello world, here I am – naked, screaming, full of potential!

You don’t know me yet, and it will be a lifetime until we are truly acquainted with one another, but rest assured that we shall both be irrevocably changed before this friendship is over. My time is now.

I see you.

ChimaeralEyes