Did you have a capital-d Dream this year? I had many quiet ones but I never formalized any of them, instead collecting and stringing my ideas and visions like little beads to drape about myself. This wasn’t my year for an annual plan or SMART goals or fancy New Year’s Resolutions—I never intended it to be; I just wanted to find my own flow and practice presence (perpetual presence).

But I did live by my books this year (sketchbooks, journals, notebooks, a bullet journal, stacks from the library and loans from Libby on my Kindle), and I’ll continue to do so in the coming one. Locating myself in a day or a moment, leaving notes and small records to mark time, gesturing at things I’m trying to understand or come closer to.

Sometime this year, I stumbled upon this image from Austin Kleon, and I was struck by the potency of his collage and how very tangibly that vision manifested. There is power to the images we create and it serves as an invocation to call more in within the pages of our sketchbooks.

If anything, I’ve day-dreamed about spaces for stillness, for being, for creating and seeing this collage really spoke to that. This year, my sketchbooks have been their own sort of spaces that transport and portal, filling and accumulating with all sorts of possibilities.

Today is about closing the books and making room for more. The practice itself adds potency and tangibility to these objects. I’ve been spending time with Lynda Barry’s Syllabus this week and it’s this presence I’m after too—

I wasn't quite 20 years old when I started my first notebook. I had no idea that nearly 40 years later, l would not only still be using it as the most reliable route to the thing I've come to call my work. . . . What am I after? I'm after what Marilyn Frasca called "being present and seeing what's there."

—Lynda Barry, Syllabus

Artist Date: Make Room

An artist date is a solo adventure designed to help you restock or fill your creative well. It compliments your creative practice—the doing and making—with seeing, experiencing, or expanding you in some way. Like most dates, it’s typically something you plan and leave your home for. But for today, you can cozy up in your studio if you have one, or a quiet spot in your home that affords you some peace and reflection. We’re going to make room and welcome in the new season, the new year, this time of transition. It’s up to you whether this is a quiet marking or a big event. May this artist date offer a small snippet of stillness amidst so much fullness if nothing else.