It’s become my practice to spend the last day of the year reflecting on what I’ve learned over the last twelve months.
Here are a few of my favorites lessons:
- Create from the heart, never the head. You get to the best parts of yourself on accident. The job of an artist is to orchestrate these accidents.
- Failure is the greatest way to propel yourself forwards.
- The work is always better when you’re having fun while doing it.
- Process > product (Easy to comprehend, but difficult to implement. This is a lesson to be learned again and again, as it’s both true of living a life and learning a craft.)
- “It is very dangerous to try to be a farmer when you’re really a pirate.”
- “Being a writer is an act of perpetual self-authorization. No matter who you are. Only you can authorize yourself….No one else can authorize you. No one.” — Verlyn Klinkenborg
- Sometimes, the miracles happen because we’re not paying attention.
- “At some point, when you create yourself to make it, you’re either going to have to let that creation go and take a chance on being loved or hated for who you really are ~or~ you’re going to have to kill who you really are and fall into your grave grasping onto a character that you never were.” — Jim Carey
- You have to let yourself be awful to wander, to play, to explore.
- “…things that start out poorly don’t always end poorly.” — Mike Nichols
Here’s to another empty page where we begin…
joshua chamberlain 