resolves

last bit of schoolwork from this doomsday scenario of a semester: late homeworks under the office door of a professor who is not showing signs of returning to campus before the year's out.

at any rate, i'm too finished with this semester to be looking back. clapping its dust off my sleeves, i'm ready to feel burdened with the things i want to be burdened with. real priorities are allowed to breathe now, and have their due. in the particular order that they occur to me, they are as follows:

- begin writing, again. that is, continue to work on the opus (for which i've found a title), but also be writing. be working with language. set aside regular time during the week for it. once the spring semester starts, i will have three classes at most, though hopefully less, to worry about. it will feel unbelievably light, i imagine. and i have a lust to kick out a draft of this book; it's wrapped around my brain like fierce ivy. i hope to write experimentally and aimlessly as well, as i will have the mental squarefootage for things to begin occuring to me again...

- get this house in order. that equals: the necessities of furniture and belongings to begin appearing in this new apartment of mine. a box spring. curtains. places to sit. things to eat off of. but also, even just as important: a desk or writing station. i am in this apartment because i didn't want to have to carve my own space out of someone else's home any longer, where i would hope, but not actually get around to, sitting down and doing some creative work. its a small place i have, but what little extra room there was ever going to be in whatever place i landed was always already devoted to this...which leads me to...

- the studio. finally unhindered by others, significant or otherwise, i have freedom of space, freedom of motion, freedom of quiet, freedom of late hours, freedom of mess. it takes more than ability to do something creative, unfortunately, but i no longer have to let anything stand in my way, or excuse my inaction. i need some more tools for course, but those can and will be gotten. nothing but myself and the level of my own dedication will be responsible for my productivity...

- the joe kubert school of comics and cartooning correspondence courses. i love comic books. they make up more of my being than the water content found inside every human, and i think that's at something like 90%. i'm so full of superheroes that the first and only very clear career desire i've ever had was to draw comic books. it's an extremely difficult business to break into nowadays; comics are at a peak like they've never been before, and were on the rise even before all these superhero movies came out. few publishers accept submissions anymore. but there are ways to get noticed and i feel an obligation to my eight year old self to take a crack at it, before i shuffle off to gradschool and become a stuffy ol' academic. i will need all the practice i can get, and the correspondence courses offer a perfect opportunity to brush up, as well as a good reason to get my ass in the studio and log some hours doing artwork....


these are the plans i've been developing while my life has been on hold since september. it is coincidental that i am able to voice them and focus on them at year's end. they are not resolutions, they are my resolves. it means the world and all my future to see them through.