December 2025: How to Begin again (again)
I began making art as a total beginner when I turned 30 and was in serious need of a hobby, "something that gives but doesn’t take." I had come to the place where everything in my life was in service of survival, and my health was taking a sharp, multifaceted downturn. I needed something soft, that was for me, that felt good, and that was flexible: something welcoming in sickness and in health, in grief and in inspiration, with 5 minutes or entire hours.
So, I began. Which sounds like a dramatic turning point in retelling, but it wasn't really. It was just something I did one day in 2016 for 15 minutes. Whatever marks I made have long since been recycled, but here's what I kept: my first go at beginning. And it's turned out to be 90% of what I need to be an artist. Every day now, I begin. Each time that I make a mark, I am there on the edge of what I've never made before. I'm stopping something else in order to pick up the pencil. I'm turning my attention to the canvas and away from the compulsion to get something done, to see what's new, to work or scroll or take care of someone else. This kind of beginning is the first creative skill I fostered, and to this day is my most treasured one.
I wrote those last two paragraphs for one of our very first EDI posts, four years ago. Since then, I've talked quite a bit about our capacity to begin, and begin again, as one of the core practices we need as creative people. Complex tasks like creativity do not become habits. Art isn't something we lock in as an immediate or reflexive or automatic behavior. Making something is always a whole-person act of reflection, of being in your body, of imagination, of reaching. Every time we come to create, no matter how much we've set our lives up to accommodate it, we must be awake and willing to bring something into existence for the very first time. This takes a kind of emotional mettle, a boldness. Even, when it's in the quiet and privacy of our own sketchbook.
And here we are now at an ending, which is, as we all know, just one more type of beginning.
For me, this moment feels like a shift towards learning – I want to turn my attention toward things I don't know, rather than chatting on and on here about the things I do. I'm also finding out how it feels to live within my means – particularly in terms of time, creative energy, emotional capacity. This year has been a series of endings. I am letting my life slink down until it fits well within what feels easy. I am letting my inspiration pile up. I am saying no until all that's left around me are a few easy yeses. I've never done this before. It's new.
What are you beginning?