Go forward.
“Every day, you have the feeling you are on the wrong track. This creates a
strong urge to go back and follow a different path. It is important not
to give in to this urge, but to keep going. It is a little like driving a car
at night, in winter, on ice, with zero visibility.”
—Patrick Modiano (Nobel Lecture)
Have confidence.
“Tell your own story, and you will be interesting. Don’t get the green disease of envy. Don’t be fooled by success and money. Don’t let anything come between you and your work.”
—Louise Bourgeois
Be forgiving.
“Let us forgive ourselves for writing poems that aren’t better than every other poem that has ever been written.”
—Dean Young
Proceed lightly.
“Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply… There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling…”
—Aldous Huxley
Read more poetry etc.
“Blockbusters are only / blockbusters if we / go see them, so let’s / go, let’s make them / what they are…”
—Maggie Nelson
Do write in the world.
“The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.”
—Ursula Le Guin
Happy New Year. Akemashite omedetou.
(Image sources: Gerda Kay, Louise Bourgeois’s “Ode à l’oubli,” Cy Twombly’s “Poems to the Sea,” Jen Gotch, Weegee, Can U Not.)