“What three words will help you in 2013?” That was the last sentence of the last post of 2012. I planned to write this post a month ago. I had my three words. But I also had doubt, the kind of doubt that sabotages movement.
“I believe in the power of words. Each year I choose three words to shape and focus my time, space, and energy. They usually arrive in my brain sometime between Thanksgiving and the New Year. I am grateful when they appear early, because I can roll them around and get comfortable with them.” I wrote this in the last blog, too. I got the 2013 words in late November and they have been rolling and rolling, but there is no comfort.
The words are prepare, practice, and evaluate. For me, they are derivatives of last year’s “invent,” the word that wanted more time. Some days these words elate me. On dark days, they seem to illuminate my inadequacies. Elation and illumination. I like it when my art causes that response in my viewers. Perhaps these words will make me a more wholesome artist.
Does your work inform and illumine your days? How does that happen? Do words help?
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As you know, I live life through words. In fact, words are THE way I find illumination in dark times.
I tell my writing students that I think through my fingers as they race across the keyboard. Sometimes there is elation over a perfectly turned phrase, a clever insight, or even early completion toward a client’s deadline. More often, the words give form to my thoughts, fears, jealousies, anxieties … inadequacies, as you have said. And what a relief it is to have that expression! No doubt these discoveries make us more wholesome, or at least more honest.
Your three words for this year are hard-working verbs. Here’s to art in action!