The moment just before I fade into sleep is when I tend to have my best ideas. In the small window of opportunity between getting into bed and my mind running to catch up with the dream of the night, I am jolted awake by an idea for a sentence, title, pitch, and frantically stumble around for my phone to make a note.
This has happened much more frequently over periods of lockdown, where my mind has wandered into spaces of unproductivity. Whilst I do the actual work in busy cafes or libraries, the initial ideas arrive in moments of absentmindedness, when I drift into the subconscious. This is perhaps because ideas are not the part of the creative process grounded in material reality, but are the initial steps that exist in imaginary space, eventually becoming concrete.
A resolution on the other hand is a conscious, confident decision to do something. A resolution is a firm commitment, a determination to complete a task or take up something new, with the inevitable juxtaposition of a failed task, a broken self-promise.
I definitely understand the desire to see off this awful year and hope for better things in the near future. Goals in themselves can be extremely helpful, setting targets for yourself can be a useful motivational tool, and can help you narrow down what is important to you. However, using January as an arbitrary measure for instantaneous change- especially now when time is framed by a discourse of indecisiveness in public policy- carves out an artificial goal that will likely be unfilled in the coming months. And so, this year I (ironically) resolve to move away from resolutions, and let things be a little all over the place for a while.
The first lockdown was full of so much reflection, of bettering ourselves, and in itself this emphasis on looking inwards whilst sometimes helpful, was quietly exhausting. So, for Christmas this year I asked for books not that I thought I should read, but ones I really wanted to. Instead of trudging through the murky narratives of books by famous authors that made me feel like I was trekking through gum, I chose books that I couldn’t turn away from.
Periods of retreat into restricted spaces create locations for ‘rediscovery’. As we are limited to repeated surroundings, people, and objects, we try to try again, to re-discover things that already exist. A quick google search results in an overwhelming number of ‘rediscover’ themed articles, showing how we have tried to imagine our relationships to creativity differently, have re-learned a love for walking. Focusing on things previously thought of as discarded certainly brings attention to hobbies and activities eclipsed by frantic work schedules and busy commutes.
However, since we have engaged in so much reflective and re-discover discourse, I would now like to just exist as we enter this new year, to mould to the things that ease this difficult period. I want to move away from the idea of renewing what is lost: trying that meal plan that never worked again, hoping that that same form of exercise will suddenly excite me, wishing that if I just plug my ears and centre my eyes that the book with the woody style will suddenly inspire me. Katie da Cunha Lewin argues that ‘forgotten’ female artists have been relegated to the space of ‘rediscovery’ in the present day, through marketing techniques that situate the figure of the neglected woman artist as contemporarily empowering. As she states, ‘the language in which rediscovery is couched is often about reorienting the individual artist, assimilating her into the canon of greatness, rather than actually dismantling the structures of power’. In a similar mode, the posturing of certain activities as forgotten, neglected, and ultimately ‘re-discovered’, such as baking, playing music, being in nature, or reading, positions them as idyllic, and ultimately implies a kind of anthropocentric dominion over these projects.
“I would now like to just exist as we enter this new year, to mould to the things that ease this difficult period. I want to move away from the idea of renewing what is lost…”
I don’t want to engage in new year’s resolutions that are framed by these narratives of loss, because it is hard and hopeless work. Eloise Hendy discusses the trend of burnout fiction, that encourages readers to bemoan modern labour, but ultimately ‘replicate the sensations of apathy, exhaustion and futility they seek to describe’. These books tend to situate focusing on things you don’t like as an accepted state of the contemporary human condition. Through this lens, resolutions that focus on doing things that are hard and uncomfortable can feel like jobs that you fail at. For me, February tends to produce the familiar feeling of defeat when I realise again that I truly dislike going for runs, and I should just pick a sport or activity I like.
The online world is awash with new year ‘challenges’ that challenge you to work on yourself. To get rid of things from your home, to leave negativity in the past, to be less this and less that, essentially to be less than. Especially in a time like now, I think it is okay to just exist in spaces of confusion and vulnerability, and maybe in this way ideas may be born out of rest.
So, I suppose I’m not really doing away with resolutions, but I’m trying not to feel the yearly pressure placed on us to lose certain characteristics, or to gain new skills, or to ‘re-discover’ old pastimes. Instead, I want to allow myself to just ‘be’ in the new year.
Assemblage Collective 