Catch Your Breath! + Morning Light
Slow down....there are a lot of days yet to come.
Today’s letter is a short reminder that the race is optional.
“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” — Mahatma Gandhi
Happy Sunday!
Are you out of the gate? Are you stuck and still idling? Are you realizing you are low on gas? Are you running and already feeling out of breath? Did you underestimate the hill? Are you already tired?
Slow down.
You really can choose to skip the race.
It’s okay to be behind.
Stamina, persistence, accountability, and resilience are important in some contexts, but keeping up, running faster, and running farther don’t have to be your goals.
The year has barely begun, how can we already feel behind?
Stop and look around. What do you see?
Breathe in slowly, and in again before you release.
It is okay to slow down, to look at the sky, to watch the movement of the leaves as they readjust after a squirrel runs through.
It is okay to not cross everything off your list.
It is okay to sit and do something you enjoy even if it takes longer than you expect, even if it means something else doesn’t move forward.
It is okay to not even think about it as being behind.
It is okay to have a different measuring system entirely about what counts and what matters.
I think so many of us are just trying too hard. We’re trying to do all the things and be all the things and see all the things and write all the things and draw all the things, and it doesn’t always matter. It isn’t always fulfilling.
I hope your new year has gotten off to a good start, but I also hope it’s gotten off to a slow start. I hope that you have carved space to just be.
One of the things that has most surprised me in the last few weeks is the fact that beyond the front door, seemingly every day, there are squirrels. I know there are squirrels in the back in the tall trees beyond the falling-down fence. I often catch sight of squirrels running through the branches of those trees when I am sitting facing the window, but I have never seen a squirrel in the front of the house, and I had no idea squirrels were running between the houses.
It could be just one squirrel.
I added a security camera to the front door, and over the last few weeks, the camera triggers most mornings, and the clip shows a squirrel running across and down the ledge of the landing. It is just really funny because I would never have guessed that every day a squirrel runs across the porch.
It is easy sometimes to think that we know everything about a certain moment or a certain context, a certain situation, a certain reality, and yet sometimes we only know as far as we can see.
We fill in a reality to give lines to the rest of the scene, to extend the known. We imagine we know what happens beyond the periphery, outside the door or window when we aren’t looking. We create stories based on logic and experience. We make assumptions without realizing that extrapolating reality from a limited set of lines doesn’t always create an accurate picture.
The mental image of the front porch now has to include the possibility of a squirrel running across the ledge. I had never considered that I might open the door and find a squirrel on the ledge.
I had not been thinking about a word for the year. I haven’t had a chance. I do consider it personally important and impactful, and yet it is something that I am okay with waiting to do until I have time to quietly think through a few options. I do know there will be plenty of time to sit with this kind of question in the coming weeks. I don’t get too worried about missing out on the first few days of the year or the first week or so in terms of the frenzy of having everything lined up. It just doesn’t really matter if it all happens right away.
I haven’t always been that way. I sometimes envy people who can always work months ahead so that posts and ideas unfold with the calendar, but I try not to let the timing be a worry.
I want a word that will be an anchor and a catalyst, one that has the right resonance. I don’t want a word hastily chosen to meet the day on the calendar.
I haven’t spent time contemplating a word, but sometimes our words find us. I haven’t settled on anything yet because, really, I wasn’t even looking, but a word popped up the other day, a simple word, and I thought maybe that’s it.
As has often been the case, it isn’t really the word I want. I’m tussling with it a bit. Some of my most powerful words through the years have been ones that I initially resisted.
I decided not to write a full letter today. As I approach the end of my second year of weekly letters, I feel the need to stand still and look around and sort out the shape of this path. I feel I am running so hard and yet standing still.
No real letter today, but here are 5 things on my mind. [Removed.]
I sat by the ocean this week. I sat on the top of a mountain this week. I looked at twilight at both ends of the day this week. I finished something, and I started something. I have a few documentation projects in play, one new. I haven’t made any goals or set any targets yet, but I generally do make a few loose notes.
Below: a wrap on another month of light, the first week of 2025 in the illustrated journal, and a few photos from the week.
I have trouble letting myself not write a full letter. It’s just a different kind of letter, but that distinction is helpful.
After I post this, I will be taking my son back to school. That will be the first of two goodbyes, the next coming next week. Then the year and the reality of the year will sink in, and I will be sitting again with my quiet routines and a lot of things still waiting in the wings.
Thank you for reading. I hope we have a very good year of documenting life ahead of us.
Amy
🎯 The Sunday post is free to all readers. Thank you to readers who have upgraded their subscriptions or made a donation. I am excited to be documenting life with you in this new year. Have paper? Have pen? The quotidian is ours to explore and record.
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December Light
I did finish the second full month of light tracking at the end of December. It was hard on January 1 not to go ahead and get up and do it again. I may ultimately regret not doing that, not plowing ahead in the new month and new year, but I am also glad to not have set that alarm.
Here is the second set of days of morning light from 2024.
I used the same overlay, for simplicity, and the same general approach that I used in November. There was irony to the fact that, in December, we had a lot of rain and most mornings were very dark or very flat and monotone in color. Continuing to get up in the dark each morning when the twilight was flat was an exercise in persistence.
The few mornings that offered color were a treat.
I feel sure I will return to this project, but sometimes we have to also prove to ourselves that we can break habits and routines. We have to be willing to set aside layers so that we have a chance to move into something new.
I do already miss it though. (I know how grounding the practice was, but maybe I needed a week off, and this aggregate look at the days of December, to fully appreciate that.) (See the first month.)
Illustrated Journal — A New Calendar Year
My week 1 page is unfinished and also a bit underfilled, but as I have expressed on the Illustrate Your Week prompt pages, this isn’t a challenge in which you have to constantly be playing catch-up. Instead, do what you can and go with the days or weeks of the year.
No significant changes to this process yet, but week one of another year of weekly diary list comics: (2024 roundup)
Photos from the Week
Postcard Prompt #4
Postcard prompt #4 is live. It probably isn’t the prompt you expected, but I wanted to be outside of the typical “new year” prompts. By the end of the post, I had wound around to an intriguing approach to tracking a year of reading, but really, it’s all about a single postcard in this year-long series of postcards. Other than the Proust stack, the books in the images are somewhat random (and old). I could have shared countless stacks of books that might intrigue me as a short stack to read through as I slowly adapt to the idea of emptying my house. (I may not get fully into what may be my year of Proust for another week or so. I want to be intentional more than I want to check off each day of the year.)
Weekly Bits and Pieces
Old podcast episodes mentioned or related:
Episode 458: Mystery (about The Boy…)
Made It?
Thank you for reading along! I always enjoy your comments and invite you to chime in. Let me know what stands out for you, what you think after reading, or where we connect.
If you selected a word for the year and want to share (I keep mine private, and that’s okay)
What is one project you have started for January
An affirmation you will carry into the new week
Alone, lonely, or part of a pack
Postcard reminder: I really appreciate those who sent a postcard so that I have other options to mix in for the monthly image for the postcard prompt post. If you want to send a postcard, please email me at illustrateyourweek@gmail.com.
As a general reminder: I draw with a small group on Sundays. If you are interested in a casual group, please let me know.
Thank you for reading Illustrated Life. Writers need readers, and I am grateful for every reader!
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Unless otherwise noted, all images in this post are ©️ A. Cowen. All rights reserved.
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Lonely, unfortunately. My word for last year was health, and I didn't make much headway, so that one is sticking around. I did things that have improved my mental health, but I need to invest some energy into my physical health. Perhaps "connect"? Milo and I went to the January meeting of the local zine group yesterday. The location changed and it is now at a much hipper, but less convenient space. Figuring out parking is going to take some thinking. Everything about the experience made me feel like a country mouse in the big city, but paying $12 for parking was the biggest surprise. I invited one of my substack friends (who I had not met in the flesh previously) and they were able to attend as well! I hit three categories of connecting - with my kid, with a fellow artist, and with the group.
I appreciate this message of not having to be part of the race, of it being ok to slow down, to carve out space to just be. I also enjoyed seeing your capturing of light, and your photos, and thinking of a squirrel who seems to have a daily routing of running across your front porch in the morning. I don’t have a word right now, and my project is trying to finish this current client project. I would like to get into my sketchbook (I am always inspired by all the illustrated week pages I see) but I guess with my creative work I’m in a bit of a race to finish right now so that is where my drawing time is going for the time being. Thinking of you this week with the goodbyes that have and will happen, and the importance of those quiet routines.