......AND IN WITH THE NEW!

I have heard tell of a custom, which used to be practised in some parts of these islands, by which people did a little, on New Year's Day, of everything which they intended to do more extensively during the coming year. What this was supposed to achieve is unclear, except perhaps as a statement of intent, but I like to subscribe to this idea, partly because it's good to see traditions upheld, and partly because it gets a bit of work done anyway.

So yesterday I did a bit of work on one of my commissioned paintings, and a little writing, as well as some work on the computer. I cooked (chicken), did a (very) little cleaning, and a bit of admin, in that I took down the 2010 calendar and year planner, replacing them with the new versions with all the necessary carry-forwards of symbols (sad, eh?). It also had the first appointment of the new year - with the optician on Wednesday. A certain well-known credit card company had sent me a calendar which has a rather useful-looking system of admin contained therein. These systems are only as useful as the person operating them, though, so it remains to be seen just how effective this one turns out to be.

There were some omissions from from my a-little-bit-of-everything routine of yesterday. I didn't pick up my guitar, which spends month after month gathering dust on my sofa. There seemed to be so little time for practice during 2010, and an awful lot of this is necessary in order to achieve any proficiency as a musician. A damaged left-hand pinkie, broken in an accident at work in 1978 and never re-set, is a handicap! I have reams of classical guitar music manuscript lying unplayed in a cupboard, a situation which I recognise as unsatisfactory, and I would like to do something about this in 2011. The trouble is that I have to spend so much time on the various elements of being self-employed as a visual artist, that at the end of a day's work at the easel and the computer (where I have to strive to keep my website http://www.tait-gallery.co.uk/ reasonably attractive to surfers and search engines), all my desire to become a Segovia, Williams or Bream has strangely dissipated. In this, as with many other things, I must do better!

All the best, to you and yours, for 2011. May all your plans come to fruition!