As a teacher, my new year starts and ends in May. While I attempt to turn off my teacher brain for a few days, it inevitably goes immediately to what I’ll be working on for the next school year. I do like to reflect on the end and beginning of the calendar year, much like most, and I try my best to set goals for myself and strive to reach them (and of course force my students to create goals and work towards them as well). The new year really is an arbitrary thing, different cultures have different dates and mindsets as well, but the important thing about it is this idea of a fresh start. Granted, the joke of messing up on the first day and “better luck next year” always comes to mind, but I think that we as people need that chance to start over, even if the previous year wasn’t so bad.

They say that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but you still have to make a voyage through the darkness. We never hear how long that tunnel is and what challenges you face when you’re in there. Many of us are still in the tunnel and we continue on a difficult journey. But it’s is necessary to continue moving ahead to think about where we started this year and what it means for creativity.

Creating worlds has been a fascination of mine since I was a young kid. As far back as I can remember I’d write little stories with characters, conflicts and worlds. As I got into junior high and high school the stories would have added details and more complexity. As any writer or creator knows, there are a lot of creators that don’t ever see the light of day.

Why not help bring these young adults together with mentors, guidance, structure? If we have the ability to help, why not help? That’s all I want to do, I want to help these kids go on and be great people, citizens, family members, human beings, artists.

This feeling was fresh to me and it came from the idea that someone I truly respected in the field gave me the time to share words of encouragement directly to me. A fire can be lit and stoked by those around you but sometimes there needs to be something a little bit more that kicks you in the backside to move forward with a dream. It’s fantastic to hear the stories of different writers and artists talking about their processes but these are usually spoken in vague terms or shared through different mediums that dilute the message.