Thirty-One Days in January

I'm nearing the scheduled end of this experiment and I can't help but be impressed with my unlikely dedication to it.  There's a certain comfort in the forced repetitive creative that I didn't anticipate.  I'm going to think about that some more before I write about it – meantime catch up on the project at the links below if you're new to the blog.

Thirty-One Days in March (Part 1)

Thirty-One Days in March (Part 2)
Thirty Days in April

Thirty-One Days in May

Thirty Days in June

Thirty-One Days in July

Thirty-One Days in August

Thirty Days in September

Thirty-One Days in October

Thirty Days in November

Thirty-One Days in December

Wednesday – 01 January 2014

Day (1) art.  I hope the rest of this year isn't as chaotic as this little guy is.  If it is, so be it...I'm about to make 2014 my bitch regardless.     

Song of the Day: Blue Collar Man - Styx

Thursday – 02 January 2014

Local color.

Song of the Day: The Sidewinder - Joe Sample and the Soul Committee 

Friday – 03 January 2014

This looks like a good drawing assignment, no?  

Song of the Day: Amie - Pure Prairie League

Saturday – 04 January 2014

Runaway meat train.  

Song of the Day: Make You Feel Better - Red Hot Chili Peppers 

Sunday – 05 January 2014

Slow Sunday morning.  

Song of the Day:  Sunday Train - Cracker

Monday – 06 January 2014

Random ATL: Sovereign

Song of the Day: Prisoner of Society - The Living End

Tuesday – 07 January 2014

Windshield sunset.  It was barely seven degrees when I took Belle out for her morning constitutional – that's ridiculous in every possible way.  These evening colors don't suck though and that feels like an even trade to me.

Song of the Day: Open Road Song - Eve 6

Wednesday – 08 January 2014

Mediocre pic of today's untitled.

Song of the Day: Roses - Los Lonely Boys 

Thursday – 09 January 2014

In midtown tonight for a Paul Rand MODA exhibit.  Every time I see these sweeping retrospectives of uber-intelligent individuals in similar settings I feel like shit and realize that I've got ground to make up – how the hell can one person accomplish so much in such a short amount of actual time!?  It's irritating, what the hell have I been doing with my life, right?  An abbreviated postscript of lamb chops and bourbon at Shout and the commiserating drive home convinced me that I just haven't found the thread yet, my voice or whatever.  When I do, I will set the market...I'm sure of it.

Song of the Day: Gun - Uncle Tupelo

Friday – 10 January 2014

Cool morning fog. 

Song of the Day: California Dreamin' - The Mamas and The Papas

Saturday – 11 January 2014

Sometimes a puzzle, AM Gold and a deep red are all that's needed to make a Saturday night perfect. 

Song of the Day: Right Down The Line - Gerry Rafferty 

Sunday – 12 January 2014

Today I did this. 

Song of the Day:  Soak The Sin - Blind Melon

Monday – 13 January 2014

The view from this afternoon.

Song of the Day:  A Day At The Races - Jurassic 5 

Tuesday – 14 January 2014

These skeletal jewels have been absent from the ATL skyline far too long but they're coming back with a quickness (and a more vetted investment strategy I trust).  I don't trust it actually, but I dig it.  Best case scenario, this is what recovery looks like.

Song of the Day:  Officer - Slightly Stoopid 

Wednesday – 15 January 2014

At a site visit up in Adairsville this afternoon I realized that you can see the foothills of what I presume to be the Blue Ridge Mountains from the roof top.    

Song of the Day: Slave To The South - The Weeks   

Thursday – 16 January 2014

Random ATL: One Atlantic Center

Song of the Day: For Whom The Bell Tolls - Metallica

Friday – 17 January 2014

Backdoor sunrise. 

Song of the Day: Red Rubber Ball - The Cyrkle 

Saturday – 18 January 2014

This is an unfortunate study in how not to accurately depict a skyline sunset on a small canvas and that is probably exactly why I love it so much.

Song of the Day: Mz. Hyde - Halestorm

Sunday – 19 January 2014

Belle's doing her part to mulch up all the neglected leaves in the backyard before spring comes and I have to rake them all away.  That's a good dog. 

Song of the Day: September - Earth, Wind & Fire

Monday – 20 January 2014

Misty morning 'Hooch meditation.  

Song of the Day: Don't Cross The River - America

Tuesday – 21 January 2014

GDOT is replacing the Northridge bridge over 400 for some reason, much to my delight.  It really is astonishing how easily entertained I am. 

Song of the Day: (No More) Paddy's Lament - Flogging Molly

Wednesday – 22 January 2014

How wonderful this sunrise would have been if not for all of this nonsense crossing the morning sky.  It's still beautiful yes, but just south of epic – this is why I hate power lines.

Song of the Day: Someday - The Strokes

Thursday – 23 January 2014

Random ATL: Monarch Tower 

Song of the Day: Peace Sells - Megadeth

Friday – 24 January 2014

Another amazing January sunset.  I'm loving this winter sky.  

Song of the Day: Rollerskate Skinny - Old 97's

Saturday – 25 January 2014

My firm is active with The Drake House in Roswell.  It's an organization that sets out to help destitute single mothers get their feet back on the ground after a bad patch of life – it's a hand-up not a hand-out type of deal and I dig that.  Today a group of my coworkers and I built shelves inside of the storage building we'd previously donated to their cause.  In spite of the cold temps, it felt good to get my hands dirty again, to reconnect with my past as it were and to give back to the community in a small way.  With my karmic worth temporarily restored, I went home and watched a gang of Civil War documentaries, napped and listened to exorbitant amounts of Uncle Tupelo.  The what surely is the obvious conclusion to such a day is this little painting above.  I call it chickamauga.

Song of the Day: Box Of Rain - Grateful Dead

Sunday – 26 January 2014

Weatherman says it's going to snow next week.  If it sticks, we're screwed.  Even without any snow it has been a wicked cold January.

Song of the Day: No Sugar Tonight - The Guess Who 

Monday – 27 January 2014

In Savannah tonight for a scheduled day-long tomorrow meeting.  I had acceptable crab cakes, learned a bit about geocaching across the street from this tourist trap and laughed a lot about not much.  It was a good day.

Song of the Day: Dancing In The Moonlight - Sherman Kelly & King Harvest

Tuesday – 28 January 2014

We cut the meeting short, caught the last SAV-ATL flight out this afternoon and I slipped into the neighborhood via secret passage just as epic chaos was happening all around.  I was lucky apparently.  My neighborhood seemed damn near idyllic when I got there and elsewhere babies were being born in freeway medians.  It's dumb how bad barely two inches of good snow is – families separated, motorists trapped, abandoned cars, (8+) hour commutes.  I'll stop short of adding my critical voice to the din but I will say this – we suck at winter Atlanta.  It looks like mañana is def a work-from-home day.  I suppose it's a good thing I stocked wine this weekend.

Song of the Day: Let Me Come Home - Limbeck

Wednesday – 29 January 2014

Snow-day. 

Song of the Day: Burritos - Sublime

Thursday – 30 January 2014

Belle had an unexpected extended sleepover with her moms this week thanks to the wonder of nature.  She finally came home today and immediately went searching for her ball in the backyard snow.  After much deliberate manic tracking, she located, attacked and went berserk with her beloved.  Man I've missed that crazy lady this week.  

Song of the Day: Keep You Right - Blind Pilot

Friday – 31 January 2014

A couple of weeks ago I googled bad-ass wine stoppers...today my bad-ass wine stopper arrived and came home with me.  Happy Friday!  

Song of the Day: Motivation - Sum 41

Unresolved

As is often the case on the front side of a new year, I wax toward standard fare, hyperbolic unfounded optimism, “…ripe with hope and promise…” and all of that fantastic drivel, right?  If you’ve read previous January posts of mine, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  That bewildering excitement has too often been chased by an even more nonsensical series of impossible New Years Resolutions.  Mercifully, I have rarely spoken these assurances aloud so they remain off the record.  Rest assured that they have nearly always failed.  That is the inherent danger in making a resolution and why they are pointless – especially if said proclamation occurs in a public forum – there really is no good that can come of it.  Resolutions set us all up for predictable failure.  So far I’ve successfully managed to resist the pedestrian impulse to make any such declaration, and I feel better for it.  I’ve even resisted writing this until right now; an heroic accomplishment in of itself!

In the interest of full disclosure however, this New Year veracity is no different than any other.  I remain consumed with equivalent wide-eyed optimism.  I continue to be overwhelmed with the triumphant prospect of starting over, doing this one better than the last – who doesn’t want a mulligan sometimes, right?  The difference, if there is one this time, is that this year there is a centering calmness embedded beneath the surface of my bold anticipation that I can’t seem to shake or explain to myself.  I’m starting to realize that this resolution not to resolve if you will, has little, in fact nothing to do with the flipping of a calendar page.  It’s what I feel every second of every day of every week of every year.

There is an unspoken known, inextricably tattooed on the collective DNA of western culture – we quite literally want the world, and we want it now.  Americans especially simply will not tolerate or accept deferred gratification and this is why I think most resolutions fail.  None of which is to say that one shouldn’t strive to do or get or be resolved to whatever it is that turns their gear, I’m simply saying that one’s resolve shouldn’t coincide with the start or end of any human record or collection of occasion and damn sure shouldn’t be allowed to fade as time tick tocks away. 

Through exhaustive research, (that I’ve clearly fabricated within the confines of my singular runaway subconscious) I’ve determined that this is exactly why New Years resolutions too often fail.  Immediate gratification is the only course we know: it’s not even necessarily our fault at this point, it just is what is.  1 January you might say something like, I’m going to lose fifty pounds this year! 8 January: I’ve lost four pounds, go me!  15 January, you’ve gained two pounds back and by lunch on the 16^th, you say Fuck it, I want a cheeseburger.  End of resolution.  It’s the American way. 

A resolution of nearly any variety is often too abstract and/or too lofty a goal to attain overnight.  It’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon, right?  Hell, it’s not even a race – life isn’t a race!  My old man used to tell me that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  I’ve admittedly been blinded by my resistance to the obvious religious connotation of that statement since its first utterance, but I’ve started to understand it in my own way.  It’s not what you say, it’s what you do.  It’s not what you want to be, it’s what you are.  It’s not what you wish for, it’s what you have.  It’s not who, when, why, where or whatever else, it’s what are you doing to change it?  That’s a helluva lesson Pop, and it’s likely not at all what you were trying to teach me, but I dig it.

Allow me to digress.  At this very moment, there are north of 3.9 million job openings in this country and they range in skill-sets from garbage collection to CEO.  And yet, December’s employment absorption numbers were barely 490,000.  Why?  Of course, if you are unemployed, you are likely more suited to something above the station of garbage collector and of course, you are likely not qualified to be CEO but somewhere in the middle might fit, eh?  Maybe you are, as unfortunate as it is, forced to start climbing from a rung lower on the ladder than your expectations insist.  But to get to where you rightfully belong it should be a minor inconvenience.  Life’s not a race, but we do need to start running just the same.  If we could fill those 3.9 million jobs tomorrow, there would still be nearly 7 million American citizens without work and that sucks.  But can you imagine the collective sigh of relief this country would take if we graduated nearly 60% of those on the public dole to gainful employment?  It wouldn’t solve the problem, but it would be a meaningful, if not epic first step.  I’m not sure why I felt compelled to frame my argument through the tragic metaphor of unemployment, but I just did.  So there’s that.

The point remains intact though.  If it’s still not clear, here it is in black in white: incrementally improving your life every day is the only way to improve your life.  The only person that needs to know anything of it is you.  Every single virgin grain of sand that passes through the skinny bit of hourglass is a novel opportunity, a second chance to make it right, whatever that might mean to you.  I resolve every morning to be a better whatever than I was the day before; a better person, a better artist, a better son, a better friend, to be more compassionate, to think more often and deeper, to read, to make, to be.  I rarely succeed at any of those aspirations and that’s perfectly acceptable.  I’m still too quick to judge and dismiss, I say the wrong thing at the wrong time, I make mistakes, I fall down.  But I pick myself up and dust off.  I make amends if to no one other than myself.  I make peace and move on wrapped in the swaddle of this one unavoidable fact – the story is never told until worms crawl into my eye sockets and suck out what’s left of my brain and not even then if I’ve lived a full life.

Every sunrise brings the promise of a new and better whatever it is we want but only if we recognize and accept the gradational victories of our every day, only if we can comfortably reside in the uncomfortable interstitial space between yesterday and tomorrow.  Don’t for a second think that my long view isn’t as center stage and as powerful, if not more so than it has ever been.  It’s not that my expectations or goals have diminished – if anything they have been amplified.  I’m still intent on making 2014 my bitch just like I was 2013 and every other year prior (and every year after).  I am though more focused on the day-to-day, minute-to-minute aspects of that master plan.  It’s easier and more productive to spotlight my energy on making Friday better than Thursday than it is to obsess about my demeanor upon being finally recognized as the “coolest mother*&$#!@ alive.”  Life is not a race.

I’m as unresolved as ever and that is exactly as it should be.