Celebrate!

Alexander Valley chardonnay in the Reidle stemless, "Snow (Hey Oh)" by Red Hot Chili Peppers on iTunes. Same song, different beverage than when I actually started this post this morning (that was coffee in the Barcelona skyline mug). Can you tell it's almost showtime? Coffee to start the day, wine to end. In the middle, four kiln loads, several phone calls, problem solving, designing on the fly--all of it at the speed of light. Yesterday was like that too--so much so that the post felt like a rote list of my gotta's, rather than words of the substance and weight deserved by the first day of a new year.

In honor of the New Year, I decided to take a bit of time and get weighty tonight. I thought about resolutions, things I would track, things I would do, things I would Jott to a special calendar... and then I took a deep breath and let it all go. There will be no earth-shaking goals, changes, pronouncements this year--at least nothing that I'm going to plan now. I can barely keep up with my business the way it is.

For instance, Why would I need to put a small jar in the studio to store all the glass that I would otherwise throw out in a year? Yes, it's cool that my entire glass waste for a year would fit into a little jelly jar, but I don't need to prove it to me or anyone else.

And, yes, I've always wanted to know exactly when the different flowering trees, vines and shrubs bloom here in Atlanta, but I probably don't have enough real need to set up a gardening calendar on Google so I can Jott the date to it every time I see a new plant species in bloom throughout the year (and that's after jotting the temperature and whether or not it rained to it _every_day_). I just don't have that much large scale garden design left to do here that would benefit from knowing *exactly* when azaleas, camellias, gardenias, magnolias, jasmine, crepe myrtle, cherries, peaches, etc. bloom and does their blooming season overlap in a meaningful way for a non-stop blooming garden. If I had a new yard to do--or if I were a landscape designer, maybe it would be worth the vig, but me, now? No.

Instead of focusing today (yesterday, now, the first of the year) on what I'm going to do, I am going instead to reflect on where I am and how truly great it is. For example, next Monday Dee (my friend the jewelry artist who does the same shows I do), and Becky (the wonder assistant and glass bead jewelry designer), and Todd (my new collaboration partner who is Bentwell Metals), and Bill (my first collaboration partner who, along with his wife Elaine, was Elliott Metal Works and is now Black Cat ArtWorks) are coming to the studio to do a dry run of Tuesday's Mart show set-up. Stacy (the former wunder-assistant and still good friend) was going to make a run to ULine to pick up the foamcore for me Monday, but it'll be too big to fit in either of our vehicles so I'm having it delivered instead. Bill and Todd will follow up the dry run with the real thing on Tuesday and Elaine and Bill will also be back at the end of the show (down from Greenville) to help me break down.

That I have professional friends who pitch in, hang out, help out, and in so doing enrich Siyeh Studio with me is so... amazing. A day with everyone here--no matter what we're doing (even cleaning out the garage to move everything to the studio as we did last summer) makes my heart feel so big I'm afraid that there isn't room in my chest for it. We are all helping each other build our businesses however we can, and the community we have built too is... I don't have words.

So now, the first of the year, I celebrate my friends and my colleagues in the art/craft business, and I know that working together, we are all going to have a stronger better year--regardless of the economy--than we ever have before. Go Dee! Go Becky! (B Bird Designs website coming soon.) Go Todd! (Bentwell Metals site coming soon.) Go Bill and Elaine! (Black Cat ArtWorks site coming soon).