Tell Me a Story: A Year on the Neck

January

February

In pics, etc.

Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering 'it will be happier'...
~Alfred Tennyson

He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.
~
Poetry = Anger x Imagination
~
Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together.

You can do it.
~
Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.
~Sherman Alexie

There's no room for demons when you're self-possessed.

March

~
'We live in America,' he said. 'Everyone who speaks English understands you. How they interpret you is something else.'
~
You know the bad thing about being a survivor... You keep having to get into difficult situations in order to show off your gift.
~Carrie Fisher

April

May

the object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a new soul.
~G.K. Chesterton

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
~
New Year's Day — Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
~Mark Twain

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential.
~Ellen Goodman

June

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
~Albert Einstein

Youth is when you are allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you are forced to.
~Bill Vaughan
and, I need to add, old age is when you say "fuck it" and hit the sheets at ten.
Hi, my name is Donna and I'm old!

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.