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Notes From Here & Now: Another Spin Around the Sun

Hello out there.

Set your calendars back to day 1 (okay, day 10). Here we go again on another spin around the sun.

I don’t know about you, but I feel pretty exhausted. Not at all ready to tackle the endeavour of another whole year. Sometimes, life feels like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. As soon as you finish, you have to start all over again.

I’ve always described myself as wildly ambitious, with an urgent need to create and a genuine belief that, through my simple, accessible art, I stand a reasonable chance of altering the needle of public discourse in a positive way. That's an enormous undertaking, and I sometimes find myself preemptively worn down by the prospect.

“Be the river, not the rock” is one of my guiding mantras when I feel especially weary. The rock, in all its stubborn steadfastness, eventually erodes over time. Whereas the river, in its consistent and continued meandering, always finds a way forward.

In moments like these, I try to remember that the river, every now and then, will gather lazily in a pool before plowing on.

Between making art in my two studios (paintings tend to happen in Brooklyn, and books in Belfast, although not exclusively) and one enormous book tour, I have found myself on airplanes a lot. At this point, I know the safety demonstration by heart. Assuming I'm not alone in feeling drained by the anticipated effort of the new year — both self-imposed and external — I've noticed the significance of a key line in that safety video, especially in moments like these, “Put on your own mask before you attempt to help with someone else’s.”

For anyone out there who needs permission to take a moment for themselves, this is it. As my friend Aaron once said, “You can’t drink from an empty cup.”

So, I, your humble author, will be trying to slow down this month, dusting off the watercolours and going back to simpler things for a while — time to put on my own mask and try to fill my cup.

–Oliver