This time of year I prepare my dream, my vision, for the year ahead. I also read the last twenty years of entries from prior year ends. I’ve noticed that the visions that had emotion behind them, even impractical visions that seemed farfetched and illogical, tended to happen. Visions that would be kind-of-nice but for which I’m unwilling to sacrifice tended not to happen even if easy to accomplish. The passion is what counts, what makes the difference. The emotion behind an idea, a vision, a dream determines whether or not it will become reality.

Some dreams, some visions, involve financial cost or risk. I try to pay particular attention to the dreams that don’t require money to happen. What would make a qualitative difference in my life over the next year that won’t require money? Time in the woods, time sitting watching the ocean, particularly when the waves are roaring, time sitting by a wild river in the woods, won’t cost money but will make a significant difference. Reading interesting books won’t cost money. I’ve recently accummulated about thirty memoirs and journals of creative outsiders with a view to drawing from them for inspiration. Willie Nelson’s latest memoir, It's a Long Story: My Life, is one. Many Alarm Clocks: Selections From Sy Safransky's Notebook another.

One of my visions for 2024 though will involve financial risk — establishing a gallery for my art in a southern city or town — probably Hilton Head. On the surface it is somewhat impractical. But it is where the energy wants to go. It has emotion behind it. It captured my imagination a year ago and won’t let go. It is time to figure out a way to make it happen within the risk parameters I can reasonably take on at the age of 67.

Another vision I try to think through and write about at year end is what I most want to learn, what skill I most want to develop. For instance, I’m currently captivated by the paintings of Gao Xingjian. Aside from his painting, he’s an accomplished novelist (he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000), filmmaker, playwright, critic, and photographer. It is not that I want to paint like him, but I want to learn from the emotion he captures in his images. The stark beauty. The simplicity, the loneliness. My painting Blue Descent (above) is perhaps the closest of my images to his though I painted it before I became aware of his work. I want to experiment in that direction and see what happens. An artist always has to be in a state of becoming, reaching for something at the limit of his or her ability and imagination.

Assuming 2024 is a year of reasonably good health, which is the only way to plan, it is a precious gift. It is an opportunity to recreate ourselves in new directions. I want to be a better person a year from now, more accomplished, wiser. Talk less, think more. More relaxed. More contemplative. I want to spend time with thought-provoking people, creative people, people of imagination, insight and courage. I want to serve them, you, in a meaningful way. I want to up my game and add something important to the lives of creative outsiders, and the lives of seekers and searchers. My tribe.

I’ll report back a year from now. We’ll see how it goes.

What do you want to do with the precious gift of 2024? I write these words and think of a new friend who lives a simple life in a cabin in the North Carolina woods. I imagine he wants, in 2024, to deepen his connection with nature, to deepen his relationship with himself, with internal peace. To achieve an even greater equanimity. That too is a beautiful vision.

The important thing, I think, is to have a vision so that the year doesn’t just slip by, its potential unrealized. Writing, thinking through, one’s vision in a journal increases our chances of a quality year, a significant year.

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For a collection of reflections, Heron Dance interview and book excerpts on making dreams reality,
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