I’ve been feeling queasy for a while now.  It started in early November, when I nearly lost my service dog to a potentially fatal twisted stomach.  He had just turned 7.

A month ago I cried at the memorial service of an occasionally grouchy woman who was a major fixture in my life for most of my childhood.  She was 58.

My grandmother has been in and out of the hospital for the last few weeks.  From one day to another the picture changes.  She is 92.

Life is freaking short.  I will turn 30 in less than six months.  When did that happen?  In my mind I’m still 9 and a half, still running around with an apron on my head pretending to be one of the nuns from The Sound of Music, still laying in the moss and the dogwood and the sunshine, thinking about all the things I’m going to do when I grow up.

The new year is only a few days away, and people are making promises to themselves.  This year I’m not.  Instead, this year I’m making promises to you.  Here they are.

1. I will dedicate myself to my art, and to making something that someone, somewhere, will feel.
Quite some time ago I figured out that what I really wanted to do with my writing was to give people what books had given me as a kid – a way to escape.  I figured it out, maybe, but I haven’t done a lot about it.  I’ve been too scared.  See the following.

2. I will write as much crap as I need to, even if it’s mountains of it, even if it’s enough crap writing to bury cities and continents and planets, because that is what I have to do to get to the truth.
I hate writing badly.  I hate the idea that something I write will make people wrinkle their noses at their screens and secretly think “Huh.  That’s… well, not very good, really.”  I hate the idea that someday I might be a well known and pretty decent writer and someone will turn up some of my older, clumsier, stupider words.  But no one paints masterpieces first.  Nobody.

3. I will experiment boldly.
I hate taking risks.  It sends prickles under my skin and makes me want to run away.  I want stability, I want safety, and I want to know that things will be what and where I expect them to be.   That’s a lousy way to be creative.   As of now, creative exploration takes precedence over feelings of safety.  I will try new things.  And they might suck.  And it will be okay.

4. I will (mostly) quit thinking about the publishing industry.
There is absolutely no point, no productivity, no anything-good in my getting all wrapped up in agent blogs and query letter advice until I have something I feel is beautiful and worthwhile to put out into the world.  It’s a waste of time I could spend writing.

5.  I will be a freaking artist!
My talents are not now, nor have they ever been, practical.  I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make them practical, or how to at least make them look practical.  Screw that.  I’m a writer, and a dreamer, and an imaginer, and the very fact that those things are utterly impractical and unnecessary is what makes them meaningful, and important, and worthwhile.  I hereby make the promise to commit myself foolishly to new experiences, to dreamy thoughts, and to messy words, in the pursuit of creating something true and beautiful.

Art, for me, is about internal truths given to the world.  That’s why I’m making my promises to you instead of to myself.  So that when I’m 30, or 58, or 92, or 115, and my time is up, I will have left my mark behind, and it will all have meant something.