January is usually the time of year when we find the web and various other media inundated with a variety of either “Best of 2011” lists, or resolutions for 2012. I don’t think I’ll really worry about crafting this first post of 2012 to match either of those themes, but I won’t go so far as to say that I won’t touch on them a little bit.
Things have been pretty quiet around here on the website for the last couple of weeks, which I’m afraid corresponds to a lack of creative output on my part. I wrote about it a couple weeks ago, so I won’t re-hash too much, but it’s felt a lot like the combination of returning home from the Netherlands and diving straight into the Christmas Season created something of a double-whammy of distraction. It’s been surprisingly difficult to keep myself in the creative mindset that I was able to occupy while in Renkum, so I need to get more aggressive about walling myself off a bit and taking time to draw, take photographs, and create cryptic-looking alphabets like a crazy person.
Which, I suppose, allows me to veer dangerously toward the subject matter of some “resolutions” for 2012. I notice I haven’t really shown you anything new since November, which I’m going to remedy, especially since I have a photo project from the Netherlands that is basically finished. Along the vein of “Better Done Than Perfect”, there are several efforts that I need to close up, launch, or otherwise finish, several of which I think you’ll see in the coming weeks. In fact, to make myself accountable, I’ll go ahead and announce one of those things now: I’m going to add a comic feature to this site, which I hope to be able to update weekly.
By “comic”, I mean just that: an illustrated cartoon with dialogue balloons and everything. I’ve been working on it inconsistently for a little while now, and while I don’t have a whole heap of material built-up and waiting to be uploaded, I do have enough to get started, so watch for that in the future. What will it be about? At the moment, it’s just a little bio-comic about funny or interesting things that happen to me. In fact, you might be able to think of it as essentially being an illustrated extension of this journal, but with less words, and me being a little more indulgent of my goof-ball side. Watch for it coming up soon.
As for other things in the “soon” category, Lorie and I will be launching a Kickstarter campaign later this month to fund a bona fide expedition. For years now, since I was a kid, really, I’ve always wanted to follow the river from my family’s ranch in the Bitterroot Valley, all the way to the Pacific Ocean. I’ve always lived where the water “starts” in the snows of the mountains, and want to follow the journey from snowbank to ocean, and find out who I meet and what I see along the way. It won’t be an easy trip, of course. There’s a few rapids on the rivers between the bank I learned to fish on and the waves of the Pacific, and several dams. We’ll probably be wet much of the time, and (don’t tell Lorie) there will probably be a lot of mosquitos. It will be, in short, an effort to see if the West is still wild, and if there’s still room in the world for someone to ride a river from the mountains to the ocean.
Details, of course, will follow. For now, though, let me close by explaining why this journal entry is enigmatically titled “Codename Porkchop”. It’s nothing fancy, really– it’s the placeholder title that I put up there until I could think of something better, but Lorie liked it, so I’m keeping it there. My philosophy is that we need more enigmatic project titles these days, because things are more interesting when they have a good name to go with them. So, if you find yourself falling asleep because your boss wants you to work on the projected Q4 sales figures for the regional FST evaluation next week, don’t make a folder on your computer with a limp-fish name like “Estimated Q4 figs for FST”, give it a good all-caps name like “Project RED SHARK”, “Operation MORNING ZEPHYR” , or “CRIMEAN GAMBIT”. Sure, clear and concise titles might be more efficient, but I learned you sometimes have to make life a little more interesting if you work under florescent lights and don’t have a window.