Plans for the year

Plus tracking sheets and Mutual Aid for Artists round two

The cultural norm of resetting and goal-setting for the new year has hit me hard this year. I feel the need to enter 2025 with some kind of plan, even if sticking to a year-long plan is not my strength.

2025 themes and goals

• Finish the top of my big patchwork quilt

• Swim two to three days per week

• A year of resourcefulness (more below)

• Make sourdough bread (dammit!)

• Volunteer (at FabScrap and Edgemere Farm)

• Start a mending club

• Start a free art supply closet somewhere in my local community

• Eat pizza on Fridays

• Do projects with my kid

• Take myself on artist dates

Patchwork quilt top that I would really like to complete this year.

The biggest theme for my 2025 is a Year of Resourcefulness

I was considering joining the hoards of content creators in doing a “Buy Nothing New 2025” year. But I know myself well enough to know that a single failure during a buy nothing year will send me spiraling into self-flagellation and the only way to make myself feel better about my failure will be to buy lots of new things. Basically I would be setting myself up for failure.

So. Instead, I’m trying a Year of Resourcefulness. Letting myself desire as much as I want, but first attempting to make said item with supplies I already have. Either make, thrift, borrow or trade for the item.

What I really want is to rewire my brain away from online shopping as the default setting. It’s too easy to see some image online and then search for a particular thing you saw and buy it within minutes. I’m creative and resourced enough to try a different path! I enjoy the dopamine hit of getting something new as much as the next person, but I also know my sense of satisfaction lasts much longer if I make something or find it at a thrift store! I can still tell you all of my household items that I thrifted or found for free on the streets (like my Boos Board cutting board found for free in the hallway of my former studio).

It’s somewhat of a continuation of my “pretend you are on a boat at sea” rule that I gave myself in November during my Residency-at-Home™ week.

Pretend you are on a boat at sea.

The other major theme is to expand my sense of community

Two years with a baby / toddler really pulled me inside out, I spent a lot of the last two years focused internally on our own home and raising this kid. But this year he goes to public school in the fall and it’s time for me to move from a me to a we mentality.

I will find a way to make a free art supply closet somewhere in my neighborhood and participate in free art education programs, either volunteering to teach or facilitating art education.

There are free spaces already available in my area so how do I get involved there and contribute to the existing infrastructures instead of building from scratch or trying to do everything by myself? My daydreams include a magical community art center, run by yours truly, but does that even need to exist if we already have a community center where people gather?

I gotta start where I am. We have a government funded community center, so why not use it? Last year a friend and I started a toddler playtime there, what else could we do in that space? We also already have a very cool community farm. So how can I support that?

And of course, my personal fun project wishlist for the year:

• Tent for my kid’s room

• Some kind of dollhouse, maybe cardboard, fabric? I have a blurry memory of having a small house that looked like a log from the outside, but then a flap opened up and you could put little creatures inside!

• A magical shelving unit in the living room / entryway that solves all of my storage problems forever!

• Pinafore dress

• Matching tank top and shorts combo

• Apron

Tracking a year of practice

Last year I used a calendar format to track everyday that I exercised, wrote for this newsletter, or spent time on my personal practice. Inspired by Lori D’s Pictoral Production Scheduling (hers are obviously way cooler than mine!!) I am taking a new approach to my monthly tracking sheets. This year’s sheets will be a more fun and funky drawing without the traditional grid format of a calendar, plus little reminders of some particular things I want to get done in the month!

I found that seeing the months add up on my wall last year kept me incredibly motivated to keep going. Daily practice adds up quickly.

Mutual Aid

The last round of Mutual Aid for Artists was an incredible success and it’s time to do it again. If you are a paid subscriber, thank you! Your subscription fee is directly funding this round of mutual aid for art supplies. If you want to contribute to the fund, become a paid subscriber (monthly or annual) today!

Additionally, you can make a one time payment via Paypal or Venmo (just email me hello@bekkapalmer.com for the links to those).

The last time I did this we ended up with two readers who matched the initial $150 I put into the fund and we were able to over-deliver on all of the requests. What a gift!

If you want to request funds, click the button below for the form. This is not a merit-based distribution, I will distribute as much as possible to everyone who requests funds. Send this email to all of your friends! Anyone can request or contribute.

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Thank you for reading, and sticking with me!

I’ll be moving to a twice-monthly publishing schedule this year, see you in a few weeks.

Bekka