I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions. Never have been. They always seem to fall into this category of best laid plans and paving stuff of the road to Hell that I find really distasteful. So when people ask me what my New Year’s Resolution is I say, without hesitance, that I don’t have one nor do I plan on adopting one.
In addition to the fact that I don’t much care to make a resolution that I know I probably won’t keep for more than a few weeks, I see a bit of hubris in the New Year’s Resolution. Maybe I’ve read too much Classical literature. Still, it seems to me that the most a person can ever do is set the foundation of the life he/she wants and hope for the freedom to react make the best of everything that follows.
Mind you, I’m not a fatalist and I’m not advocating passivity. Quite the contrary. In fact passivity is part of my problem with the Resolution. Resolutions are just words and words and they don’t seem to lead to deeds.
Since my circumstances are preventing me from continuing my undergraduate path for now it’s up to me to see to my education. Add to that the fact that one of the strongest weapons at the depressed person’s disposal is proactive behavior, I’ve adopted a new practice that I’m calling my “office hour.” I was first introduced to the idea last February during a workshop conducted from Actor’s Theatre of Louisville at ACTF.
Basically, the idea behind setting regular office hours is that the professional artists need to adopt professional behaviors. You are your own biggest advocate. There’s no way to stress that enough or repeat it to often! Each of us is our own biggest advocate. to be a successful professional artist, professionalism is key.
If you’re not quite sure how to go about starting your own regular hours, you’re in luck because I’ll be exploring that here. I think it’s a brilliant idea and I’m adopting it into my routine and I will be sharing my experiences with the practice in my blog.
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