Spent a good few hours this afternoon and evening doing press maintenance, a thorough cleaning that my poor Vandercook badly needed and probably hasn't had in a decade. After being stored unused for years in a newspaper print shop, then in a leaky barn, a dusty garage and finally my studio space (which happens to be located between a surfboard shaper and a carpenter), most of the guts of the press were caked with a thick black layer of sawdust, dirt, grime and dead cypress leaves.

We carefully took the press apart, wiped each gear tooth clean of an ungodly amount of dirt and caked-on grease and dried ink, readjusted the tympan, cleaned the rust off the press bed, oiled every bit that needs oiling and put it all back together. The press is clean and the cylinder rolls easily along its track. Michael took me out for Indian food to celebrate.

A new year, a new start, a clean slate - a clean press, anyway.

2004 was a hard year for me financially, emotionally, creatively. There were some incredibly wonderful points too, mostly in the first part of the year: getting married to my best friend and love of my life, graduating from Art Center (and Carla Barr's senior working photographer class), an amazing roadtrip to Austin, many visits with friends in San Francisco, so many meals shared with good friends and family. The last half of 2004, however, was a different story entirely. What goes up inevitably must come down, and sometimes it comes down with a force you can't predict.

Since my graduation and wedding, I feel like I've been cut loose without an anchor. After four years of hard work, structure and drive to get to a goal (and doing pretty well at it), suddenly I'm back to where I was before I started school, vaguely uncomfortable with my surroundings and with no real picture of the future. I'm just not sure where to go from here. I think I know where I want to go, it's just that getting there seems to be a minefield of negative bank balances, family emergencies, broken equipment and contracts falling through. Every time I feel like I've gotten started, a new project is just coming together, plans are in place, I've made progress - everything falls apart. I've spent so much energy trying to be a good grand-daughter, supportive wife, responsible landlord - all very rewarding and necessary things to be - but at the end of the day, I have nothing left for myself, or my art.

Without the structure of school, the stability of predictable income, student loan checks or a regular job, it's been easy to lose motivation or direction. I feel like I'm constantly second-guessing myself, unable to focus enough on any one thing because I simply have too many things that need my attention. My creative output, like the content of this blog, has plummeted. My day-to-day existence has more and more resembled bailing water from a sinking liferaft. I keep finding myself late at night, mentally exhausted, staring zombie-like into the laptop screen, spending hours reading news, blogs, anything but what I should be doing. The inertia is tremendous - this is something I've learned this year. It is easy to keep going and hard to stop when you are motivated and busy. It is equally as difficult to start again when you are interrupted. I have to-do lists and goals written over every one of my notebooks and journals and appointment books, and they seem to keep getting longer. None of the big things ever seem to get checked off. I'm not sure if I'm afraid to start or afraid to finish.

I made a resolution a few years ago not to make any more New Year's resolutions. You can't decide to stop or start doing something based on an arbitrary date and expect it to stick, especially if you're not ready. But this year I feel like change from the past is inevitable. I have to change. I will either get better at managing the unpredictable in my life and make some progress toward making my life creatively fulfilling, or I will fall apart.

The New Year is a time of new beginnings, of starting over - and I am hoping that 2005 will be a good year for me. I hope, too, that 2005 will be a good year for you.