Reading Time: About 9 minutes
Here we are at the end of another calendar year. It has become a tradition in my household to spend December 31st working through the Year End Compass whilst sipping tea and snacking on cheese and delicious baked things. It’s an opportunity to reflect deeply on the year just gone, to see the fullness of what I accomplished and how I’ve grown, and to let go of anything I’ve been holding too tight. Then, as we move from the first half of the workbook to the second, it’s an invitation to consider the coming year and all the opportunities the unwritten future holds. There is something about the process that is both cleansing and galvanizing.
While I would never make my Year End Compass a public thing, I thought it might be fun to do a modified version of it for my blog as a way to look at my creative practices of writing and art and the myriad ways creativity helps me grow, connect with community, and find joy.
I invite folks to share with me the creative endeavors you have taken in 2023—leave a comment about the projects that have helped to sustain you, to give you a sense of connection, or that you’ve used to build community!
1. Avalokiteshvara
I started the year with a tentative commission, which is to say, I had a date in a calendar to talk with a person about a thing. I didn’t know if anything would come of it. I was hopeful, but wasn’t pinning those hopes down…
I met with my patron in January. By April we had figured out a contract and practice schedule. In June I sketched out the grid and began to draw the figure for a thousand-armed Chenrezig. In August I finished the figure, blessed the materials, and started adding colour. As of this writing I have spent roughly 108 hours with this figure this year!
Spending time with Avalokiteshvara never fails to make me feel connected to a lineage of liberation, as I am incorporating movement ancestors into the piece. I’ve been connecting more deeply with ancestors I already practice with and learning about ancestors I hadn’t heard of before. It is an incredibly powerful practice to have, and one for which I am immensely grateful.
2. Sacred Love/Sacred Lives
I completed sixteen pieces for the Sacred Love/Sacred Lives series in 2023, bringing the total up to twenty-one.1 Five of the sixteen were collaborations with fellow artists that I posted to them as a gift when completed.
Sharing disabled, queer, and trans joy and love this way was so good for my heart-mind. It was delightful to receive messages from the artists when they received their completed pieces, and to see them sharing the collaborations on their socials. Each time this happened, and each time I shared one of my own designs and it was flooded with likes and comments, it reminded me of the power of solidarity, community care, and art.
3. About this blog…
In August, while focused on thangka practice and Sacred Love/Sacred Lives, I realised the publishing schedule I’d set for myself for this blog was not working. I gave myself the gift of letting go of my weekly commitment, freeing up my time and energy to focus on my artwork and let writing happen as it happens.
This was a great decision and one I’m proud of making because it’s really hard for me to not stick to a committed schedule. I like being organized, but I’m aware I have a habit of holding myself to decisions that no longer serve me…. for reasons. I can’t actually fathom what these reasons are beyond a little ghoulish Capitalist voice that likes to pop up and tell me if I don’t stick to my schedule then I am failing.
I ignored the voice, using great willpower, and wouldn’t you know? Suddenly I had all this creativity and the writing just flowed. Despite the voice believing I wouldn’t write for my blog at all if I didn’t have a schedule, the opposite happened! I ended up writing a lot and publishing MORE than I intended. Like, my original blog plan from the start of the year was to take off all of December to give myself a break from the publishing schedule. By giving myself a break from the publishing schedule…I didn’t need a break.
The lesson? If a schedule works for you, use it, but if it’s no longer serving, let it go.
4. Manjushri!
Because I wasn’t fretting about my blog schedule so much, I got into a flow with my thangka practice and managed to complete the colourful version of my Manjushri figure that I first drew in 2017.
It’s been delightful to send prints and card sets of this piece out into the world! Like with Sacred Love/Sacred Lives, I get texts and emails back from folks sharing their joy at having this image or receiving a card with one on it. It was particularly fun to send a print and card set as a gift to the Dharma brother who gave me my Manjushri empowerment back when we were in chaplaincy training together.
5. Podcasts? Say WHAT?
Sharing my art publicly means folks have reached out to me to talk about art as a practice. I had the great pleasure of being on two podcasts in 2023…or should I say, of being on a vodcast and a podcast in 2023. :)
The first, about disability justice and living at the intersections of identity, was with Leo Aces Collins. I met Leo back when I lived in the UK. He attended a drag workshop I gave during a Pride festival. He saw me as a minor celebrity at the time.2 It’s wonderful to see him thriving in the world and I was honoured to be part of the work he is doing to empower others. It feels very full-circle and is a reminder that what we give to people and put out in the world can play a part in what they give and put out there too.
The second conversation was for Choosing to Create with Desiree Aspiras. It’s a small Buddhist world and Desiree found me through several mutual connections. We recorded this conversation in the summer, right as I was completing the pencil drawing of the figure of Avalokiteshvara.
I love that Desiree is giving voice to the role art plays (and has always played) in social change, spiritual growth, and our collective liberation. I listened to the other conversations she’s put out and am humbled to be included amongst such incredibly skilled and dedicated people as Ramel Wallace and Rusia Mohiuddin.
Being part of this is a great support for my sense of connectivity with a broader community of creative folks who centre their commitment to our liberation in everything they do. I can’t recommend listening to this podcast enough, and honestly, that would be true even if I wasn’t one of the guests.
6. MEMOIR!
Oh yeah. I wrote that memoir!
I have been attempting to write a memoir in some form since I was twenty-eight…so, a whole decade! I don’t know what it was about this year that it finally worked out, but ever since I feel like I cracked a code on memoir and the whole genre of creative non-fiction in general.
I have to credit the short story collection, Moccasin Square Gardens by Richard Van Camp, with a lot of how my writing has evolved this year. His varied and skillful approach to storytelling was a great model at a time when I had gotten way too into my head about the “Rules of the Craft”.
One of the greatest gifts anyone can give themselves when it comes to creativity is to let go of all the voices telling you there is some formula to it. Yes, study about writing and plain language and structure and character development and plotting and revision and scene…but when it comes to putting something down? There are no rules beyond the rules to make it understandable to the reader. Give yourself permission to write it as it flows, to play with structure, to be as creative about the style and presentation as you are about the words you choose.
7. Shakyamuni
Considering that no one has ever commissioned me for art in a meaningful way before, it’s pretty exciting that 2023 brought two patrons into my life. Receiving a request for a Shakyamuni thangka from a fellow chaplain brought with it the opportunity to explore how to further my anti-capitalist practice when it comes to my art. It’s been a joy to work closely with the patron, who will be the steward of the completed piece, in a way that invites others to support the creation of more sacred art for the world. I’m also enjoying this opportunity to be with Shakyamuni Buddha, to revisit stories I’ve heard many times before and learn some new ones, all while creating a depiction that honours the journey of Buddhist teachings from what is now known as India to what is currently known as the United States.
Folks are invited, if able, to contribute to funding this project from now until the end of January 2024. You can find out more details in this post from December 1st of 2023. The target for crowdsourced contributions is $1,500, and I think we will get there! As of this writing, in addition to the $250 payment from the patron, eight others folks have contributed a total of $496. These funds will help cover the costs of material, time, imaging, print making, and, with whatever extra comes in, the production of a collaborative community ‘zine celebrating trans joy.
Looking back on the year never fails to give me a great sense of achievement, growth, and pride. This year was a particularly rich one for my writing and art, and for connecting with community through creativity.
What about ya’ll? What are some things you have made, projects you have started, and connections that have arisen from your creative practice in 2023?
Just eighty-seven more to go!
Shortly after we recorded this episode for his vodcast, Leo sent me a screen capture of him gushing on social media about me replying to an email he sent me. He was, as he pointed out, terribly young then. Still, it was adorable.