365

Except for one day when blogger was down and I had to post two entries the next day, I met the goal I set for 2011! It seems fitting to announce a new writing goal on my last day, especially because the discipline of daily writing has been truly valuable for me.

My inspiration for the new project comes from a trip two friends and I took to San Francisco about five years ago to see an exhibition of quilts made by the women of Gees Bend, Alabama. This collection of images from the exhibition hangs in my home office to remind me of that adventure.


Many of the women who made the quilts spent the better part of the day working in the cotton fields, and while they worked they'd dream about how they'd piece together the scraps of fabrics they had waiting for them at home. They didn't follow patterns. They followed their own imaginations.

One woman told the story of how one day she decided to follow a traditional pattern. Following that pattern, she said, sucked the joy of quilting right out of her. It took her years to recover her own quilting "voice" again after that.

When I heard her tell the story, I understood deep down in my soul exactly what she meant. Whenever I try to follow a pattern of life thought up by someone else, it sucks the joy of living right out of me. At first subconsciously, but gradually more consciously, I've stopped trying to follow many of those patterns. As a result, I've got a life full of bits and scraps of experiences that aren't measured carefully or cut evenly, and don't fit into prescribed patterns.

Each day in 2012 (with some exciting exceptions that may involve actually leaving the continent), I plan to stitch together small colorful fragments of memories here on my blog and watch the patterns of my own imagination emerge.