Hello Icons!
The only person less dependable than an artist is anyone who is not an artist.
I was planning on posting every day for the rest of the year. I had built up a queue of completed work. Then I was unable to make new illustrated haiku for several days because of illness. This consumed all of my backlog.
Now, I’m also staring down a critical deadline to get Wild Divinity into shape for a late January publication.
Books are my largest source of poetry income and new readers for this newsletter. So, I need to prioritize Wild Divinity. That means I’m going to be taking a book leave for the rest of December. I will be back to daily illustrated haiku on January 3, 2023. In the meantime, I will be pausing subscriptions.
I will also be sending one or two posts between now and the end of the year, as I will have two fun announcements I will want to share with you as soon as I can. One will be the Wild Divinity cover reveal!
I will also be even slower than usual in responding to emails, comments, social media messages, and newsletters.
I never know what my limits are until I come crashing against them. Perhaps by the time I reach 50, I’ll have a better knack for pacing myself (If you're a betting person, I would not wager on this, in fact, happening.)
Thank you for your patience with me. And thank you most of all for reading, sharing, and reacting to my work! I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and enjoy a marvelous new year, You have all made this the best year of my poetry career!
Be the weird you want to see in the world!
Cheers,
Jason
Good luck with the pacing yourself part! I made the mistake of scheduling a book release for December 28 and it kind of hijacked everything including Christmas. While the business end of things says, “capture those post, holiday sales!“ Asking your editor for edits in your review team for typos by December 20 is not realistic, not to mention trying to input those edits while visiting family in someone else’s house. Not recommended if I ever do a holiday release again, it will be paced out well in advance! Or at least, so I tell myself. I also had to put my newsletter on hiatus through January 9, which wasn’t a plan either. I always come back to: “you do what you can do” and I generally find my readers are very supportive and forgiving.
Glad to read you're taking time for yourself. As a person over 50, healthy priorities do matter more than deadlines. We can't get time back, and so we carefully "measure" every day.
Looking forward to a very creative 2023 with you, Jason!