Summer of 2003 - San Diego California

This item on my 26 before 26 list was difficult for me. I technically only completed half of it, but I’m still crossing off #4: Read and return all borrowed books.

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For the past year, I’ve discovered my inability to read books. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading. I used to read a book a week and couldn’t get enough. Lately though, with work, family, and house, I just can’t seem to focus long enough to get through a decent number of pages. I read a chapter, but can’t remember most of it. My mind is a wanderer. So as I work towards getting my reading groove back, I decided to return any borrowed books from friends and family anyway.

I was surprised to feel a weight lifted. The pile of borrowed books on my to-do list was always in the back of my mind and it was a relief to clear them from my space. I’ve resolved to first read any books I own that I have yet to enjoy and, in the future, to only borrow one book at a time.

I’ve been examining my 26 before 26 list, trying to determine which items I will complete before my birthday on Tuesday. It was then I realized life had already helped me out with one of them. Joyfully, I am crossing off #12: Reconnect with an old friend.

I was introduced to Kate Farrar by a mutual friend in high school. Although we didn’t attend the same school, we saw each other all the time. We shared a love for pop-punk and could easily be found at the same shows or hanging out at the 92nd St. Starbucks/Chipotle. We worked at the same retirement home and she even permanently borrowed a pair of my Converse (even though she doesn’t remember).

I hadn’t talked to or seen her since high school, until earlier this year I discovered we had mutual friends in common still. She came to work at meltmedia and I’m so glad she did. We quickly and easily became friends again, and we discovered our mutual loves for HTML, Star Wars, and not wearing pants. Both of us searched through our old photos to find a picture of the two of us from high school. We each found pictures of the other from nights we know we were both in attendance. But sadly, none of the two of us surfaced. Here’s us now, coworkers and friends again.

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”

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