New Year Begins

I'm having trouble getting back in the swing of things at the start of the year. I've been puttering around with a few personal projects, spending a lot of time scavenging in the desert with my camera. It's January 3 already -- shouldn't I have won the Nobel Prize for something? 2012 is flying by!

Seriously, I've been downshifting for a long time. I think this landscape poked a hole in my ambition. I don't have a lot going on, and I'm starting to like it that way. It's hard to scrape up a lot of ambition when you live in a suburb of Mars.

I'm very happy to have two tanka included in the first issue of Inner Art Journal, an online journal devoted to tanka, haiku and other simple forms of poetry. There's a wonderful article on tanka practice posted on their home page. It's a simple, quiet journal -- easy to stay focused there.

I hope your year is off to a good start.