The Ball Drop. New Year. 2014 Begins.

Happy New Year! Yay, 2014! And all that jazz!

Here in DTLA, good old King Eddys Saloon got all old school and opened at 6am on New Year’s Day to take care of the late night/early morning party people. And the great friends at Grand Park pulled off an amazing NYE party.

Me?

It was low-key, to say the least. I stayed in and watched the original Ultraman series on Hulu Plus with the dog sleeping next to me and had a FaceTime Happy New Year exchange with Judeth, who has been in Charlotte visiting her family for the holidays.

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I ate a couple of tangerines. And some pear wedges. Left the pants off. Just chilled the fuck out. And it was good and necessary, entering a new year calm and rested.

I didn’t even watch the ball drop in—anywhere in the world.

(…super clunky segue in 3…2…1…)

Speaking of dropping the ball (sorry), things, and by things I mean schedule, sort of unraveled toward the end of the year. It was a combination of personal things (I, like many people, go through weird emotional stuff during the holidays; this year hit a bit heavy), unexpected problems like computer dying, parents’ health, trips, DT•LAB drama, blah blah blah. And all of it happening during October through December meant I couldn’t keep my shit together long enough to take care of Writ Large Press work that I was supposed to take care of.

I guess what was always going to be the most challenging aspect of running a small press (or any small business, for that matter) and trying to stay completely engaged with the people and community around us at all times was our personal responsibilites, how to balance private and work lives especially when time and money and health and family become so overwhelming.

My biggest fear is that throughout most of 2013, we had such momentum, going at full speed even when we didn’t quite have an idea in what direction we were speeding, and I don’t know if that kind of momentum can be easily regained.

Judy says we’ll get there, that we just have to figure out where there is.

So the energy that carried us in 2013 needs to become energy with direction in 2014.

The new year has begun. A whole shitload of work is piled up on the Writ Large Press desk (by desk I mean our dining table). I haven’t left the house in about 5 days and feel invisible.

But!

But there’s no time to mope. Time to put on my pants and get back to work. Reach out to the community for help. Not for cash or some Kickstarter project or anything like that. Just for some energy to help us reboot.

Ok, 2014, you fucking new year. Here we go.

Banner image by Flickr user PreciousBytes. Used under creative commons license.

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