Ten Thousand Flowers and the New Year’s Resolution

So for my 2012, I have decided instead of the usual resolutions about exercise and getting organized, I’m going to take on three self-imposed challenges.  The one we’ll discuss here pertains, as you might have guessed, to my Ten Thousand Flowers project.

I knew when I set myself the task of drawing ten thousand of these things, that I’d come up against the usual resistance and procrastination.  The incentive of having people ask me for them has been a useful nudge but the requests have dropped off and I’ve been terrible about letting the world know that I have flowers to give away.  So as a way to poke me into keeping the momentum going instead of waiting until I’ve run out before making new ones, I’ve placed this New Year’s resolution on my shoulders–each day I must do at least one flower.  I can do more, and probably will, but I’m setting myself a minimum of one flower a day.  To keep myself honest, I will also photograph the first flower of the day and put it up on Twitter with the hashtag #10KFlowers.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the first flower of 2012.

I can’t say with absolute certainty that I will hold to this resolution perfectly in the coming year.  But having been offered Neil Gaiman’s benediction to make mistakes this year, it’s worth a try.