The painting “New Year” (1953) by Pablo Picasso always speaks to me the first week “back” after the December holiday break. If you’ve known me for a while, no doubt you’ve seen this image once or twice. I consider it repeat-worthy.

I’m very grateful that my company closes between Christmas and New Year’s Day for maximum revelry + rest, and allows me to shed the holiday mask and come back to work with a fresh, hopeful outlook. I feel like the guy in this painting every January 2nd.

We all have a tendency to start the year with overzealous resolutions (the gym everyday! eat every kind of healthy seed! digital detox!) and then come back down to earth with more realistic, bite-sized goals (the gym 3 x week; add hemp; delete problem apps) – but – for this first week in January, I always give myself permission to DREAM BIG AND BOLD and see anything and everything through hopeful eyes. The pragmatic goals/objectives setting exercises can come next week.

So, pardon me while I live aspirationally at home and at work this week – particularly while letting my mind run wild with the amazingly bright potential of Women in Print Alliance to empower women leaders and rising stars in the printing industry in 2024. I promise to parachute back down to earth with two or three really solid, achievable “big goals” to begin plodding through next week.

And if you’re a woman in print who is bold-dreaming at work this week, too, please consider for a moment what you’d like to see Women in Print Alliance accomplish on your behalf in 2024. I’d love to your ideas about programming and/or content related to any of the following topics: advocacy, career development, DE&I, executive leadership, and work-life balance. Contact me or feel welcome to reach out to me on LinkedIn.

From Picasso and me: HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Editor’s Note: I’ve always been a fan of Picasso’s artwork, yet never took a course in Art History or knew much about the meaning or the man behind the work. Thanks to my sister, who is completing her degree in Art History this year, I learned in early 2023 that the year would mark the 50th year of the artists’ death. All last year, museums across the globe went into hyper-focus curating special Picasso exhibitions, while art critics, journalists, and biographers published articles with a renewed focus on Picasso’s personal life. Wow. I’ve now been plainly schooled on well-proven evidence of his creepily misogynistic actions. I now choose to focus solely on the aesthetics of the work, which I still love, but with far more knowledge of and less admiration for its creator.