Life is not an oil painting, sealed behind varnish and clamped in a golden frame, hanging in a white walled gallery in Chelsea, waiting to be bought by a hedge fund manager’s third wife.

Life is not an edition of etchings, a long series of identical impressions.

Life is not a mural, intended as a public display or the backdrop to an expensively furnished room. Life is not wallpaper.

Life is not a bronze sculpture, cold, monumental, an abstracted, idealized image of a hero long forgotten.

Life is a shelf.

A long shelf partly filled with sketchbooks. Some of the sketchbooks are hand-made, some store-bought, some in ornate covers, some stained and dog-eared.

Some of the sketchbooks are completely filled, others are abandoned half-way, maybe to be taken up at a later date. Some of the books are filled with paper that felt just right under your pen, smooth and creamy, bold and bright. Others were experiments that failed or overreaches, made of materials you weren’t ready to master quite yet.

Sections of the shelf may be filled with identical volumes, a type of sketchbook that you found comfortable at the time and stuck with it, disinterested in experimentation and change so you kept filling one after another. On the shelf, they may look the same, identical spines all in a row like a suburban cul-de-sac. But inside, each page is different, drawn by the same hand and pen, yet recording unique observations, days that fill up identically-sized boxes on the calendar but were all filled with different challenges, discoveries, lessons and dreams.

Each page of each sketchbook is always different. Some are perfectly drawn and brilliantly written, insightful and illuminating. Others are failures with poor perspective and distracted lines. Some of the pages are dappled with raindrops or a splash of champagne, others are drawn in haste, still others crosshatched with great intensity and care. Some contain shopping lists, phone numbers of new friends, boarding passes to far-away places. Some are bright and colorful, witty and bold. Others are intimate and personal, never to be shared. Some pages describe loss and death, others a drawing of a gift you took to a baby shower.

None of these pages is an end in itself. No matter how good it seems at the time, eventually, you turn each one over. Even the ones at the end of a volume are merely leading to the first fresh page of the next. You fill the page, maybe you like what you drew or maybe it was a disappointment, but there’s always another to follow and another beyond that.

You try your best with each blank page, try to make something fresh and beautiful. Some of the time, you feel excited and proud of what you’ve made; at other times, you are disappointed and desperate. Often, a page you thought was just a disaster looks a whole lot better when you come back to it years later. The drawing you thought was clumsy and flawed reveals some new insight and truth about who you were at the moment, fresh energy, naiveté, hope, darkness before the dawn. Each drawing, whether you know it at the time or not, contains truth. You just have to trust it and keep on drawing and writing and living your life.

Life is a process, and everyone has the same end result: that last sketchbook, partly filled, cut off when we thought there was still art left to make. No need to rush to get there. Make the most of the page that lies open before you today.

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. If this essay seems familiar, you must be a long-time subscriber. I originally wrote it five years ago. If you're wondering (as is my monkey) why I am cheating by recycling an old essay, it's because I have been in bed with a cold all week and didn't have the get-up-and-go to get up and write something new. I and my excuses will be back again next week. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this golden oldie.

P.P.S. 💝 Happy Valentine's Day. 💐