Maybe I should have asked my friends–the few who haven’t been badgered into participation on this blog at this point–to weigh in on 2015, new starts, and old habits that die hard in the face of the desire to change.

But that would have been a lot of work, and I’m not in the mood to persuade people to use this platform to express themselves. I mean, if you need to be persuaded, maybe a Studiola residency isn’t the right thing for you at this juncture…

Here is the thing about trying to change. It’s really hard to change and build new habits to reach new goals (or the same old goals you haven’t progressed toward) with the same tools you’ve been using.

Take my dollhouse. I found it really hard to devise a project that would somehow transcend the basic layout of the bedrooms.

So I ended up just coloring inside the lines, using each room to contain a different state I’ve lived in.

That got old pretty fast. But finding addresses for the past nine or ten years–wow! Research effort that could have been better applied to a paying job.

Flee, Dream, or Leap: the three basic motivations I’ve decided prompt all these moves.

My current habitat, New Orleans, found its way to the attic of the dollhouse.

There are still plenty of places where studs or supports or whatever you call the framework for a house should go.

 And now they are empty spaces that make perfect homes for the ghosts in my life, who occupy just as much energy as geographical fleeing and experience’s baggage. I’m of the opinion that trying to bottle your ghosts in the hopes they’ll suffocate and die (hint: they don’t need air) or attempting to deny their existence–are futile and sometimes self sabotage.

We’ve all got them. It’s how you choose to live with them–that’s the stuff of intention and sometimes nightmares. Give them some boundaries. You may as well–they’re not going anywhere. Amy Poehler, in her new memoir Yes Please, talks about her gremlin voice, amalgamation of ghost-like self-doubts and criticism, which she regularly talks to. “Please don’t talk to my friend Amy like that,” she says.

New Year’s Revolution-ary question number #2: Where do your ghosts live?