Magazines

For years I was a hopeless magazine junkie. I subscribed to them all. The New Yorker. Gourmet. House and Garden. Harpers. Martha Stewart. Garden Design. Newsweek. That was the core. But I'd go off on tangents. Vogue, for a while. House Beautiful. Smithsonian. Metropolitan Home. American Artist. New York Magazine. Art and Antiques. The New York Review of Books. Oh, and all the alumni magazines!

Of course there was never time to read them all, so I'd pile them up into categories, thinking I'd get to them later. Sometimes I would. More often, I wouldn't. And the piles were occupying serious space.

I have a different approach now. No subscriptions.

But the library lets the magazines circulate - even the most current issue. You get them for a week. So, whenever I go there I take a few. And - remarkably - I READ them. Maybe it's knowing there's a time limit? Of course I can't maintain my vast clipping files any longer. Instead, if there's something I want to take note of, or remember, I write it down. Or sketch it.

I still have a few piles here and there. But I'm working my way through them. The alumni magazines still pour in, of course. Who said anything about perfection?