holy cannoli, here we go...
And so it begins.
It all started with a book.
My wonderfully wise and weird housemate brought me a book from her travels in Michigan. To say I’ve been slungshot through a portal of realization would be damn near accurate.
The book is called How to Not Always Be Working by Marlee Grace.
If you’ve been following along for a while, then you know that I burned out hard in September of 2020. In both my business and my body.
I ended up in the ER worried I couldn’t walk in because of how much pain I was in and have spent the last almost-2 years putting myself back together with a team of healthcare professionals, deconstructing toxic capitalistic beliefs, and leaning towards less more than I lean towards more.
Psychological recovery in particular has been slippery and elusive.
How do you take your own unhealthy thinking and unlearn it?
Diligently and messily is how.
Honestly, I’m still not fully out the other side.
But this little book, and the creator it introduced me to, have changed my life in a matter of days.
I have been searching for how to create, work, and show up authentically for many months (now almost years) and found myself eddying out into this weird no man’s land of indecision, self-doubt, and lack of inspiration.
Burnout is traumatic, and my body didn’t want to move towards what it associated with trauma, which was work, creating, and showing up.
Now I know it’s because I still had a major layer to shed…
The layer that wanted every creation to be part of a conversion funnel that made long-term sense and fed into a design that had to be making money.
The layer that kept turning my thoughts to unhealthy, uninteresting, unethical marketing philosophy and tactics.
The layer that constantly pushed me to create-to-get rather than create-to-give.
I needed to shed the snarls of capitalism hiding in the shadows of my belief system, and let go of my addiction to productivity and believing that the most important thing I needed to be doing was making money.
(Yes, I need to make money, but I want it to be something I do, not something I live for.)
I’ve been trying to be a marketer, content creator, and online business person.
When all along I’ve actually been a creator. A teacher. A writer. A filmmaker. A connector. A gatherer. A forager. An adventurer. A maker. A dreamer. A citizen researcher. A thinker. An activist. A rugged femme. A queer. An explorer. A psychonaut. A botanical enthusiast. A witch. A cook…
So now, instead of trying to produce for the sake of selling…
I am going to write about the practice of walking through life as our best, most interesting curriculum.
How noticing and paying attention to our experiences leads us deeper into ourselves and deeper into reverence of the Organizing Force of Existence, while also helping us laugh at the inherent comedy of trying to be human.
I’m going to write about unremarkable moments with my three-legged, one-eyed, old dog - Arlo - that teach me more about appreciation than any influencer ever could.
I’m going to write for the sake of writing… for the sake of breathing more art into the world.
I’m going to write about scary, triumphant, absurd, holy human moments that reflect something back to you about the wildly unlikely person that you are.
I’m going to write pieces that make you want to live life with more attention on the right now so that you can soak it up in earnest.
This is a firm, matronly nudge for you to create more too.
That if you’ve been needing encouragement to make what your perfect little hands and heart want to make “just ‘cuz”, please - in Arlo’s name - do it.
I urge you to create more of whatever it is that you love creating — whether it’s a vegetable garden, naughty doodles, gathering friends, making music, exploring self-actualization, or frequenting anarchist bike fests…
Can I embolden you to be the subtlest, loudest, thickest expression of yourself?
Or if all of that sounds like too much, and really your art right now is REST, can you take just a few seconds to sink into the fact that you are literally the only fuqqin’ you on the planet?
And then go steal that nap baby!
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for subscribing and believing in the importance of weirdness, art, and a little bit more love in the world.
FULL DISCLOSURE:
I’m gonna swear sometimes. I’m gonna use big, colorful words, change my mind, and sometimes I’m going to miss a Tuesday. Sometimes I’m going to share things that make you uncomfortable, and I hope you’ll ask questions and explore why. Sometimes I’m going to share stuff you know and have already mastered, but it will be a well-timed reminder of how far you’ve come. Sometimes I’m going to need to apologize for saying something that harmed someone, and I hope you’ll give me the grace and space to learn and redeem myself. And I’ll definitely publish pieaces with typos in them. C’est la vie!
Dive Deeper:
How to Not Always Be Working by Marlee Grace → buy it from my fave black-owned family bookstore instead of a mega-corps pretty please!
Extra Magic:
In the future, this section will contain extra magic I wanna share!
Invitations:
In the future, this section will contain invitations/promotions to things I am offering or that other folks are offering that I think are worth promoting!
My Little Listy List:
I got this idea from Marlee Grace → who I am clearly obsessed with right now. It’s a little list of things that I am noticing, enjoying, and experiencing in the world that I want to share with you too… here goes!
Divergent Mind by Jenara Nerenberg ~ I’m listening on audible and learning so much about my own neurodivergence. It focuses particularly on neurodiversity in understudied folks - women, people of color, queer folks. Eye-opening and empowering.
Speaking of neurodiversity, I think that consuming so much scrollable social media has shortened my attention span and made reading text on paper much harder for me so for non-fiction books like the one up top, listening to it is a much more accessible way for me to experience the book. Sharing just in case there are other ways for you to interact with things you value that you haven’t let yourself explore yet!
The Cube Rule of Food - has been a matter of much humorous (and sometimes too serious) debate over meals lately. You’ve been forewarned!
A song that’s had my heart lately:
I absolutely adore science-fiction. It is my favorite genre. I’m thinking about starting Next Gen again.
I recently did a big re-organization of all my houseplants and I am happy to report that many of them are flourishing in their new proximities to direct light. It’s a quiet, patient, intimate relationship to try to help things thrive that use no words…