I want fewer followers. You heard me right.

This time last year I believe I had 230,000 followers on instagram. A little less than 200k of those followed me based on one viral reel.

Today my follower number clicked from 222k to 221k and every time that happens I get a little jolt of joy. It sounds counterintuitive— most people want that number to go up, right? 

But here’s the thing, every time someone peaces out and decides my online space isn’t for them, it means there are more folks here for whom my space IS for them.

The internet basically begs you to “niche down” as a content creator. “It’s how you’ll get more followers!” They say. “Make viral content to grow your account!” they say. But when a reel goes viral you’re basically niching down in the most granular sense— you become this one singular piece of content. That one thing is why a hundred thousand people follow you. Holy shit, right?

But you aren’t a single piece of content and neither am I. What you do, or what I do, or what anyone does is so much more than what can be contained in a viral piece of content or a “niched down” account.

So the more I show up in my wholeness on my account, the more people will be like, “oh weird, I’m not here for this” and that’s GREAT. I cannot stress that enough. It’s so so great when people decide you aren’t their cup of tea.

And the truth is, I’m so wildly multifaceted, to the point where I don’t have the bandwidth to pursue and embrace all my passions simultaneously. At least not while being a decent mom and wife and friend. So the things I enjoy and pursue will vacillate and ebb and flow. I’ll get a spurt of ADHD hyperfixation on something and run with it. I’ll rediscover something I loved as a kid and deep dive. I’ll feel a tug towards a different creative expression and follow the pull. And I think that’s all normal and ok.

We’ve been taught that it’s normal to pick a career and then do that one thing for 30+ years and that’s the responsible adult way of being, but it doesn’t have to be that way and I don’t think everyone thrives in that format. I know I don’t.

Watching your follower count go down little by little isn’t necessarily a universal experience, especially if you aren’t a content creator, but the idea of showing up in your wholeness and authenticity, and letting those who aren’t here for it fall away--that totally is. I think we’ve all felt like at times we’ve had to edit or censor ourselves to fit into the mold of what a certain group deemed appropriate. Maybe it was high school. Maybe it was a job. Maybe it was a relationship.

What I do know is that creativity thrives when you allow yourself to show up authentically. Messy and imperfect and joyful and true.  And, you know what? While my overall follower number is going down, while maybe 1500 folks left this month… 500 joined! 500 folks who are jiving with and aligned with me and my art and music vibe and my values. 500 folks who feel welcomed and seen by the community I've created. And that is so much more meaningful than some vanity number.

Your authenticity will cull your audience for you, 

and that's a good thing!

Your screenshot folder is waiting...

I used to do these annual bucket lists where I'd make a list of, for example, 27 things to do before I turn 28… 28 things to do before 29… 29 before 30. You get the idea. I think I probably stopped doing this around 29 because, well, the list does tend to get longer each year. I was reading back through old blog posts and saw a mention of my 27 before 28 list, and how on that list I'd put “create new art and submit it to a gallery for exhibition.”  I definitely didn't accomplish that one, and now here I am realizing that ten years later, at 37, I've got the same thing on my *unofficial* 37 before 38 list. Sometimes having a blog for a decade and a half is cool, and sometime it reminds you of all the goals you never actually accomplished. But in a way, it feels nice to know that this dream is still percolating inside me. I'm still wanting to be a “real” artist, even though I've put it off for a decade.
 

In the past six months I've screen-shotted dozens of calls for submissions from galleries, magazines, and journals. Of course, most of them have just sat in the graveyard of my screen shots album on my phone, but I've dubbed 2024 the year of submitting, so I'm dragging that album out and actually submitting my work-- whether its poems to a local literary journal, a mural proposal for the city, an article for a magazine, an application for an artist residency… I'm actually doing the thing instead of just thinking “oh, I want to do that!" then screen shotting it and forgetting it forever. You miss 100% of the shots you never take, right? And at least I don't have to compete against all the other people out there who just screen shotted the call for submissions and then left those photos to die in their phone, right? 

So whatever the thing is that you've been screen shotting and thinking about doing, but never taking the leap… hey, maybe now's the time! Maybe 2024 is the year you resurrect your screen shot album and start taking action on those little dreams sitting in there.

One of the things that I took action on from my opportunity screenshots… Tacoma Wayzgoose! Wayzgoose is an annual printmaking event here in Tacoma, and besides having tons of printmakers hosting booths as vendors, they also do giant linoleum block prints that are printed using a steamroller. So cool right? I’ve always wanted to do Wayzgoose, so this year when the application opened, I threw my hat in the ring. And guess what? I was picked as one of the steamroller print artists! So for the next month I’ll be feverishly carving away at this absolutely gigantic sheet of linoleum. I’m so so excited. Jack took this photo of me after picking up my sheet of linoleum and I’m not intimidated in the slightest by the fact that it is nearly as big as I am. Nope. Not at all…

All that to say, if you never ask, the answer is always no. So don’t give yourself an automatic rejection by never putting yourself out there in the first place. Now excuse me while I get back to carving…

Intentions for the new year

The majority of my 2023 was spent in a phase of rest. At the beginning of 2023 I chose the word “ease” as the focus of my year, while in the midst of a very non-easeful season. January of 2023 was quite possibly one of my least easeful months of my life, spent hustling to put together the final details of the DIY Awards Bash event. By the end of January, with the dust settling from a successful event, I was 100% burnt out. I hibernated for about a month, then tried to kickstart myself back into a phase of productivity, but ultimately ended up taking a sabbatical in the summer which I planned to be two months long, but ended up… well, if I’m honest, I’m still in it.

Those months of rest I spent recalibrating my priorities and deconstructing the hustle life I’d created for myself in exchange for one that allowed me to show up in a way that created room for so much creativity to blossom. Within that season of rest I found myself returning to creativity modes that I’d abandoned in the singleminded pursuit of the “DIY influencer” track. I found myself writing fiction and poetry again, illustration, and painting. I realized, to some dismay, that I needed to dismantle (or perhaps rather pivot?) my DIYer mantle for something more holistic and embodied. To create a space that allows me to fully explore all the avenues of my own creativity, including DIY and home renovation. I’ve been quietly and slowly working on a rebrand of sorts, while also figuring out what the end result of that branding overhaul will look like. And likely it will be an evolving overhaul, but for now the focus of that overhaul, and the focus of 2024 for me, is creating space for creativity to blossom, and finding joy through creativity in every day life.

In the past I’ve niched myself into specific creative spaces, but if you know me at all, you know pretty much my entire life is one creative project. If it can be done, I’m gonna do it in a creative way. Part of why I’ve loved the DIY niche is because working on a home and infusing creativity into our living spaces is one of the main ways I think we can invite more creativity and joy into our lives. By making our homes a creative playground, we can let our brains explore even more creativity, or even unlock creative ways of being we’ve maybe buried over the years of adulthood responsibilities. When we say, “it’s just paint!” and paint a wall in our homes, we give ourselves freedom to be creative and less inhibited in other ways too.

So, what should you expect here? Probably less DIY-home-reno-specific-content, but only because there will be more on other creative subjects. I’m working on launching a new podcast focused on infusing life with more joy through a practice of creativity— interviewing creative humans in a broad variety of artistic and creative industries about their own practices and disciplines that have added joy and fulfillment to their lives. I also want to focus on creating more resources that support you in creating a more creative and joyful life— maybe art journals, books, downloadable worksheets, etc. And in the midst of it all, also creating an environment for myself to practice what I preach and invest in my own creative practice. Submitting my artwork to galleries and my writing to journals, applying for artist grants, and being more active in my local art and writing community.

So that’s the download! Nearly 9 months in the making, it’s taken about that long to distill my thoughts on all of this and come to a place that feels in alignment for me in terms of my online “platform” if you will. I know some folks were just here for the DIY stuff, and if that’s you and none of this sounds interesting, no hard feelings if you choose to peace out. A large majority of my audience discovered me during my DIY years. But in 15 years of blogging and social media presence I’ve pivoted a few times, so people coming and going as my content serves them or not feels very much an expected part of the territory. You do you, boo!

But if you’ve been feeling that pull towards creativity as a practice seeking joy, you might want to stick around!

Adolescent Dreams

My 2023 word of the year that I chose was Ease. Hilariously I got hit with such intense burnout that I was basically forced to take two months off this summer. Forced ease is still ease I guess. But one of the unexpected things that has come up in the past year is that I’ve allowed myself to like the things I liked as a kid and teen. I don’t think I ever thought those things were bad or dumb, but you know… you move on, you get different interests, find new friends and new communities, and along with that there’s a sort of falling away of the things that felt cool or magical as an adolescent.

One of my huge pleasures this year has been realizing that I can be a person that young me would’ve thought is SO cool. I can be the person I would’ve looked up to or idolized. I spent a lot of years in religion trying to be a certain type of person (righteous, pure, disciplined, worthy, etc). But now I can be who and whatever I want to be, and little whispers from smol Liz have been trickling in from the 90’s/00’s and it’s felt so wonderful to listen to them and run with it.

When I was in second grade a girl in my school published a book and I wanted to do that. It burned inside me. But I think I thought it was too lofty a goal or something and it got buried. I’ve been in contact with a publisher since about 2015 about publishing a book but it’s never happened. And the reason is that I don’t want to publish the book they seem to want from me. Something self-help-y or to do with my platform niche. I keep self sabotaging because deep down I don’t want to write that.

So here I am, 30 years later picking up a goal I set down. Writing. Publishing. And this time I’m bigger and I know what I’m capable of.

Waking up

This past week has been a weird flailing dash towards the finish line of summer. I haven’t been writing much, I decided to change some details of my MMC which felt like something I needed to do to move forward with writing, and I think it’ll eliminate some issues with motive and clean up the plot a little. So instead of making progress I’ve been editing.

Ugh. I promised myself I wasn’t going to edit anything until my SFD (shitty first draft) was done, but in order to move the plot forward I want to button up a couple details so that things make sense. Interestingly, I’m not losing word count or even staying the same, I’m gaining word count, so that’s nice. Even though I’m swapping out details, they seem to be more fleshed out. Or something. I’m not sure, I’m a book writing newb so maybe I’m really fucking shit up. Fingers crossed I’m not though.

Either way, I do not want to get caught in an editing eddy, swirling around endlessly in story that’s already been written to avoid pushing the story forward. I’ve also been feeling a bit of anxiety about going back online after two whole months away. It felt good though. Good enough that I was like… maybe I’ll fuck around and #pivotabitch and come back as maaaybe not quite a DIYer anymore. I mean ya girl will always be a DIYer, it’s in my blood. But I’m, well, de-niche-ing. I don’t think I meant to niche down in the DIY world so hard, but I loved it and I was good at it so it felt good to do. Especially as a new mom who was STRUGGLIN to find herself in the postpartum hellscape. DIY helped me feel powerful. Gave me something purely my own to pursue. And it was a place I’ve always felt pretty confident, and I felt very much not confident in every other area of my life. DIY was a port in a raging storm.

But I let my artist hibernate. She came out to play sometimes, in service of DIY, but never to create art for art’s sake. And I’m waking her up now. Hibernation season is over.