Fatigue and the digital footprint

The dance of disappearing and showing up

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Today I feel the tired feeling you feel when you’ve said too much. Or you’ve said just enough to meet yourself at the edge of all the sharing you can do. I find this to be the dance of knowing when to share our work and knowing when to take a break and tend to the inner world. It is the dance of finding the pace. It is in the pace finding we see clearly when to rest and when to push.

Since releasing a podcast last week I can feel the fatigue of the digital footprint. While I believe in building business ecosystems with many channels of communication and streams of revenue, I also am familiar with the feeling when it feels like there is one too many, or the tipping point is coming.

I insist to my students that they are not scattered, I remind them they are multi passionate, interdisciplinary, one person with many interests willing to dig into them all. And yet, as my tried and true Gemini season is upon us, I run up against the edge of believing it for myself.

I wonder if the real work is to see things through before we pivot? I sense that the map I draw out of my own work needs to shift, yet I also already see the many new projects I want to create. I miss having a physical studio outside of my home, a place that houses all of the projects. Should more things find their digital home here under the Substack umbrella, or is it better for things to have homes elsewhere? The physical and ephemeral containers slip through my fingers just as quickly as I mold them out of the imaginary clay of my practice.

I find that in the podcast format I am using it as a teaching space, which makes me wonder if this is a teaching space. Or if this is a place to only share about my life, or is this the place where my life shows itself as a teaching space. And then what is the material when the life’s experiences aren’t ready to become an essay. What about the parts of me that will never see the light of the short form writing’s day? Some that are to remain private and some that may outlive me.

Like a bug on my back, today is just questions

Some parts of my job are staying curious and saying, I don’t know what goes where and if I did I would tell you. Its ok if you don’t know if your new projects fit with your old projects. I find that sometimes we have to add new things that we are excited about to show us the old things don’t work. We have to begin before we are ready to leave.

I made a decision to retire my quilt class only to find I missed it so much that I applied to a graduate studies program in quilts and then wanted to teach again. I am allowed to teach it again or not. Thank god Cher kept doing farewell tours over and over again.

This is where I remember I am an artist, trying to string together my interests and my skills and my desires and my intuition. As soon as I start piling myself in to an online business world I get trapped into thinking I need to perfectly have a “funnel” and a “marketing plan” and to have it all figured out. It’s why our offering are shapes, malleable and shiftable.

You know, anyone can make a newsletter. Part of why I love it is it reminds me of zine culture. You don’t have to wait for anyone’s permission to publish it. You just make an account, login, tell people you have it, and then you do. This is true with all forms of self employment, online classes, memberships, podcasts, etc. It is both the fear of industries being overcrowded, and yet the most spacious indication there is room for all of us.

Today I ask myself : What is my responsibility to the reader? Must I come to the table with a fully formed opinion? To be clear in my words? Which containers do my projects live in? Are questions inherently confusing? How do we set up our practice so there is space to disappear?

Or can I just come here and say my plate is too full but I don’t know what to take off yet and I might just add more before the right thing falls off

TWENTY SEVEN WAYS TO BEGIN

1. TURN ON A LIGHT

2. HOLD A PENCIL

3. STARE AT A WALL

4. PHONE A FRIEND

5. TURN OFF THE TV

6. TURN ON THE TV

7. PET THE DOG

8. PUT MUSIC ON

9. TURN THE MUSIC UP

10. GO OUTSIDE

11. TIE YOUR SHOES

12. TURN THE COMPUTER ON

13. TURN YOUR PHONE OFF

14. DELETE EVERY APP OFF YOUR PHONE

15. TAKE A PICTURE

16. OPEN A BLANK GOOGLE DOC

17. LAY ON THE GROUND

18. NAP

19. MAKE A COUNTRY MUSIC PLAYLIST

20. LISTEN TO A PODCAST

21. WRITE ON A STICKY NOTE

22. SING OFF KEY

23. STRETCH

24. POP OPEN A LA CROIX

25. TAKE A DRIVE

26. THREAD THE SEWING MACHINE

27. PUT YOUR LAUNDRY AWAY

THE ART OF BEGINNING
Building practices for starting new projects, weaving in daily rituals, and resuming our work after we’ve strayed

SUNDAY MAY 28 AT 9AM PST / 12PM EST

Want to add to the list? Want to tend to your garden of creative endeavors? Join me for class on Sunday. Class is $55 and there are scholarships available. We will make our own lists and you will leave with the confidence and next steps to start your next project, hobby, business, hard text to a friend, song you are writing, anything.

If you had a hobby you loved but you stopped, you can find a way to pick it back up

Class is two hours and could totally transform your mindset around starting projects, take the risk, invest in yourself. CLASS IS RECORDED AND YOURS FOREVER

1. My favorite thing that you could do is hit FOLLOW on Spotify or the PLUS button an Apple Podcasts so that when a new episode of Common Shapes drops you are in the know! Episode three and four drop this Wednesday, new episodes every week! The show debuted at #15 on the Apple Podcast Arts Charts and that is so special to me and so is the fact that so many of you are listening

2. Things of the past that look like the right now

   Thomas J. Watson Library

   

   Thomas J. Watson Library on Instagram: ”“The Shape of Things,” by Edward H. Hutchins, is entirely made of one sheet of folded and cut paper. Inside, the artist has used brightly colored geometric shapes to adorn the pages. #MetLibrary #ArtistsBooks #SpecialCollections #Editions #EdHutchins #EdwardHHutchins #AccordionBooks #TinyBooks”

   May 22, 2023

3. Detroit friends interested in quilts : community quilt making series with @cyrah_power! Wednesdays in June, 6p at KGD Farm. 
   
   This series is a hands-on conversation about ways that fiber arts are intertwined with our plant stewardship practices. Our making of the community quilt will also kick off a summer of celebrating 10 years of Keep Growing Detroit.

   

4. Amanda Acker painted my favorite quilt, one that has lived in her house, by Frances Swan

   

5. Apply for this residency at the Vermont Studio Center - deadline 6/15

6. The Oral History Summer School looks so incredibly cool

7. I wrote one of my favorite Yes Yes Advice Columns yet :)

   

8. The latest from

   Anna Fusco

   

9. Brooklyn Art Book Fair is next weekend and looks amazing! Including

   Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo
   newest work FLIGHT SCHOOL

   

10. This is a non binary anthem I said so (Heart Like a Truck is also a hell of a song)

A portion of May’s paid subscriptions goes towards the Southern Trans Youth Emergency Project

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⌇⋰ Email : info@marleegrace.space

⌇⋰ PO Box 252 Cedar, MI 49621

Flexible Office : An experimental digital co-working space meets every Tue and Thu from 8-10am PST / 11-1pm EST : our next visioning session is tomorrow May 22

Friday Threads : Check out the most recent gathering of resources and support in Picking up The Loose Ends about re-starting rituals and habits

Yes Yes Advice Column : How to stop loving your ex, self employment without social media, and the faith it takes to write

Photos in this newsletter are by Chloe Sells