Marketing in a Broken World
Doing our jobs when we're not ok
If I am honest dear reader, I am exhausted.
I am exhausted from watching multiple genocides carry on, I am exhausted thinking about the upcoming US presidential election, I am exhausted hearing Amy Goodman tell me yet again how many children have been killed in Palestine. I am exhausted by the makings of my own debt, I am exhausted by wealth inequity, I am exhausted by my PMDD, I am exhausted by the fact that taking a break in our current system is almost impossible. I am exhausted by men who can’t speak truth to my face. I am exhausted by my dating choices. I am exhausted by capitalism. I am exhausted by zionism, white supremacy, and occupation. I am exhausted by war. I am exhausted from being queer. I am exhausted from being non binary. I am exhausted from being misgendered. I am exhausted by how much pain people I love are in.
I rarely admit exhaustion, assuming I am unworthy of the feeling. I have my home and my health and my dog and my beautiful life, I shouldn’t be exhausted. I weave my privilege into as much as I can as a tool for good. And yet I am exhausted. Gaslighting myself into thinking I shouldn’t be what I am has never proven helpful.
I am exhausted not just from the deep and endless feeling but also from the not feeling. From the too much of it all. From the can’t take a break from it all. I don’t want to look away so I turn towards the news and the information and the movement work and my neighbors and do my walks and my prayers and my writing and my workouts and take my meds and go to therapy but I am almost like - What do I need to stop doing so I can feel this more?
I imagine you might feel exhausted too. On top of feeling exhausted most of us have to keep doing our jobs. Over and over and over again. Day in and day out. To pay the rent or the mortgage, to pay taxes, to pay debt, to pay student loans, to pay for food, to pay for the dog, to pay for kids, to pay for the car, to pay for the gym or working out, to pay a therapist, to pay bills, to pay doctors, to pay, to pay, to pay, to pay.
In my closest sphere of life, I am well. I am extremely loved and in good relationships with my closest friends, I love my job, my home is safe and beautiful, June is in good health, my car is working great, and yet the pain of the world pains me greatly.
Perhaps this is just what it is like to be a big feeler, to be highly sensitive, to be neurodiverse. War wages on and I find it can feel so embarrassing to say - Oh the world is a mess, take my little quilt class! Oh the world is a mess? Come to my little co working group!
I am reminded, time and time again, that this is actually where deep and revolutionary work happens. When we gather we are saying fuck you to capitalism and yes to making blankets for the sake of blanket making. We are saying fuck you to war taking away our desire for creative practice. When you market your offerings you are not saying that you don’t see the world, but that the world keeps on turning and the work keeps on needing to be worked.
We don’t carry on business as usual, because we can use our offerings to point the direction of our attention toward our values and what matters to us the most. And yet business must carry on. We labor and we work and we fight for what we believe in and they don’t have to be separate.
I also think social media heightens this exhaustion, and as I attempt to use it again I am not met with a soothing experience to my nervous system. I see death, socks for sale, an online class, death, art my friends make. I sometimes leave inspired, specifically by the activism and organizing of my dearest friends that mobilizes me. But otherwise I am left feeling empty and still exhausted.
Today I don’t come with a clear solution to the exhaustion, the burnout, or staying committed to your work amongst the darkness. I have heard astrologically this month and this week, specifically May 18, are supposed to be lucky. I pray for a ceasefire, for a Free Palestine, for less suffering and starvation, for abundant outcomes for everyone I love.
I stay present and I stay awake, something I didn’t used to have the capacity before. I will continue to tend to my exhaustion, creating more space for rest so that care, mutual aid, and collective tending stay at the forefront of my days.
Dear reader thank you for tuning in every Monday, for being alongside me. Yesterday we had our first Living The Artist’s Way book club meeting and I couldn’t believe how special everyone is. I really do have the best readers in the whole world and connecting with all of you felt important and made me feel less exhausted and more in the web of creative endeavoring.
You are held in the midst of being tired, defeated, and hopeless. Have faith we must! I feel it now more than ever. In the puddles of despair I turn toward even the smallest actions to keep me in alignment and this helps. Writing this helps. Saying it out loud to a friend helps. Endurance is the name of the game, so when I am exhausted today I catch it and I pivot accordingly. I do not trip and fall. I stay resilient and ask for help in the same breath.
Everyone in my community of artists, writers, and cultural workers is tending to this pain of - How can I possibly sell art and “non necessities” during this time of great crisis? I try to remember that just as the world needs doctors and nurses and electricians and plumbers and farmers we need art. We need beautiful objects to make our homes feel peaceful. We need writing to understand ourselves. We need generative and radical classrooms to be students and grow our understanding of practice and process.
To the body workers, tattoo artists, painters, teachers, quilters, writers, coaches, artists, herbalists, and anyone with a “non traditiona”l job - I see you, I am grateful for you. Keep working towards a more equitable world, keep doing your work. It makes this world so much more beautiful to have your work in it. Use the work to bring the movements you believe in to the forefront of your reader’s and your audience’s minds. Tend to the practice as it is how you stay alive.
I find it isn’t the work that I want to avoid, it’s the marketing of the work. The act of inviting feels challenging. Invite I will still do, invite I will practice. I will commit to the art of calling in, even when it is uncomfortable. Perhaps the most radical act in the broken world is to stay creative and agile. Today I have the tools to admit when I am at my breaking point, and use the tools at my disposal to climb back up the ladder of care. I can name exhaustion without tapping out.
May you create actionable steps to free you from exhaustion today, to be available for the work at hand. May you experience ease in your job and labor so that there is time to tend to yourself and the collective. May exhaustion be a signal that it is time to pivot, to tend, and to lean into your people.
We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.
Audre Lorde, The Transformation of Silence in Language and Action
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You have an uncanny ability to write what’s on my heart and mind (and the hearts and minds of many others no doubt) in a way that honors ambivalence while also holding fast to hope. It’s beautiful and I really appreciate it.
It indeed feels very silly and vapid to have to do the things we have to do to promote ourselves in the midst of global events like this. I appreciate how you turn your focus outward as much as you can. By chance, have you read "Orwell's Roses" by Rebecca Solnit? It really helped me reframe some of the ways I view myself within global issues like this.