Things of note :
🪟 This Sunday October 15 is the deadline to apply for the Window Place Residency
🪞 You can take my class on Skillshare for free when you do a 30 day trial of Skillshare Success on Substack: Craft a Subscription Newsletter Worth Reading
Welcome to Yes Yes - my advice column tucked into the Monday Monday newsletter. October is upon us here in Michigan and the leaves couldn’t be more beautiful. The Detroit Art Book Fair is this weekend and I look forward to hosting friends, perusing the tables, and celebrating the printed form.
I took on one question today and it encompasses so much around SHAME and how we talk to ourselves amidst disappointment. May it bring you closer to the self acceptance we all deserve.
I am not a therapist and I have no training in advice giving. I am an artist, a writer, and a teacher of creative practice with a devotion to how we live. These are my opinions, my best shot at hope, and what I know from 35 years on the planet. As always, may you hold a gentle spirit while reading, take what you like, and leave the rest. Let’s dive in!
Dear Mar - How do I hold myself ACCOUNTABLE to taking ACTION instead of joining more classes and workshops. So much knowledge, shitty, SHITTY follow-thru. I've taken Clear Channels and your Newsletter workshop & I'm READY but for some reason here I am...signing up for a Branding Workshop INSTEAD OF WRITING THE FUCKING NEWSLETTER. Even with multiple co-working & accountability groups!
Dearest gentle reader! You are not alone in this frustration and you are not shitty SHITTY at following through. You are a human, doing your best to exist within an extractive capitalist framework, bursting with creative ideas, grasping for something to stick. What a blessing, what a reframe, what a joy to witness you in this way. Together we will transmute this shame into creative prosperity.
I love taking classes, and I have been known to buy a class that I never take. I beat myself up for the wasted $27 but ya know what, sometimes just reading the copy of the sales page did its spell on me. It worked its magic and something clicked. Something small may have shifted that is imperceivable but rippled through in the way I do business and make art.
I have heard from more than one person that they have never opened my book How to Not Always Be Working, but they keep it on their nightstand. Just having it there, almost as a mini altar to the centering practice of their day to day life, has an impact on how they spend their work hours. We buy books we never read, classes we never take, food we don’t get around to cooking. It’s the way of many a brilliant neurodivergent freak that is worth looking at more closely.
I’d love to offer you these five solutions for reframing, integrating, and weaving it all together.