Leaving Instagram or Exiting the Portal of the Validation Loop

Welcome to season two of Common Shapes! Since last season, I took a big step in my life and logged out of Instagram for good.

So in this episode, I’m going to share why I left and how I did it. Not from a place of knowing-it-all, but by asking the question, “what does it actually mean to be done with social media?”

I hope this episode inspires you to take supportive steps that are right for you. Tune in to learn about—

  • What it’s like to leave Instagram

  • The portal of the validation loop

  • A big business success moment since leaving

  • Is Substack social media?

  • Weaving the personal, poetic & political


LISTEN WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS SPOTIFY + APPLE PODCASTS + AUDIBLE

“I left Instagram with 28 ,000 people subscribing to my newsletter. I absolutely do not think you need a number anywhere close to that to leave Instagram. I’m sharing my numbers as transparently as I can, but I want it to feel possible for you as well without that many newsletter subscribers. Just start your email list.”

  • Introducing Season Two: Common Shapes Podcast

    [0:00] Hello, and welcome to Common Shapes season two.

    I'm so happy to be here as your host. I'm Mar Marlee Grace.

    This is a podcast about practices, systems, and rituals for a creative life.

    And if you're listening today, welcome back. Welcome back to the show.

    Happy to have you here. I had a great time making season one and took a much -needed break as I figured out the business and creative ecosystem that includes having a podcast.

    It's a lot of work, but it's also, it's like just another channel, and sometimes I feel like there's so many channels between me and the people.

    [0:52] You know, I send a weekly newsletter that often comes out twice a week. I teach.

    I'm writing a book. I'm talking to my neighbors.

    So I think the space between season one and two was sort of this stretch of time to try to understand what the podcast wanted to be.

    And the good news is I don't have any more clarity.

    Lesson Learned: Hit Record Even Without Clarity

    [1:23] So that is lesson number one of season two. You don't have to be clear to hit record.

    Introducing the Creative Ideation Portal and its benefits

    [1:32] All right, so what are we going to talk about today?

    Well, the first thing I'll say that I love to say is I would love if you downloaded the Creative Ideation Portal, just like in season one.

    It's still here in season two. It is three days of journaling, writing, visioning about your creative projects.

    It's totally free. You can grab it in the show notes.

    MarleyGray .space slash common shapes is the other place that everything lives on my website.

    [2:03] So grab that, let it support you.

    That's the first place I tell people to go. If they're like, I don't know where to start, start there and then see what you need after that.

    Okay. Today's episode is all about how I left Instagram.

    Yes, I left. I logged out September 28th, something like that.

    I should probably look, end of September.

    And if you've been reading my writing, listening to this podcast, following my life, you know that I've struggled, right?

    That I've taken these different breaks and put rules on myself and I quit Instagram.

    So I wanna talk about Instagram.

    I wanna talk about leaving it. I want to talk about what it's like, I want to talk about my fears, I want to talk about a huge business success moment, and is Substack social media?

    Exploring fears, business success, and Substack as social media

    [3:04] These are my questions today. Here we go.

    Leaving Instagram for Mental Health and Artistic Freedom

    [3:11] I don't know exactly.

    [3:18] How I got the strength to leave.

    [3:23] And strength might sound really dramatic, but it took like a level of strength.

    And it's sort of funny that I started with, you don't have to have clarity to hit record.

    It's like, you don't have to be strong to leave the thing that isn't working anymore, right?

    And so I really just knew that Instagram wasn't working for my mental health, for my relationship to both my art and level of activism.

    Like, you know, I don't identify as an activist, but absolutely am someone who weaves in my identity and politics into my work.

    And so I just knew that it wasn't working.

    It wasn't like bringing me closer to the work at hand. It wasn't bringing me closer to people anymore.

    And it was like I would really find myself, of course, just using my phone so much.

    But spoiler alert, I'm still using my phone more than I want to.

    So I feel like it's important to say that I don't think leaving social media equals suddenly being free of a phone addiction, right?

    So that's one thing I've noticed.

    [4:45] And I wrote about this a little bit in Monday Monday in the installment called Channeling New Ideas.

    [4:53] And yeah, the Gmail app, it's like the search for validation is what I'm in withdrawal from and isn't automatically fixed when we leave Instagram.

    So how do you leave Instagram if you're using it for your business?

    How to Leave Instagram for Business Purposes

    [5:17] I, of course, have to name, as I am known to do on this podcast and in my newsletter, Amelia Hruby, who makes Off the Grid.

    If you really want a formula for how to leave social media, go listen to her podcast, especially the first couple episodes.

    Really walks you through it.

    But I will say for me, what do we need, right? What are we using Instagram for?

    We're using it to speak to people and to tell them how to buy the things or interact with the things that we make, right?

    Books, newsletters, podcasts, courses, membership sites, objects, experiences, right? It's where we tell people.

    It's the channel where we say, hello, it's me.

    I've thought about us for a long, long time.

    [6:17] Name that movie that that moment is in, it's The Virgin Suicides.

    Okay, since I've been gone from hosting this podcast, I watched, I had to take a break between season one and two because I had to watch all of Sex and the City and the two movies and the spinoff and Just Like That.

    Okay, so you also, I'm not gonna spoiler anything, but in episode one of and Just Like That, the spinoff, that song happens there as well, okay?

    Anyways, the channel of Instagram is where we say, hello, it's me, here's the thing I do.

    In order to leave and still have a business, we have to do one of two things.

    Invent a new business model, which is totally possible, or move that audience somewhere else.

    Right? So having a podcast, having a newsletter, having a Patreon, having somewhere else that is the channel that you tell the people what it is you are doing.

    Starting a business without social media?

    [7:30] You know, I was joking to someone the other day. I had someone ask me, what would you tell someone who is totally new to starting a business?

    It's like starting a brand new business and wants to do it without social media.

    And I did have like a pause or like a oof, like.

    This is a great question, and I think somewhere that I get like a little bit stuck, but I'm going to try to unpack it a little bit.

    One of the things is like, or my response to her was like, I feel like I just spent the last 11 years using Instagram so that I could leave it.

    [8:08] So again, metric wise, it was like I left Instagram with 28 ,000 people subscribing to my newsletter.

    I absolutely do not think you need a number anywhere close to that to leave Instagram I'm sharing my numbers as transparently as I can But I want it to feel possible for you as well without that many newsletter subscribers I think you could have a couple hundred people on an email list a thousand people on an email list Start your email list. Okay. Are you listening to me?

    Are you reading the transcript start your email list?

    Listened to the episode in season one called the art of the newsletter, or take my Skillshare class about Substack, or take my old newsletter class, just start an email list.

    Owning and moving your email list

    [9:01] If you need either of those, just email me.

    Just I'm here to help you. I want you to start an email list because the way that I was able to leave Instagram is because I had an email list.

    You can use Flowdesk, MailChimp, Substack, Beehive, Ghost, whatever you want to use. Tiny letter.

    [9:19] The thing about your email list, you own it, you can move it around whenever you want.

    Okay? So again, if you're like, start on MailChimp, and then you're like, I want to move to Substack, or I want to move over here.

    You can. You own that list. You can download it and import it into the new email service provider that you're using. Get an email list, okay?

    Examining the Motivation Behind Instagram Usage

    [9:44] So, I think here's like the part of the experiment for me.

    And for any of you who are like into human design, it's part of my human design. I'm a 2 -4 manifester.

    It's part of my human design that I'm not here to prove anything.

    And so, I tried to be careful with like, am I trying to like prove something?

    Like I can do this without Instagram.

    And so, I sort of waited for that to pass in some ways to just be like, okay, what is the motivation here.

    And I'll name that this was like borrowed from talking to a lot of different people.

    But I feel like Instagram from like a recovery standpoint is like the alcoholic, the bar, the alcoholic parent, and the partner of the alcoholic at the same time. And it's alcohol.

    Did I say that one already? It's like, it's every form of that addiction for me. It like fills every part of it.

    It's like the alcoholic partner who can't show up. It's the alcohol I can't put down. It's the addict parent.

    You know, it's whatever it is. It's a mirror of myself as all of these things.

    And that was the part that really wasn't working anymore for me was like, you know, I've heard this before around codependency and...

    Codependency and Instagram Success

    [11:10] Like a great episode of Amelia's podcast, Off the Grid, is with Melissa Word, who I'm a huge fan of, and I feel like they have a lot of good talks in there about this.

    But it's just like, where am I healing my codependency everywhere else and finding success in that?

    But on Instagram, I wasn't finding success in healing it there.

    And so, you know, I'll also say it just wasn't working as well, Right? Like I would post, you know, people love a selfie.

    People love when I'm like, 12 years sober today. And then 3000 people like it.

    As soon as I'm like, here's a flyer for my class, literally 40 people see it.

    And that's okay. But it's just like, that's the inconsistency of the chaos person or the alcoholic or however you want to kind of draw these similarities.

    The writer Murphy Barney talked to me about some of this. It's another person to name.

    But it's that inconsistency and that going back for more.

    It's like, shoot, I didn't get that much attention. I have to try again.

    And then you get the attention. I mean, this is also the dance of the anxious and the avoidant in the attachment wound dance, right?

    [12:31] And so I wanted to like overpower that.

    And as I've talked about on this podcast, it's like I tried everything, like giving over my password, changing what hours I used it.

    Setting Rules and Breaking Them: Similar to Alcoholism

    [12:43] And this also like drew back to me sort of the alcoholic narrative of, can I just drink gin? Can I just drink on the weekends?

    What if I don't drink in the morning? Like I'm gonna put all these rules on my using and then I would break every single rule over and over and over again, I would break the rule.

    [13:02] And so it really was...

    Similar to so many other things I've left in my life or changed or pivoted was like a deeply spirit -led moment.

    It was a Saturday, it was a Saturday night, and I just got this like message from G .O .D. that was like, you're done now. It's done.

    You have to leave. You have to stop using it." And it was really like a, you know, I'm not one to like really identify as like a leader.

    Like that's not like an archetype or a word I use a lot.

    But as like someone like Brene Brown really calls us into like the arena, right?

    Of like, I want to be in the arena with the other people. and if I'm going to talk about this relationship and write about it and really look at it with a clear view.

    [14:03] Clear eyes, full hearts can't lose.

    [14:07] I need to practice not what I preach necessarily, but I need to practice what I practice.

    I need to practice leaving the thing before I know if gonna work or not.

    How else do you know?" And so, God was like, it's time to leave.

    The next morning, I posted I was leaving, and I logged out.

    Breaking Free from the Grip of Social Media

    [14:35] I'm gonna be honest that I logged back in at some point to just look, maybe a week later, And then I had my dear assistant Hannah change the password and now I really haven't looked again.

    And it's been quite freeing. And there's a sorrow to it, which kind of brings me to like, how has it been?

    And I had like two relationships this year that were really sort of like, did a lot of like witnessing for me, like a lot of like reflecting back of like, this is how you are, this is who you are, you're hot, you're cool, you're special, you're amazing.

    And those two relationships are on pause.

    [15:22] And Instagram was sort of that third relationship. Like, I have other relationships where I feel that energy, but these were like, a little more consistent.

    And so was Instagram, it was like, I could go there at any time, and like be fed by the validation machine, right?

    That's what Instagram kind of became was like the validation machine loop.

    And I think that's sort of what Spirit was maybe saying to me, but couldn't name it. Because I think if I had known that that's what it was, I don't know if I would have left. Like, I think I would have been too scared.

    I think I would have been like, wait, wait, wait, I can't be without that.

    The Struggle of Taking a Break from Social Media

    [16:10] You know, I was hesitant to make the first episode about this only because I feel like I know so little at this point, like it's still all sort of like coming to me around.

    What does it mean to take a break? What does it mean to be done with Instagram or be done with social media?

    I haven't, I never really had Twitter, haven't had Facebook since 2016 or something.

    And which also brings us to the question is sub stack social media.

    And but first, let me let me continue.

    So you know, how has it been, I feel like I'm in this like portal around the validation loop.

    And sort of like missing that like parasocial, just like the random urge to share something.

    Just like the random urge to be like, here's a hot pick, or like, here's a little thing I want to say.

    But I definitely, I'm noticing already.

    [17:21] I'm thinking clearer, like I'm noticing things, my attention is pretty rapidly coming back in terms of like being able to read and watch movies, and just get back to people.

    So I'm noticing that is good.

    Realizing the Negative Impact on Mental Health

    [17:45] I'm also noticing like, and I say this with so much love for myself, but like it's worse than I thought.

    Like my what has happened to my brain is worse than I could have imagined.

    And I feel like I can't fully comprehend things as well, like I'm just noticing the long -term effects on my brain.

    And there's nothing that I could do in six weeks to take back 11 years of using this thing.

    And that feels kind of serious to say. Bye.

    Is Substack Social Media? The Debate Begins.

    [18:27] Is sub stack social media? That's the question.

    No, is my answer. Well, I think yes and no.

    I think if you use the sub stack app, you are absolutely engaging in a social media type thing.

    [18:47] There's notes, which is kind of their like Twitter like thing.

    And there's like a home. and there's an explore and that looks if it walks like social media and it talks like social media.

    Yeah, I guess I'll just say I think that if you're using substack the app and interacting on it, I think you are using social media.

    I think if you are sending out a newsletter via Substack, even if you're engaging with comments, I absolutely don't think that is social media.

    I think that that is sending a newsletter and engaging in the comments, similar to how a blog worked or how Patreon works.

    It's a membership subscription service that you interact with people on a computer or on your phone, but it's not social media.

    So I don't think that Substack is inherently social media.

    I think that if you utilize the features of it that are, then yeah, you're using social media.

    But if you're not using notes or other functions of it, I don't think it's social media.

    That's my hot, hot take.

    Struggling with Apps, Except Dating Apps

    [20:05] But yeah, I can't have the Substack app on my phone. That doesn't work for me.

    I'm struggling with the Gmail app. I'm struggling with other apps.

    [20:14] Not dating apps, though. Those scare me too much, but blessings to those who use them.

    Fear of Leaving Social Media and Need for New Business Plan

    [20:24] Okay, my win! I had a win!

    So, what's the fear of leaving social media? The fear is, I'm not going to make money anymore, I'm not going to reach people anymore, right? That's the fear.

    And so that's sort of like where I said before, like, you need either a new business plan or another channel, and maybe a little bit of both, right?

    And I guess I'll sort of explain that in this example of the first like test was, I launched a new season of Flexible Office, my digital co -working space, and.

    [21:05] I will share that I had the most signups out of any season of Flexible Office that has ever happened with social media.

    So I had more people sign up than ever before.

    And one thing that changed, this isn't a change in the business model, but it is a change in like my marketing was that I like went kind of heavy on the emails.

    Like I sent an extra email just about Flexible Office the day before it started and so many people signed up.

    And you know, I really leaned in to the email marketing side of my newsletter and it worked.

    And so I share that just to say, I was really, really afraid that it wasn't going to work.

    Acceptance of Potential Loss and Financial Concerns

    [22:00] I was afraid that like one thing that did happen, for instance, was like one of my quilt class sessions didn't sell out and usually both do and it only didn't sell out by four spots.

    Maybe I'm wrong, but in the past, those four spots have sold when I like blast Instagram stories one more time, like the day or two before.

    And so I had left Instagram right before a quilt class started in October.

    [22:31] And you know, or I guess with that, it's like, it was a bummer.

    [22:37] And that extra $1 ,300 would have certainly been really nice to have.

    I was also like in a lot of acceptance around a pay cut. like I was in a lot of acceptance around, like I might lose something in this process. And, Yeah, so I think I was feeling really nervous that I was going to see like another pay cut in flexible office. And I'm grateful to say that I didn't.

    I made more money organizing flexible office than I did any other season that I used Instagram for.

    And so yeah, that's sort of where it's like the business model might need to change or like the model of your marketing might need to change.

    Like you might need to lean in more to your emails or having something like the creative ideation portal, like having your own sort of lead magnet or entry point, right?

    It's like we have to lean into these other tools in order to be able to leave this tool that is Instagram.

    [23:41] Also, maybe you don't want to leave it and I'll just also say that that's fine. That's okay.

    You know, of course, my real – what's the real fear is the question that I keep asking that I've now posed here more than once.

    And the other one is that I can't like get another book deal or promote another book without it.

    And I do think that having an email newsletter and subscribers that you can show an agent or an editor or a publishing house is really, really helpful.

    So I do think that the reality is like we have to show people sometimes that we can reach a certain number of people, and that's why I tell you over and over to get an email list.

    Even if you just never send an email, just keep collecting them.

    Maybe one day you'll want to.

    But yeah, I think I had to accept that it might be true, right?

    As much as I'm sitting here, I'm like, I will absolutely write more books, and they will absolutely find people.

    If I have to self -publish, publish with a small indie press, whatever it is, I will make more books and they will find the people, period. I do believe that.

    And there was part of me that had to accept that.

    Shifting Business Models and Success Measures

    [25:02] Maybe the level of book, making that I once saw maybe wouldn't be what I see in my lifetime or something.

    And I don't even know what that means, whether it's like success of like sales or being on lists or getting press.

    Like, I just think that, yeah, I had to really say to myself, like, it's okay if that doesn't happen.

    And that's sort of like the shift in business model for me.

    And I'll say that my current yearly sub -stack income is about the same as my last book advance.

    And so that's an example of the business model changing, is like before, I would get a book advance and write that book, and that book advance would be part of how I paid my rent and lived my life.

    And today, my substack gives me about the same amount of money as I got from my last book advance.

    And that is a generous amount to be able to pay myself and pay my mortgage and live my life today in addition to, you know, my teaching and other things.

    But that's an example of the business model changing. is like I was also able to make the jump because I do monetize my newsletter.

    [26:25] But I also have continued to successfully use my newsletter as a place to market my other offerings.

    So I really believe that you can do both in that space if it's on Substack, if it's somewhere else.

    Writing, Marketing, and Teaching Opportunities

    [26:39] I really believe that you can make a personal essay, be a personal essayist, write narrative nonfiction, and still market your other offerings in a newsletter format, whether it's Flowdesk, MailChimp, Substack, et cetera.

    [26:54] I wanna just wrap up and say, you know, this was a bit of a channeling ramble, which is a higher version of a ramble. It's led by God.

    And thank you for listening.

    I think I'm really curious, like, how this episode lands.

    So if you wanna email me, info at marleygrace .space, I'd love to hear about it. I think on Spotify you can say what you thought about the episode.

    I would love if you shared this episode, either on social media or in your own newsletter or text it to a friend.

    That is the best way to get the word out about Common Shapes.

    Season two, we've got some amazing guests lined up.

    I would also love to just share a couple things coming up. If you're listening in real time, November 21st, I'm teaching a class about putting marketing gems in your newsletter, November 21st, head to the show notes.

    And then in December, I'm teaching a writing class.

    Exciting December Workshops and Guest Teachers

    [27:59] It's the three Sundays, three Sundays in December, writing the personal, and I'm going to let you jump into the show notes to read all about that. But I'd love to have you.

    There's two amazing guest teachers, Fareeha Roshin and Anna Fusco.

    It's going to be really, really special. So those are two places that I think also will just help nourish your creative spirit off of Instagram, right?

    It's like, not only am I off of Instagram, but I will now really be teaching through the lens of not using it and being in it with you guys in terms of like figuring out like, how do we market?

    How do we fill our classes?

    How do we get creative without totally burning out and losing, you know, our audience, our clients, etc.

    And so I hope to keep exploring this on season two.

    I think this is a big question I have. It's a big question in the writing the personal class is also around like our politics, our personal politics.

    How do we weave them into the work that we're doing? And I sort of mentioned, you know, that Instagram wasn't really feeling like a place that I could do that.

    But my newsletter absolutely is a place that I can do that. And I've been doing it now more than ever.

    And so, yeah, you're interested in weaving in the personal, poetic, and political, come take class with us in December. It's going to be really, really special.

    Support the Podcast and Newsletter on Substack

    [29:28] And the best way to find the newsletter, Monday Monday, that I write every week is to go to marleygrace .substack.

    That is also the best way to support this podcast. Honestly, if you become a paying subscriber of Monday Monday, it's $7 a month or $70 a year.

    That helps pay everyone who makes this podcast possible.

    So jump on over there. You can follow me on Instagram if you want, but I won't see it.

    And many blessings season two common shapes. Here we go.

    Thank you for listening to this episode. Thank you for sharing it.

    You are a blessing to me. And to those who may benefit I am sure I'm Marley Grace. I'm your host.

    Thanks to everyone who makes this podcast possible. Thanks to Lukeza Branfman Verissimo who made our art.

    Thank you to Salt Breaker who made our music and sound effects.

    And thank you to Softer Sound Studio for podcast editing and support.

    Thank you for listening to Common Shapes. See you next week.

Common Shapes is an ad free listener supported show. To receive emails when new episodes come out and get bonus content subscribe to my newsletter

Embracing Your Everchanging Job Description

Making this podcast brought me into a business ecosystem crisis. Very little of my output changed, but my inner understanding of my work needed to shift.

So in today’s episode, I’m sharing how my job description has changed since I launched this show. And I’m exploring how shifting your job description can transform your relationship to your work.

Tune in to learn about—

  • How to discover what you’re devoted to

  • What are the themes of your job

  • What is not your job

  • How to write your job description

  • Aligning your job with your values & interests

  • What’s next for Common Shapes podcast

LISTEN WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS SPOTIFY + APPLE PODCASTS + AUDIBLE

“The biggest way my job description changed was internally. In my twenties and my early thirties messing up in front of people was a huge part of my job description. It was like — look at me! I’m a tornado person! Look at me go! But that’s not part of my job description today. Today at 35 years old, I feel confident in the work that I do, the writing that I create, the offerings I craft, and I give them to the world.”

  • Welcome to Common Shapes: Exploring the Creative Life

    [0:00] Hello, and welcome to Common Shapes, a podcast about practices, systems, and rituals for a creative life. And today, a podcast about your changing job description.

    I'm your host, Marley Grace. Thank you for being a listener.

    This is the last episode of season one of the podcast, a nice short and sweet debut season of Common Shapes.

    It has been the honor of a lifetime to host this little show and bring you a couple great guests and a lot of different thoughts, feelings, strategies, systems, rituals, et cetera, for creative living and art making and sharing that work with the world.

    So I'll be taking the next couple of weeks off of the show, but leaving you with a lot of great things to dig into.

    The Creative Ideation Portal for Project Visioning

    [1:06] Throughout season one, I've been sharing about the Creative Ideation Portal, which is a three-day guide to help you vision your projects and bring them into the world.

    It's free to download at marleygrace.space slash common shapes.

    So grab that. it goes well with the first four episodes of this podcast and we'll support you in making your dreams come true.

    Today's episode goes with a mini workshop called Your Ever-Changing Job.

    And this is a mini workshop and notion template that you can purchase in the show notes, marleygrace.space.

    That's where you can find it. and it is to bring everything I'm going to talk to you about today, truly into the forefront of your mind, to put it into action, to integrate it with your spirit and into the world.

    So if you love today's episode, your ever-changing job is the mini workshop for you.

    Let's dive in.

    Shifting Perspectives: A Business Ecosystem Crisis

    [2:21] So, this season, making this podcast brought me into what I might call a business ecosystem crisis.

    Now, very little of my output needed to change.

    But my inside business ecosystem needed to shift, right? Like the way that I look at my job needed to change internally.

    [2:53] And externally, I don't actually think it needs to look that different.

    So today on the show, I wanna bring us through how to write a job description and how to change that job description.

    And so we're gonna look at what are you devoted to, what is it that you do and what you like to do, the themes of your job, and what is not your job.

    And then we'll talk a little bit about how the workshop can bring you further into some of this knowing if you wanna dig in further. So I'm gonna talk about my own business crisis first.

    So there's nothing like teaching something to make you wonder if you actually like doing it that way.

    Right, so when I first started getting the show ready to figure out, okay, what do I wanna say?

    What do I wanna teach about? What do I wanna share about? It was really, you know, I wanna share, how I craft the offerings of my art and my work, how I exchange those offerings for money, how I make money.

    I wanna bring on guests for them to talk about the ways that they make money and put their own work out.

    And I wanna just like peel back the curtain on how I do things so that more people can be inspired.

    [4:19] To create their own art and create their own offerings around their art.

    Bridging the Gap: Artists and Small Business

    [4:24] I also knew I wanted to sort of bridge the gap.

    [4:29] Between artists and marketing and small business, right? It's like sometimes that seems maybe only for the online influencer or a business person or service provider. And I really wanted artists, to see that they could expand their income and their offerings in the same way that I have found success in doing so. So that was sort of my, that's what the podcast is about. That's what what season one is about, you know, this little journey through those first four episodes with the creative ideation portal to really say, here's everything I know to sort of make a start, make a beginning, and then here's how I do the other things in my life.

    And now I'm sitting here in a lot more not knowing.

    Reflecting on Personal Beliefs and Choices

    [5:24] And I stand by everything I said on the podcast. I stand by everything I shared about and believe in.

    And I also sit here thinking, what if you didn't do any of that?

    Finger pointed back at myself. What if I didn't do any of that?

    What if you don't do any of that?

    What if you stopped thinking about piecing together all of these different puzzle pieces and only chose one thing and just did that.

    You know, something that emerged from the podcast this season was taking on one-on-one creative advising clients. So in the past, I was taking very little on in terms of one-on-one consulting around creative projects. That's something I used to do a lot more as part of my job. And I stopped in part because it could be a little bit draining for me sometimes.

    And I also noticed that for a more accessible exchange, someone could take my online class and have access to me week after week. And it wore me out less to host a group. But I then found that I had to promote less to get new one-on-one clients.

    [6:53] Like I really only had to post once and then my book sort of filled for the month.

    Whereas in a class, you have to promote a lot to get people to sign up.

    So I was sort of starting to look at, okay, what is the energy exchange in talking about selling, right?

    Exploring Selling Fatigue and Promotional Strategies

    [7:11] So I'm sort of bringing us through this creative crisis into some things that changed.

    So I'm still sort of talking about my own journey this season of the podcast.

    But I think it was, you know, I think something I experienced myself is like selling fatigue.

    And, you know, in the shapes of our offerings and in my class teaching as a practice and other things that I do, I talk so much about marketing as a creative practice, right, we look at that in the creative ideation portal.

    And I sort of hit this feeling with the podcast and talking about the podcast and my newsletter and my classes where I felt like all I'm doing, all I do is sell myself and sell my offerings and sell my work.

    And because my work is so personal, I was feeling like, am I selling myself or something?

    And something wasn't quite adding up.

    So I was noticing the selling fatigue.

    [8:15] And I think part of that was just like, I added a new project, the podcast, a new thing that I'm going to be telling people about.

    Another shift that happened this season was that I stopped hosting Flexible Office.

    And I think in part that was I added the podcast and it was like, it felt tiring to also promote.

    [8:37] Flexible Office and the podcast and my newsletter and classes, like there were just too many different things.

    And, you know, something I also wanna share is a lot of people have a podcast that they can use social media less.

    [8:54] So my job description, I'm also thinking, what if it didn't include social media at all?

    Embracing the Fluidity of Job Descriptions and Creative Practices

    [9:02] Right, this also came up this season doing the podcast. So what I wanna say, first of all, is just that creating this podcast led me to a lot of crisis-like feelings.

    And they were crisis feelings, not just, oh, this is experimental, because I forgot it was an experiment, right?

    When I stay in the experiment of my job and my business and my life and my art practice, it stays fun, it stays curious, and it stays open to shifting, right? As soon as I'm like, well, I thought I was going to do this and it was going to go this way, that rigidity is going to keep me stuck when movement is actually possible and what is going to provide the most excitement to the listener or the reader or the student.

    [9:59] So I'm calling it a crisis because I think because I was using a podcast to talk about my work and what I was doing, it felt like so much more set in stone.

    But I'm telling these people these things, and they're listened to thousands of times.

    That's a beautiful result of this podcast and the word-of-mouth nature, and it being shared far and wide is thousands of people are listening to each episode, whereas when I teach in a container, there's maybe 80 to 150 students.

    In the podcast.

    [10:43] Container, thousands of people are listening, and suddenly it feels more like fact. Like, this is my truth, this is my job, this is how I do it, you can do it too. So when I would pause, and think, you know what, actually, I want to do it this way now, not this way, my thought would be like, oh no, but I've already made a podcast episode about this thing, or I've already said this thing is true, but what if this thing is true now? People often ask me.

    [11:18] Are you ever afraid that you're writing a book and you just won't believe the things in it anymore? I'm like, yes, of course, but it was true when I said it. And so everything in the podcast is true when I said it, but I'm allowed to be ever-changing, right? I'm allowed to have, my job description change? And so I have these questions that I dig into in the workshop, but I'm gonna share them with you here now. And one of them is our changing job description, right? How do you write a job description for yourself? And you might be asking, well, why would I do that? Like I just am an artist and I just do my job, which is art making.

    But I think as we start to fold in these other offerings, whether it's teaching or your own podcast or your newsletter, I want you to get really clear on what you're devoted to and the themes that emerge throughout your work. When I teach about writing newsletters, this is one of the first things we look at is like what happens sort of throughout the newsletter, no matter what the topic is.

    And so something that emerged in my work.

    Defining What Your Job Isn't

    [12:40] Was also what my job isn't. So that's the other thing I want you to start to sort of get clear on is like, what isn't your job?

    I've done this exercise before.

    I think it was the poet and my friend, Jacqueline Suskin, who I first saw make a list that was like, my job isn't.

    And I was like, wow. And like a big one was like, my job is not to be a news reporter and I am not an elected official, right?

    Right, these are important things for me to remember just because I'm a public figure and a public person.

    If I'm held to any standard that is separate from my own, that was not decided on by me, that was maybe decided on by a person who had an expectation of me or my work or my values and how they were going to weave together that I didn't consent to.

    So my job is also what I decide.

    If you're starting to get the feeling another person is making a decision about what your job role is, this is a great opportunity to sort of bring the focus back on you and decide what your job is for yourself.

    [13:52] Right? So in sort of stepping away from any feeling of being an elected official or public figure with responsibilities that I didn't sign up for, you know, one of the shifts I made during the season was that I left social media. I gave my virtual assistant, Hannah, my password.

    I had her change that password and I stopped using Instagram myself. I wish I had like a a big, beautiful statement of how freeing it has felt, but I don't fully have that yet.

    And I think partly it's because my job description hasn't fully changed with that change.

    [14:34] So I'm still using Instagram, right? I will create a post, a caption, or stories.

    I will text them to Hannah and she will post them.

    If anything, I feel like I've lost a little bit of my creative spark, which I really did get from using Instagram, both the inspiration of people I love and people I love to follow, as well as using it and creating, you know, graphics or images or things to share there felt really fun.

    It's a place that I have had a lot of fun in the last decade, more than a decade.

    And I was feeling it not working. So part of my job description shifting was I no longer interface with Instagram.

    And then I also had to set up an auto response for my DM.

    [15:25] So if someone sends me a DM, they automatically get a message back that says, this inbox is unmonitored.

    For more info and contact, go to marleygrace.space.

    That's something you can do in the business suite of Facebook.

    So you do have to have your Facebook linked to your Instagram as a business account, And then you can make that auto response happen.

    Job Description Changes: Themes, Access, and Fatigue

    [15:53] Here's where my job description changed, right? Here's what I'm devoted to change, the themes changed, what isn't my job and is my job changed was around access.

    This was also part of deciding to no longer do flexible office or to take a season off of flexible office was I started to feel like I was extremely accessible, right?

    [16:19] Suddenly thousands of people are listening to the podcast, Tens of thousands of people read my newsletter.

    People DM me, they respond to the newsletter, and it was becoming so much, and I was putting a pressure on myself to respond to everyone.

    And this is simply not sustainable, whether you have 10 subscribers or 100,000 subscribers to your newsletter, right?

    If you want your job description to be, I respond to every newsletter response, that's great.

    But I hadn't written that into my job description, I was just doing it.

    And I was finding myself fatigued, again, in my accessibility.

    I was having accessibility fatigue, right? So I needed to put some barriers between me, and people I don't know reaching out and my accessibility to them, right?

    Now, of course, I could have just ignored the messages or not opened DMs or, you know, all the different ways that I hope you can also apply to your own process of engaging with people.

    But for me, it's like I have to take big measures sometimes, right, so handing my password over, making an auto response, those were some ways that my job description changed this season.

    Longer Breaks and Income Changes

    [17:42] I also noticed that I needed a longer break between teaching live.

    [17:49] Sometimes that's that output of new ideas was coming faster, but because I was bringing so many ideas to the podcast, I noticed.

    [18:01] That I wasn't like inventing new classes all the time in the way that I have in the past.

    Another way my job description changed was this year, I decided to take a break from teaching A Quilt is Something Human, and the podcast emerged.

    Right, that was also an income change. You know, this is the other thing to look at with our job description is, where is our money coming from, right?

    And is that working for us?

    So not only did I take away the income from A Quilt is Something Human, also added in the expense of paying for podcast editing and guidance.

    I also got a job teaching for Skillshare this year, making an original class with them.

    That's something I hadn't done before. I've only ever taught through the Marley Grace ecosystem.

    And so that's a way that my job description changed.

    I became open to collaborating with an organization outside of my own and being paid for that work and doing that work.

    [19:13] The biggest way my job description changed though was internally.

    In my 20s and my early 30s, messing up in front of people was a huge part of my job description.

    It was like, woof, look at me, I'm a tornado person. I'm, ba-da-ba-da-ba-do, all over the place. I'm messing up.

    Look at me go. Here's the lesson, right?

    It's maybe part of the relatability or why you are a listener in the first place.

    But that's not part of my job description today. Today, at 35 years old, I feel confident in the work that I do, the writing that I create, the offerings that I craft, and I give them to the world.

    Now, this doesn't mean that they're perfect, right? One of my core values of my job description remains anti-perfectionism and being in the experiment, but I no longer necessarily am here to write from the disaster or write from the place of complete not knowing and utter despair.

    I'm more taking that into a private space and writing from more of a completed journey of the self.

    Redefining My Job Description

    [20:39] And that gets to also change back. Maybe when I'm 47, it'll be different. Maybe when I'm 37, it'll be different. But for right now, my job description changed from here is every single part of my life. Look, look, look, look, I'll show you how I do it, how I fuck it up and how I get through it. And now you don't see the inside of the house. And I mean that in both the metaphor and the reality. It's just private. You don't get to see the person I'm dating, that's just private. You don't see the inside of my bedroom, that's just private.

    You see less pictures of my dog, that's private. And you see a little bit less of the mess, that's private. There's also just less mess than there used to be.

    [21:31] And part of that is because I let myself have a weird job where I wove it all together. So you are allowed to outgrow your job description. You are allowed to outgrow, what you designed that was working for you before. You're allowed to say, you know what?

    That's actually not working for me anymore. I want to do something different. And again, the output might not look different, right? I'm still writing a newsletter every week.

    I'm making my podcast every week.

    I'm teaching classes. I'm quilting. I'm thinking about things out loud and in public, right?

    That's the job description, thinking about things out loud and in public.

    [22:21] But how the things are framed is gonna start looking different.

    It already does look different.

    There is a seriousness I take more now than I did before with my work, but I'm still not taking myself overly seriously, right?

    But my projects and the way they exist in the ecosystem, that part of my job description can change as the internal parts change.

    Discovering Themes and Hidden Truths

    [22:54] So I want you to ask yourself, what are you devoted to? What are the themes that are coming up?

    I think a new theme is sort of, to stay hidden and are you allowed to stay hidden? Another theme is like bringing the people the facts, and in the container, bringing them more of like the juiciness.

    It's like in the podcast, you get the beautiful outside skin of the orange and you can sort of like smell that it's really good, but you have to go to the class, to be invited into the container where it's like really juicy and you can make it into juice.

    It's like on the podcast I talk about my online class and how my online class teaches you to make an online class or this episode is the exact example of I'm going to tell you about how my own job description shifted, but if you want to really shift yours yourself, check out the workshop and the notion template. It's like, let this be the formula that you can take.

    [24:04] Right? And that's what the whole first season of this podcast has been about is here's the formula. Now you take it, but here's what else I'm saying is maybe don't Maybe make up a new formula for yourself.

    I hope that season two is all about my next formula and how different it is, right?

    Embracing New Formulas and Personalization

    [24:31] So if you're like, gosh, I've listened to this whole season.

    I thought you were giving me all the answers. I was giving you answers, but I want you to switch them up and figure out what's really, really working for you.

    I remember on the episode about how we create our offering ecosystem and figure out what we give to people, it might just be a newsletter and one online class you teach over and over and over again.

    I think we can get sort of caught up in like marketing world suggestions of you have to launch in this way and have your release runway and it all has to look like this, and your cart should be open for this many days, and don't forget to do blah, blah, blah, and make sure you have your lead magnet. And it's like.

    [25:23] I'm glad at least with A Quilt is Something Human, I never really listened to a lot of that and just was like, here's quilt class and said it when I felt like it and people signed up.

    Like, I want you to remember the simplicity of your job description.

    It could just be, I make blank and I teach blank. You know, I want you to not develop a million offerings and then suddenly you're feeling overwhelmed and like you can't keep up with them.

    [25:56] I also want you to remember that part of your job description doesn't have to be constantly selling the offerings.

    Not just selling like exchange of money, but promoting yourself.

    Like the selling of self and of offerings is exhausting.

    It's what I think so many of us feel exhausted with about using social media, or if having a newsletter feels hard, it could be that way as well.

    I think something I'm encouraging myself to do right now with my own job description is like sell myself less, and trust that the people are coming into my world, in a natural way, right?

    So I'm like, oh, I wanna promote the podcast on social media.

    It's clearly really helping, but it's like, maybe there's enough listeners.

    I don't know. Maybe there's enough people listening and sharing it with each other that this is a marketing tool.

    Like a podcast is a creative practice of marketing. I'm sharing my online classes and my newsletter and the other things that make money on the podcast.

    The podcast is also an offering and a practice itself, but it's also a place to market things.

    Same as my newsletter.

    Redefining Your Job Description and Social Media Presence

    [27:20] And so if part of your job description is to be on social media less and sell yourself less, I think the only way to do that is to just try and see even if it's uncomfortable.

    It's like every single thing I do, I could choose to post about it.

    Every single newsletter that comes out, I could say to Instagram, hey, go read my newsletter.

    And I do usually in my stories at least, but I could pull that back even.

    Because even when I'm sending my posts to my virtual assistant and she's posting them, I'm still in the tether between me and social media. I'm not fully free.

    It's better, I don't even know if it's better. It's different to not be there, but I'm still using it for my business.

    And that can really spike up the like, well, did anyone comment?

    Did anyone message about it?

    You know, wanting to ask for more information instead of fully relinquishing control.

    So as you're thinking about your job description changing, what do you not want to control anymore?

    What can you release control of?

    [28:39] So just to sort of review, we're looking at what are you devoted to? What are the themes of your job? What is not your job, right? I'm not a scientist. I'm not a doctor. I like to write those things sometimes just in case I ever trick myself, right? I'm not a professional swimmer.

    That's not part of my job. But I am a writer who writes about swimming. I am a researcher or who researches about quilts, but I'm not a historian.

    Right, so how do you get clear on the labels that feel really good to you and nourish that part of you, that wants to have your job be in alignment with your values and your interests?

    And I also, I want you to ask yourself, what is it that you do and what is it that you like to do?

    So if you're like, well, hell, I don't know what my job description is. Get poetic with it.

    If you're a painter, maybe your job description is the chemistry of color mixing, right?

    Like maybe your job description is throwing paint at the canvas to see what happens.

    If you are working with clay, the job description is tending to the earth and creating sacred objects of form and function.

    Crafting Your Job Description to Align with Values and Interests

    [30:07] And then if you have a newsletter about your ceramics, the newsletter can be something else, another job description.

    Or maybe you want your newsletter to just be through Flowdesk, and it's just a marketing email.

    And so that's not part of your job description. Maybe part of the job description isn't newsletter writer, but it's to have a marketing practice through a newsletter so that I can be on social media less.

    And the next steps are getting clear on the core values of your job and how they, weave in with the description. I've been a lot of places on this episode sort of in and out, up and down, all around. But what I know is true is that inner job description, is what I want you to really look at for yourself. And for me, it was, you know, I have to be less accessible to people.

    There's just too many who want my attention.

    And in order to do my job and to be of maximum benefit and service, I have to limit those sparse, fast parasocial interactions.

    Creating a Container for One-on-One Clients

    [31:24] And really focus on the long-form connections, which brings me all the way back to wanting to create a container to see one-on-one clients again.

    This doesn't mean I never want to speak to anyone who has an interest in my thoughts on their work, right?

    It's creating a container that is my job where I can be of service to the individual.

    That isn't in my email inbox.

    And it might be some days. Some days I might read an email and think, ooh, yeah, I do want to respond to this.

    But I also set up an auto responder on my email so that when someone reaches out, it's clear that I might not respond to them.

    Right, so my job description changed in that I needed more boundaries around my time and my attention.

    [32:23] And I needed to make that clear in a loving, detached way to the people who were reaching out to me.

    And I needed to make offerings that made it so they could access me if I wanted them to.

    And I can stop and close those books whenever I need to or whenever they're full, right?

    So I don't always have to take clients, but I can.

    If you're listening to this now, you can go to marleygrace.space slash creative advising and book a session if you so desire.

    Finding fulfillment in diverse job roles

    [32:58] Right, there's all these different ways, again, that our jobs can look and feel and be.

    [33:05] And in that fatigue of feeling like I'm selling myself, I'm selling myself, it's so exhausting, it felt so good to open up my creative advising books because again, I just only had to post it once or twice to sort of get the people to come back into the orbit.

    And that's where word of mouth is so beautiful and can really spread and expand, that service that I provide.

    And then, you know, with promoting my online classes, I had to also get clear that part of my job description is to talk about the things that I do, not just to do the thing.

    This is something I've talked about so much this season, but, you know, to really value my teaching as a creative practice, to really value my writing and my podcast as a practice of communicating how I do the things I do and why I do the things I do.

    And that that ripple effect is worthy.

    Right, your ripple effect is worthy. I want you to remember that as you go forth with your projects and creating everything that you do, to remember that the world needs it.

    The world needs your online class. Go back and listen to the five reasons The world needs your online class.

    [34:31] The world needs your book. The world needs your art.

    The world needs all of the practices that you show us.

    And we need you to get clear on what is private and what is public.

    [34:49] We need you to get clear on what is no longer serving you because that is probably no longer serving your students, your readers, your listeners.

    You might have to cut something out in order to bring something else forth.

    And sometimes we have to cut the thing out before we even know what's next and what wants to be brought forth.

    And that's really scary and juicy, worthy, orange peeling back to get to the juicy middle good work to do.

    [35:26] So, my job description changed, and now I'm going to take a few weeks off of making this podcast and I'm so interested how it will change again.

    It's going to keep changing. I imagine something else will emerge.

    I imagine that more spaciousness might show me another class I want to teach or give me some space to work on the book that I'm working on.

    We have to make the space for the thing to come through. Maybe that's a business retreat or a sabbatical from your job, from your self-employment.

    [36:07] Maybe it's just taking out one part of what you do and adding something back in.

    Maybe it's a website spruce up.

    I'd love to point you to my new website, which I've been working on the last month or so, is now ready, an even better reason to go to marleygrace.space.

    That was another thing I wanted to change my job description was also I wanted to change my website.

    So your ever-changing job is the little workshop I made for you.

    And I talk more about changing up your website, rewriting the copy of your About Me.

    I talk about shifting around the shapes of your offerings. I talk about getting clear on those core values that go with your job.

    So I'd love to invite you in this break between seasons of Common Shapes to go grab the workshop, hunker down.

    [37:07] Take some time to look at your own job description so that when we come back on season two, we can keep moving forward with even more clarity about what we do and why we do it and why it is of service to not only the people who interact with our work, but to our own practices, our own creative process.

    Your job description is always changing, and so are you, and that's beautiful.

    And you get to change the parts of you that market and the parts of you that share, and all of that is in the workshop, and you are amazing, dear listener, dear reader.

    I just can't thank you enough for making this first season of Common Shapes so special, so magical, so fun, I can't wait to keep going.

    I can't wait to keep changing and holding myself to lower expectations so that I may exceed, at what I love to do, which is making art, teaching other people how to do it, and sharing the process along the way.

    [38:15] So, grab the Creative Ideation Portal, grab the workshop for this episode, grab a copy of How to Not Always Be Working or Getting to Center, grab one of my zines, grab a print from the online shop.

    Thank you for keeping my mighty little art career going. Thank you for keeping your own little career or hobby or passion project going.

    You are amazing. I hope this feels like a hug and a pep talk and a high-five.

    I want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible. Thank you to Lukeza Branfman-Varissimo for the art.

    Thank you to Saltbreaker for the music and to Softer Sound Studio for podcast editing.

    Thank you for being a listener. I would love it if you shared this episode with a friend or shared it on social media or in your own newsletter.

    Five star reviews are amazing. You can rate the show five stars.

    You can write a review.

    You can text it to a friend, shout it from the rooftops.

    Thank you so much for being a listener of Common Shapes. May your job be abundant, and ripple out to all of those who may be sparked and delighted by your work.

Common Shapes is an ad free listener supported show. To receive emails when new episodes come out and get bonus content subscribe to my newsletter

Creating Your Offer Ecosystem

Your offer ecosystem is how your creative offerings branch out of your artistry, fit together in the world, increase your income, and expand your reach.

In this episode, I share how I’ve crafted my offer ecosystem over the past decade, and I tell you the stories of how a few of my offers have evolved and even ended.

Tune in to learn about—

  • What an offer ecosystem is

  • My favorite ways to get ideas for your offer ecosystem

  • How to choose a container for an offer

  • Why one-on-one work can be a great place to start

  • Charging for your offerings

LISTEN WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS SPOTIFY + APPLE PODCASTS + AUDIBLE

“I love seeing all of the different ways that our offerings support each other and play off each other and intersect with each other and bring more art into the world. That’s what I hope more than anything — that your art can reach more people. ”

  • Transcript

    Introduction to Common Shapes and Offer Ecosystems

    [0:00] Hello and welcome to Common Shapes, a podcast about practices, systems, and rituals for a creative life.

    And in your creative life, I hope that you create many different offerings over the course of your beautiful life. I hope they look like books and art shows and texts and letters and community projects and all of the ways that you integrate your activism and joy and passions into everything that you do. So today we're going to talk about your offer ecosystem.

    We talk about business ecosystems and creative ecosystems in the gardens of creation here on Common Shapes.

    If you don't already know, I am Marley Grace. Most people call me Mar.

    I am the host of this podcast. I am a teacher. I am a dancer.

    I'm a writer. I'm a quilter.

    And I am a shape maker.

    I love thinking about all of the shapes that our offerings make and how we can invent new shapes.

    [1:26] And how the shapes interact with each other, right?

    It's like, you don't have to just make a bumper sticker, you can make a bumper sticker about your radio show.

    [1:38] If you're listening to this the day this podcast comes out or the morning after, I would love to invite you to take Teaching as a Practice, a three-week class for visioning your offering, building your dream syllabus, and launching and teaching your own online class.

    Invitation to "Teaching as a Practice" Class

    [1:57] Head to marleygrace.space to learn more about class and sign up. It's not too late. I'd love to have you there. Every class is recorded. You have lifetime access. There are payment plans. There are scholarships. May you show up as your most abundant self even if you have no idea what to teach.

    If you're like, I don't even want to come to class if I don't know what I want to teach, then my next suggestion, my next offering to remind you, dear listener, is the Creative Ideation Portal, which is a three-day guide for visioning your projects, bringing them to life.

    If the online class isn't right for you right now, take your ideas and put them through the portal.

    You'll get clear. You'll find joy. You'll find inspiration there.

    MarleyGrace.space slash Common Shapes is where you can find the Creative Ideation Portal, all the show notes, all the podcast episodes, and you can find all of my online classes and offerings on my website.

    Creating an offer ecosystem: Introduction and ideas

    [3:08] Creating an offer ecosystem. You, dear artist, are amazing.

    You are prolific. You are ready to bring work into the world, but you're not quite sure what it is, or you have too many ideas, right?

    So in episode two, we talk about creating our creative containers, which is similar to the offer ecosystem. They sort of talk to each other, right?

    My web, as Luqueza would say, includes teaching online classes, My free offering, which is the Creative Ideation Portal.

    My newsletter, which is both free and has the option to become a paid subscriber.

    [4:01] Writing books, this podcast, and the thing I added back in most recently was one-on-one creative advising.

    Now, if you've been listening to this podcast, you might've noticed that I stopped talking about Flexible Office, which was the digital coworking space that I was running.

    So that was part of my offer ecosystem that no longer is, and I'll talk a little bit about why that is later in the episode.

    Those are some of the very basic things to put in an ecosystem.

    Other examples would be physical objects. So let's say I was in a season where I wanted to make quilts to sell.

    I wanted to have an art show of quilts. That would be an example of something I might add onto my ecosystem.

    Perhaps I want to teach a real life dance class series series at the Township Hall.

    Maybe I want to add group coaching.

    [5:08] Perhaps I want to have a book club. Perhaps I want to start an online membership community.

    Right, so flexible office sort of existed in the online community world of offerings.

    In episode two, again, we talk about all the different kinds of creative containers you can have.

    And so today I wanna talk more about how we pick which ones to do, how we decide if they make money or not, and how much money they each cost or make, and just how to decide what season it's all in, right?

    So follow me on this journey.

    Welcome to the journey of creating your offer ecosystem as an artist, as a creative person, as an entrepreneur, As a small business owner, welcome to the journey.

    As always, I suggest you make a list, but I want you to make a list of all the ways.

    [6:18] You like making money, right?

    So you might make two columns. One that's the ways you like making money and one that's the things that you love doing that you maybe could make money on.

    So I wanna be clear that when I'm talking about offerings, I am talking about making money.

    I'm talking about your job.

    But I'm also talking about maybe a hobby that makes some income, right?

    I think we can be loose about what is a job, what is work, and what is adding in commerce to the things we already do, right?

    So if you're listening and you're like, well, I still have a nine to five, and I don't know if I need like a whole offer ecosystem, that's okay, it could be as simple as Maybe you wanna teach a one-off online class that's two hours long and also have a newsletter that promotes it and the newsletter is free.

    That could be as simple as what your offer ecosystem is. Is a two-hour class and a newsletter to tell people about it.

    That can be the whole ecosystem, right? So I've been building mine over almost 11 years of time that it's gonna be bigger and it's gonna be always shifting.

    So like I mentioned, I was including Flexible Office and then I removed Flexible Office.

    [7:41] Flexible Office started as a seasonal offering. When I first released it in early 2022, it happened for two months.

    And then I took a month break and then I did it for another two months and then I didn't bring it back until early this year, 2023.

    And it went so well and it was so fun and people were so excited about it that I thought, I'll just have this be all the time and cost way less money.

    [8:10] And I can't exactly describe how I came to that. I think it was really like the desire was there, right?

    So when you're creating your offers, pay attention to the desires of your students, your readers, your community, your audience, but also pay attention to your desires and the seasons that you make things in.

    I was really paying attention to like, these people want twice a week co-working, they want it all the time and they want it to be two hours every time.

    And if it's always happening, I'll charge them less money so it's more accessible.

    You could pay $0, $5, 11, 22, right? It was sliding scale.

    [8:56] And so we started and I thought the way to keep it sort of feeling seasonal, was we would do a monthly visioning session.

    So, what happened was...

    Summer began to creep in and I realized the exchange for my time and energy wasn't enough.

    So it wasn't bringing in enough money for me to feel like it was correct for my time exchange and my season of creation really changes in the summer.

    I like to teach a little bit and write, but I don't necessarily want to sit in community with others. I want to be outside more. I want to be practicing in my garden. I want to be planting literal seeds so that in the fall and winter, my projects can sort of come to life.

    And I'm sort of wishing for more time with others in a digital space. And so I had tried to foresee this and planned to take August and February off of Flexible Office, but it was still just like, it started to sit weird in my ecosystem and feel like not the right thing.

    [10:19] So I made the hard decision to end it early. And to stop doing it, I had put it in the platform of Mighty Networks. I'll say to anyone considering their own offerings that a con of using Mighty networks is you cannot pause subscriptions.

    So I couldn't just pause it for longer. I couldn't say, oh, okay, actually, I want to take three months off in the summer and then pause everyone's subscription. There wasn't a way to do that.

    For instance, like on Substack, if you wanted to take a month off, you could pause the subscriptions if you want.

    Of course, a lot of your readers are happy to pay for artists to take breaks.

    I don't think you need to pause subscriptions, but let's say you have a more community-based, interactive-based sub-stack or Patreon or offering of a subscription like that, there's usually a way to pause that membership.

    And in Mighty Networks, there was not. And so I did make the decision to end flexible office.

    Early and just be open to bringing it back for a new season if I wanted to down the road.

    So again, whether you have a small offering ecosystem or a big one, pay attention to.

    [11:40] What are your readers or community audience, what are they wanting? What are they noticing?

    And a great way to start noticing that is in one-on-one relationships. So whether you you see people in a one-on-one advising, or maybe you're a therapist, or you're a service provider, and you're a chiropractor, or a massage therapist, you know, whatever it is, this can also just be in your relationships, right?

    So if you have a relationship with a friend, or a loved one, or even one of your readers who you get a lot of feedback from, pay attention to what themes and patterns of devotion of devotion are coming up for them, right?

    [12:25] What direction do they want to go in? And that is how you can start to sort of formulate what's next.

    And then you get to decide what container it goes in.

    So for instance, a huge theme in my own life is reclaiming my attention from both the systems that take it and the tech that takes it and the time, et cetera.

    Anything that steals my attention or that is built to take my attention, I'm questioning. I'm reclaiming that time and that energy and that precious resource of my brain. And so I write about that often in my newsletter, but I'm also working on a bigger offering of a book that will eventually sort of encapsulate all of this research and thinking about it that I'm doing. Now, because I'm so in process with it right now, I wouldn't develop an online class about that.

    Before I was thinking about it as a book, I did develop an online class about it, right?

    Cultivating Creative Attention is a two-hour class that I teach.

    [13:35] But now I'm just in a different season of it. I'm digging deeper. I'm going deeper into the research of it. So what I mean to say is right now, I'm using the energy of reclaiming the attention. That part of what I'm thinking about is going towards the offering of a future book, a long-term project with short-term writing in between. It's not asking me for new online class material right now. Now quilt class took a break. It's sort of asking me to come back. I'm really feeling the people being like, we really want quilt class. And I get to pause because people were saying they really wanted quilt class before and I knew I needed a break from it.

    I knew in order to be a good teacher and excited and lit up in the way that I wanted to be about quilts, I had to step away. I had to get excited about going back to school to learn about quilts.

    [14:34] And now I'm ready to bring back the class in some way, shape, or form. It's not totally clear yet to me what it's going to look like though. Is it going to look exactly the same? I don't know.

    It needs a little more time to brew. And if you listen to the episode, what to do when you don't know what to do next, you'll know that I get that information from morning pages, list making, movement, calling a friend, right?

    These different tools that I use to get clear on the offerings, right?

    So you're not just making all this up from scratch in your little brain, you are gonna be using these different tools to get clear on what it is that wants to come forth.

    One-on-one work as a source of income and research

    [15:26] The other thing about one-on-one work is it's a way to charge money for your time and also be gathering information, right?

    So whether it's creative advising, creative consulting, branding work, getting hired to redo someone's website.

    You know, anything that you're brought in for your work and your knowledge, that is a way to generate income while also researching at the same time, right?

    So I've just started taking one-on-one clients again in little short spurts, right?

    I open my books, I tell people about that, and people sign up for this guidance.

    And because I recently handed over my Instagram password to my virtual assistant, Hannah, shout out to Hannah, I have so much more capacity for taking on one-on-one clients, right?

    I don't feel myself burnt out from responding to and talking to.

    [16:31] My students and readers in the realm of Instagram. And that's helping me have better boundaries with my newsletter as well, and even in my friendships.

    So I have that capacity to support other artists in a one-on-one container of creative consulting and advising and supporting them on their own projects.

    Offering creative consulting and advising to support other artists

    [16:52] If you're listening to this and you want more one-on-one support, shoot me an email, check out marleygrace.space to see if my books are open.

    I would love to support you in that way. So that has been a part of my offers on and off since 2015, right? So when I had a store, which was a huge offering, right? A store that was an artist residency, an art gallery, and the shop, I added that as an offering because so many people started asking me like, how do I use social media to market my business? You're so good at that.

    How do I set up an online shop? How do I get a Squarespace website?

    You know, it was like these really basic new things to business.

    And that was that reflection of friends saying, hey, you're good at this thing, I need to understand more about it, and then creating an offering around that.

    [17:47] Now, you might know that you're good at something, right? This goes back to that first list I encouraged you to make.

    What are the ways you love making money? and what are the things you love to do that you could make money at?

    [18:01] Now, I'm loving gardening. I don't wanna start making money at that.

    You know, I know that that is a slippery slope for me in terms of how to not always be working.

    [18:12] But I will write about my gardening practice in my newsletter.

    [18:20] So see how sometimes we have offerings that are writing about, talking about, teaching about the thing that we do, but aren't the thing that we do itself.

    So I would never try to teach a gardening class, right? That's a hobby, it's an experiment, but I'm always writing about my hobbies and experiment, that's one of my offerings.

    So maybe my main offering is my weekly newsletter and this podcast where I talk about being in process with the things that I do.

    So navigating what's making money and what's not making money.

    So again, just because you're good at something doesn't mean you need to immediately turn it into a one-on-one service that you offer, right? You might be great at building Squarespace websites and never want to do that for another person.

    So you also might want to be able to release things in seasons, right?

    So when I took flexible office away, I needed to create a new offering to supplement that income, right?

    [19:22] I didn't have a flush enough income. I don't have a book advance right now.

    I didn't have a new online class set up.

    So I took away flexible office. I get to pick into my hat of offerings and think, oh, what else could I work on right now?

    And this was there for me and perfectly in alignment with not having access to social media anymore.

    I was like, perfect. I feel ready again to take on one-on-one clients.

    That's how the offer ecosystem shifted.

    [19:53] Another thing is, a lot of times my readers and my students are asking me for a more consistent sort of community space, like a membership site, like a Mighty Networks, and that's just something I know I can't give.

    I know that I don't want to be constantly facilitating a space.

    I love doing things in season.

    So that's why I did the Artist's Way book study. And then I do make a container that makes it need one more step to access it, like becoming a paying subscriber of my newsletter, that allows you to access the book study, right?

    And then that is like, I don't host a Zoom every single week for that.

    There are two Zooms in the 12 weeks, and then each week you get an email, a pep talk, and an opportunity to share about how your week went with the Artist's Way.

    That is an offer, right? A book study can be an offer, and you are allowed to charge for a container to hold it in, right?

    You're allowed to charge money for your offerings. I don't know, that sounds so simple, but I just feel in this moment like wanting to say that.

    Expanding Your Reach and Increasing Income

    [21:06] Now, all of these things are about branching out of your artistry, right?

    So if you're listening to this and you are a painter or a weaver, or a ceramicist, or do body work.

    You know, whatever your thing is that you do, these are all about increasing your income and expanding your reach, right? That's what building an offer ecosystem is really about.

    If you make objects and you sell them.

    [21:37] That's beautiful, and you might be looking for more, right? There's only so much time and energy that you can put towards creation, and this allows opportunity to charge more for your time, and to reach more people who might not be able to access your work because of time and space, because of price, whatever it is, right? So part of creating the different offers is also about having different price points for our work, right? My one-on-one sessions are a very different price than a zine that I make, right? So if someone isn't at the point of, being able to afford or access a one-on-one session with me, I know that they can access my newsletter or one of my $44 classes, or even one of my $400 classes that offers so so much more knowledge than you could get in just a one-on-one session.

    Creating Different Price Points and Offerings

    [22:38] But the one-on-one session will serve my students who want deeper understanding of their own process and what they're trying to invent in the world, right?

    So someone who's going to take the World Needs Your Online class very well might want to also have a one-on-one session to go even deeper with their ideas.

    [22:58] So if you're creating an idea for a class, adding on a one-on-one session to advise on the thing that you do or teach in class is a great idea to expand the resources that you offer to other people as well as increase your income.

    [23:17] Again, let's say the ecosystem is really small and it's like a two-hour class with just your newsletter that tells them about them. Maybe it's even like a 30-minute call that's a hundred bucks.

    Or maybe it's a tarot reading that's a three-card pull, a $75 add-on for class.

    You know, I'm just spitballing numbers here.

    That might sound high to you. That might sound low.

    Of course, some people who read tarot charge $450 for an hour.

    Many prices in the offerings world, right? So I'm just throwing out some ideas for you to start thinking about how these things start to add and relate to each other. So of course, let's say you're listening and you're like, I'm a fine artist and I don't want to add any of these sort of online business type offerings.

    Adding Analog Offerings to Connect with Your Art Show

    [24:08] I totally hear you and I totally understand. So let's talk about some analog offerings you could with the ad.

    [24:15] Let's say that you are going to have a show of paintings in an art gallery. Another offer that you could add is a zine that goes with it. You could hire a local Resograph printer, illustrator, artist to create some prints of your paintings, right? So this could also help. Maybe your paintings are $35,000 each and so you want to make an exclusive print that goes with the art show that are $50 each and then a zine that goes with the art show that are $15 each, right?

    [24:53] That way everyone who comes to your art show could possibly leave with something that makes them feel connected to the show. You could also print out a free piece of paper with with your favorite things that you've been thinking about that inspired you about the art show, right?

    So there's so many different options to even add to your current art practice that aren't necessarily digital offerings or one-on-ones, but it's just more ways to give people access to the art that you're making.

    I can't help but think of like Bread and Puppet where it's like you can go and see this beautiful parade and be a part of the puppetry of it all.

    Or when you're far away, you can order a print from them or a calendar or different things and cards.

    There's so many different parts of that ecosystem that make everyone feel like they can sort of be a part of this thing, even if they aren't there in real life.

    Documenting and archiving as an integral part of work

    [25:58] I want to talk about the documenting side also of our offerings, right? So my newsletter is really a practice in research and documenting and archiving the work that I do every day, right?

    So I'm photographing, I'm being photographed, I'm using film photography and writing as a way to document my experience of the world.

    Now, I have decided, or at some point, it naturally evolved into being my job, but it's also just my work and my practice at the same time.

    So part of the offering could also be the experience of documenting.

    You can use social media to do that as well. Maybe it's making a fun reel or stories.

    And again, I will always stand by, I will never make a reel, and you never have to make a reel to be an artist and to reach people.

    But shout out to people who make really good and cool reels, or TikToks, or whatever the kids are working on these days.

    You know, you can use social media and a digital presence to document and share about the process of your work, right?

    That's part of creating this web of how everything fits together.

    [27:19] So go back to your list-making exercise and start to write out all the different things that.

    You could offer and the containers that they come in and the prices they could be and how they all relate to each other, right? So having things that cost less than $50, the things that cost more than $50, the things that cost more than hundreds of dollars, the things that are thousands of dollars, right? You might not want to do one-on-one sessions just randomly with people because that burns you out, you might want to create more of a package. You might want to ask someone what their budget is first and then design a package for them that offers consulting on different things that you can give them, their brand identity, or designing things for them if you're a designer. You might want to just consult and not do the design part of things, right? So So there's all of these different ways to sort of create packages for people, whether it's one person or a company, or you are one person or in a company, you're going to look at the different themes and topics you might wanna think about or teach about and decide, is this a quick two-hour class?

    Creating different packages and formats for teaching and sharing expertise

    [28:40] Is this a longer online class?

    Is this a book? You know, where does this go?

    [28:45] I really think that having something like a podcast or a newsletter will help you see what the offerings are and what wants to emerge.

    Both from hearing back from your readers and listeners, what they're excited about, what feels cool to them, what they're gravitating towards, that's gonna lead you to think, oh, that would make a really cool online class, or this is really exciting to me every time I think about it, maybe I'll wanna make a book about that someday, right?

    So the more you find yourself wanting to write about a specific topic over and over, you might think, you know, This could make a really cool book.

    [29:24] So, there are so many offerings to make and so many sort of ecosystems to create out of them.

    And also, just remember that you get to shift them when they aren't working for you anymore.

    And having sort of backup ideas is great.

    And you could have a totally digital online business and suddenly be like, you know what?

    I want to have an art show.

    Or you could be an artist making physical work and suddenly be like, you know what?

    I want to try to teach an online class.

    It's not too late.

    It's not too early. You're right on time. Like you are allowed to create the offerings that you dream of and that you want to see in the world.

    I mean, I think that is really the biggest thing is I usually create what I wish I had, or I usually create what I don't see in the world.

    Right.

    And that's where you are the only one there will ever be.

    You are the only you we have, and your perspective is so important.

    So as you're thinking about this, I want you to notice offering fatigue, which would be if you're offering too many different things, or if the fatigue is coming from thinking there are too many of the thing already.

    [30:48] Right? So in terms of offering too much to your audience, that's where it's, I think, good to take things out and put things in.

    So I wouldn't necessarily be like, I have flexible office and my class and this and this and this.

    It's like, I try to pace out how I talk about these things and when I offer them.

    For instance, I took away flexible office and put in creative advising.

    And I only offer a certain number of them because I know I need time for my writing, for my podcast, and for the other things that I offer.

    So make sure you're balancing that and figuring out what that dance is for you.

    In terms of thinking there's too many things in the world, I think that's gonna be a wound for artists till the end of time, right?

    The like wound of, well, there's already so many newsletters, there's already so many podcasts.

    It's like, yes, but you have your own unique audience and readership and community of people, who are ready to learn from you and support you and be with you.

    So I want you to really think about that before you just write it off as another random thing.

    [32:03] I love seeing all of the different ways that our offerings support each other and play off each other and intersect with each other and bring more art into the world. That's what I hope, you know, more than anything is that your art can reach more people. So if you're out there making ceramic mugs or you're out there working at a plant store and creating different packages of plants and seeds for us to buy for our gardens.

    If you are making quilts for art shows, whatever you're doing, if you're doing a really physical labor of art making and you are looking to reach more people in a digital way or a real life way, the printed multiple, whatever it is, I hope that you do it.

    I hope that you do it in small steps, little by little.

    [32:58] It doesn't all have to be at once. Practice shifting your offerings just a little bit when they aren't working for you.

    Practice throwing one new thing in and seeing how it feels.

    And again, go back to episode two if you wanna learn more about creative containers and the way these episodes are all starting to sort of play off of each other.

    Check out the Art of Newsletters if you want more about newsletters and definitely check out episode four, Art as Service, which I hope you keep coming back to to remember the importance of your work in the world.

    [33:34] And if you wanna shoot some of your ideas through the portal, check out the Creative Ideation Portal, the three-day guide for visioning all of these offerings, bringing them into the world.

    You can find it at marleygrace.space slash Common Shapes. And just one more time, I would love to see you in class.

    We start tomorrow, July 13th. If you're listening to this the day it comes out.

    Otherwise, every class is recorded.

    You have lifetime access. We meet Thursdays in July, the 13th, the 20th, the 27th.

    It's going to be so fun. We're gonna vision, build and launch our online classes.

    We're gonna make beautiful offerings to this world in the form of teaching.

    And I hope you'll join me, marleygrace.space, or in the show notes.

    It's where you can find all the information. Thank you for coming on this journey with me today to talk about the offering ecosystem that all artists can and should be thinking about and making to stay in their own practice and of benefit to those they may serve.

    Acknowledgments to the Contributors

    [34:50] Thank you to everyone who makes Common Shapes possible. Thank you to Lukeza Brampman Verissimo for our art. Thank you to Saltbreaker for our music and Softer Sound Studio for editing.

    Thank you, dear listener, for sharing this show on social media or in your own newsletter or on your podcast. I just heard someone said their therapist recommended it to them. That is the the greatest honor.

    Thank you to therapists everywhere for doing the Lord's work, and thank you for recommending my podcast to your clients.

    Thank you for giving us a five-star review or writing us a rating, sharing it far and wide.

    It means the world to me.

    Thank you for being a listener of Common Shapes.

Common Shapes is an ad free listener supported show. To receive emails when new episodes come out and get bonus content subscribe to my newsletter

5 Reasons the World Needs Your Online Class

Teaching online classes is how I’ve made the majority of my income since 2017. And it is a great joy of my career to have had such amazing, invested, weird, inspirational students.

In this episode, I’m going to share my approach to creating an online class by walking us through how I teach my class A Quilt Is Something Human.

I hope that this inspires you to become the teacher that you are meant to be. 

Grab a pen & paper, then tune in to learn about—

  • How to decide what to teach

  • Reasons to teach online

  • Pricing your online class

  • 5 reasons the world needs your online class

  • Some of my favorite tech for selling online classes

LISTEN WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS SPOTIFY + APPLE PODCASTS + AUDIBLE

“Don’t overly think about the tech and make it overcomplicated. There are so many ways to make it simple, easy, and fun. And to have it bring you closer to your practice.”

  • Transcript

    Introduction to the podcast and topic of online classes

    [0:00] Hello, and welcome to Common Shapes, a podcast about practices, systems, and rituals for a creative life.

    And today, it's a podcast about online classes.

    It's about teaching as a hope practice, coming into closer contact with your own creative spirit.

    I'm Marlee Grace, and I teach online courses about quilting, creativity, business, and I want to teach you today on the podcast about making an online class.

    It is the majority of my income since 2017, is teaching the people in the digital realm And it is a great joy of my career.

    Teaching is Joyful Because of Amazing Students

    [1:07] To have such amazing, invested, excited, weird, awesome, inspirational students.

    So a big part of teaching for me is not just the joy that it brings me in my own life, but it is getting to be in contact and inspired by my amazing students.

    So I'm gonna sort of walk us through today how I teach quilt class, which is called A Quilt is Something Human, and I hope that it inspires you no matter what your art practice or creative practice or hobby is, that you can teach other people how to do it.

    Building and Launching Your Online Course with Marlee Grace

    [1:58] I'm sharing all of this today because no matter when it is that you're listening to this, I hope that you feel inspired to become the teacher you are meant to be. But I'm also sharing it because in July, I am teaching my class, Teaching As a Practice, a class about visioning, building and launching your own online course. So it could be a course about the art that you do, or it could be a course about something that you teach people to do that's like your job, sort of like I teach a class about how to make an online class, right? So it's really fun. It's $425. That's the investment. There are two and three part payment plans, as well as scholarships.

    [2:53] For any marginalized students who are looking for financial accessibility. So I really hope that you take the class if you've been feeling like you want to add this offering into your ecosystem.

    So I'm going to jump in to just keep talking about online classes and everything I love about them.

    And if you're wanting to dig deeper, I'd love it if you came to class, you can head to marleegrace.space to learn more about class and sign up!

    Deciding What to Teach Based on Passion and Excitement

    [3:37] For me, deciding what to teach is looking around at what's lighting me up, what is making me excited, what do I love doing, and what do I want to share with other people?

    So in a lot of traditional online course-building worlds, I feel like you sort of hear the suggestion of like, what are people's pain points?

    And I don't know if I love that language, And so what I try to think about is what do the people around me want to unlock within themselves, right?

    And so then I try to look for something that maybe can combine a few different things.

    And so I'm gonna walk us through quilt class because I think it's such a great example of like.

    [4:28] It's about making a blanket, but it's really about so much more.

    So I want you to get out a pen and paper. And if you haven't already, grabbing the Creative Ideation Portal, my three-day guide for visioning your projects is a great place to put an online class idea through the portal, right?

    So each day brings you through these different exercises and journaling prompts that get you really clear on the idea what your next steps are in putting it into the world.

    And so if you want a free resource that's just like, how do I figure out what my online class is, what it's about, where does it go?

    [5:09] The Creative Ideation Portal is perfect for that. So head to marleygrace.space slash common shapes to grab that. And in the meantime, grab a pen and paper and start thinking about all the things you could teach.

    Just make a list, right?

    It could be as specific and art-focused as you want or as sort of like vague and poetic, right?

    So a class that I'm sure some of you have taken that I taught a few different times was called Everything is a Sunset.

    And...

    [5:42] That class was about creative practice and ending projects and starting projects, but the name itself isn't obvious per se, right? I love naming classes really obvious things, like I have Newsletter Class.

    I lovingly call Quilt Class, Quilt Class, because it's a class about making a quilt, but its full title is A Quilt is Something Human, which is the name of an essay in the Foxfire book.

    And so you can write down all of the different things you would want to teach.

    And if titles start coming to you, that's great.

    So let's say you are a ceramicist, right? And you wanna teach a class about pinch pots.

    [6:33] Pinch pots are the object that you will teach people how to make.

    [6:40] But when you're creating a syllabus, you get to weave in all of the different things you're interested in, right?

    So when I teach quilt class, something I teach about and talk about is finding your own personal quilt ancestry.

    So each student is encouraged through the four weeks of class to look at.

    Is there quilt making in your own bloodline and your ancestors that you know, as well as the places that you come from and that your ancestors come from?

    So for me, I like looking at Swedish quilts and German quilts.

    As a white teacher, I think this also helps me stay out of cultural appropriation, right?

    I can be inspired by and teach about and think about quilts from other places and cultures that are different than my own, but I'm also gonna be wanting to connect to my own ancestry and my own history of quilts.

    So that could also be looking at Michigan quilts, looking at queer quilts, right?

    Quilts that are from where I'm from, spiritually, emotionally, and factually.

    So that's woven into quilt class.

    But again, the class is about how to make a blanket. But by including the encouragement of personal research.

    [8:09] For our own histories, that is also part of my commitment to dismantling white supremacy and systems of oppression, right?

    I'm not saving the world telling people to understand what their own quilt history is, but it invites each student, no matter what their identity is, to get closer to where they come from.

    And then those students are all sharing with each other and teaching with each other throughout the course.

    So we're all learning about all these different ways of being in the world and making quilts in the world and the history of quilts, right?

    As a group, we're sort of becoming a little research lab of where quilts come from.

    So that's an example of, you might think of a class that is.

    [9:03] About how to make the thing that you make in your job, but you can weave in your values and the things that excite you and the way that you want to shift consciousness in a way that makes sense to go with the teaching of the thing, right?

    I sort of sometimes see myself as sort of like doing the Trojan horse method where I'm like, we're gonna make blankets But then I'm actually like, we're actually going to radically unblock our creative selves, right?

    So another thing that I'm really committed to in everything that I do is being anti-perfectionist, right? Like just deeply, deeply committed to undoing perfectionism. And so teaching improvisational quilt making gives me the opportunity to share everything I know about embracing imperfection.

    [10:09] Right? So the way that I teach no rules, no rulers, no patterns.

    We snip, we rip, we improvise, we cut things, We rearrange them, we start over.

    [10:22] There's no mistakes in quilting in the way that I teach quilting, right? So what that means is that, I can start thinking about the themes that are going to go with my class. So start with thinking about what do you want to teach and then start looking at the themes that you want to include and see if they can go with the thing you're wanting to teach. And my guess is that they can.

    Like, that's where someone might not originally think, oh, a quilt class, we're gonna talk about, undoing perfectionism, dismantling systems of oppression, and redistributing wealth, right?

    Using Quilt Class to Teach about Dismantling Systems of Oppression

    [11:02] But you can. You don't have to just teach the thing. You get to teach all the different things that come with it.

    So in week three of quilt class, we talk about what to do with your quilts.

    So we look at the history of social movements, political movements that have included raffling off quilts, donating quilts as part of making change in the world, redistributing resources and money and blankets, and how that brings awareness to different movements that we believe in.

    Many quilt class alumni have hosted their own quilt raffles and use the practice of quilting to shine a light on what matters to them.

    [11:48] So, again, I use quilt class to really teach about all the different things that I believe in for my life and my own practice of business, of doing business in a different way as an artist, right? Doing business as an artist, how I spend my money, how I use my money, how I use my resources and time. I can teach about all of those things in Quilt Class.

    [12:16] So however you're doing business, doing your life, showing up to your practices, remember that those can be a part of the class that you teach, even if you're teaching how to make a pinch pot, how to make a weaving, how to make candles, right? They can seem like these simple things, but I imagine that the art of dipping the beeswax candles in the hot wax over and over is its own meditative experience that you can share with us about, right? It could be a watercolor class that is about slowing down. It could be a sewing class that is about joy and expression or grief. Melissa Word is an amazing artist and dancer, quilter, who literally weaves in quilting with talking about grief in the classes that she teaches.

    So again, make a list of what you could teach and the themes that you want to weave in, and then start to play with how they all mix together when you're deciding what you want to teach.

    Teaching as a Way to Increase Your Earnings

    [13:29] I want to be honest that teaching is a way to make money, right?

    I don't want to shy away from that.

    That's part of why I want to encourage you to teach. It's something to add in to your business and creative ecosystem that will increase your earning.

    So I often tell people to take my class because while it might feel like an investment, it is one that I feel confident will return to you.

    Teaching online offers the opportunity for people all over the world to exchange money with you for your expertise.

    And I say expertise, and that does not mean you need to be an expert.

    [14:14] And I'm gonna keep using quilt class as the example that I am certainly not an expert quilter, but I am an artist, and I am a person who's been quilting for a decade.

    I'm dedicated to imperfection and thinking about quilting. I love making blankets, right?

    And it's actually many people who are expert quilters or are amazing at using rulers and patterns take my quilt class because they want to undo some of what they've learned about precision.

    So I say, come to my quilt class, where we're scrappy and we mess up and we do things differently.

    So don't wait to be an expert to teach and embrace that it could increase your income and be a place to make more money.

    Redistributing Profits to Correlating Organizations or Funds

    [15:02] You can choose somewhere to redistribute part of the profits of your class to an organization or a person, or a mutual aid fund, that correlates with the thing that you're teaching.

    Making Money by Offering Online Classes

    [15:21] Right, so there's all these different ways to use the online class as an offering of service, both teaching itself and the redistribution of time, resources, and energy.

    You get to make money. May you make money. May your online class make you money so that you can support yourself and your art practice and those around you.

    Understanding How to Price Online Classes

    [15:47] Pricing our online classes takes its own skill to understand how much time we're taking to teach, the scalability of it.

    Do you wanna teach to a set number of people? Do you wanna teach to many people?

    Right, I cap my quilting class because I want it to be an intimate setting.

    I have pushed back on many mentors and people who have thought of ideas to scale quilt class, and I just don't have an interest in doing it.

    It's not how I want that part of my ecosystem to feel or be.

    I want it to be 40 people or less. I want us to get to know each other.

    I want us to create intimacy.

    When I'm teaching a class like the Architecture of Book Writing, Those are bigger groups.

    I'm willing and able to scale those and have them be more lecture series classes that are less about intimacy and more about really knowledge sharing and sharing the skill so that people can go forth to create their own intimate spaces or their own scalable spaces.

    [16:56] So an online class, you'll need your idea, your themes, the willingness and openness to make money.

    Tools Needed to Create and Launch an Online Class

    [17:05] You will need a digital space, right?

    So thinking about those tools, do you wanna do it live? Do you wanna do it recorded?

    [17:15] And there's a lot of different ways to figure out which one's right for you.

    That's definitely what we'll be digging into in class.

    And in class, we'll also be deeply looking at all of the ways to make a creative syllabus, a creative sales page, and sort of the ins and outs of really how to build out your class and launch a beautiful class. But if you have an idea, that's enough to start. And if you don't have an idea, pop it into the Creative Ideation Portal, get those prompts going, or ask a friend. Ask a friend and say, what am I good at?

    That. What part of my job do you wish you could understand how to do? There are parts of your work that you have perfected. And again, we say perfected and we say expertise knowing that we're not experts or that we don't strive for perfection. Something I often say to my students is shoot for a B+, and you will make an A+. Our B+, as perfectionists, is actually probably going to be really good and really exciting.

    Why the world needs your online class

    [18:30] Whether it's an online class or something else, you know, I say the world needs your online class, but I really feel like what I'm saying is the world needs your work, which is what this podcast is all about. But I want to share the five reasons the world really does need your online class. And if you're like, Mar, I don't want to teach, talk about something else. You can apply this to.

    [18:55] Any offering that you're thinking about sharing with the world. This could be your book.

    This could be your next show in an art gallery, whatever it is.

    But the five reasons the world needs your online class is it roots you into your own practice, right?

    So when I was thinking about what do I wanna teach, in 2020, what I wanted to do was I wanted to quilt more.

    I wanted to be more invested in my own quilting practice. And so I thought, I'm gonna teach other people to quilt online.

    When I teach dance, I dance more. When I teach quilting, I quilt more.

    Number two is you will learn so much from your students. So again, a lot of times people who come to quilt class have just experienced a death or a big transition or they quit their job the day before, right?

    I see these sort of patterns of my students and it feels really like God chose me to hold that container, not just for them, but so that I could see the examples of how we walk through grief and joy and birth and death, and how we don't do it alone.

    So you will learn so much from your students.

    [20:13] Number three, as I mentioned, it's a way to increase your income, which increases abundance in your community.

    Because making money isn't bad. It's actually really cool.

    Right. This is something I am constantly relearning, especially as my income has increased from online teaching.

    I've had to accept this is good. This is beautiful for me and the generations that have come before me who don't own a house, who haven't surpassed a certain number in income, right? Who do still struggle and debt, and don't have all of their needs met, right? I get to rewrite that script and so can you.

    [20:58] Number four, creating a course that generates income is an invitation to generate more generosity. You could find yourself having more time, money, joy, and freedom from teaching online, or hosting a weekend retreat, sharing your knowledge, again, whatever it is that you want to apply all of this to. This may open up your emotional capacity to be there for your friends and family, take on a new hobby in your free time, set up reoccurring donations or or redistributions to organizations that support a more equitable world, the possibilities are endless and you will see them open up.

    Being open to our income increasing is going to open up more pathways to generosity and sharing.

    [21:48] And number five is it's fun and it's inspiring. Teaching online is fun.

    It's an amazing way to facilitate digital togetherness and connect with others.

    I find that it's a place to bring my humor and my jokes. And, you know, again, I pick one thing like quilting, but I get to talk about so many other things.

    And I love teaching live because I also get to like talk about what I'm doing that day and what is exciting me in my process, in my practice, in the world, I get to bring my sort of fresh perspective.

    And my bonus reason, which I've talked about a few times already, is you don't have to be the best to be the teacher, right?

    So I'm so grateful that in the containers of teaching that I create, I really encourage my students to share their own expertise about what we're talking about.

    [22:46] I don't wanna be the smartest one in the room. I wanna be one amongst many.

    And inviting my students to share their own insights and what they learn each week.

    At the beginning of each week, we report from the field of learning and thinking about quilts.

    And that's one of my favorite parts of class is just hearing what everyone is up to, in the weeks in between when we meet.

    You know, someone might take your class because you aren't the expert, right?

    It's less intimidating. I don't wanna take classes from experts or know-it-alls.

    That's not usually the kinds of podcasts or classes I'm watching or listening to.

    I'm looking for other people who are sort of messy weirdos in the world, and that's usually who comes to my classes, and that's what I like.

    So the world needs your online class. It's simply true.

    [23:45] And if you are not sure if you are going to be a good teacher, you don't have to start with a three or four or eight week class.

    Try just teaching a two hour, even a one hour class about something that excites you.

    Also, that's a fun, quick way to make money, right? If you need a little extra cash flow and you want to just try something on, make up a two hour class about something that excites you.

    You can use Gumroad, that's a payment processor, and you can make a sales page on Gumroad.

    You can make a sales page using Flowdesk. You can make a sales page using Notion.

    You can make a sales page using a Google Doc, right? So don't make it overly complicated for yourself.

    Something like Gumroad is nice because you can add the homepage to the sales page.

    [24:39] So like you can make a sales page, and when someone checks out through Gumroad, you can have it so it automatically sends them the info for the class.

    And again, you could make that in a Google Doc if you wanted to.

    You can have it so it sends them the Zoom link and anything they need to prepare for class, right?

    So don't overly think about the tech and making it super complicated.

    You could even just email everyone the day before and say, hey, the Zoom link comes out 24 hours before class, I'll email it to you.

    There's so many ways to make it simple and easy and fun and to have it bring you closer to your practice.

    I really wanna emphasize that again.

    Keep deepening your own studies as a teacher

    [25:21] Part of how I stay an artist is I stay a teacher.

    [25:26] And I've talked about this a little bit on the show, but I decided to deepen my own studies and take a break from teaching quilt class.

    So it will return this fall, but I took a break not knowing what was next.

    And what was next is I applied to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln's Quilt Studies Graduate Certificate Program.

    So I start that this fall.

    I'm really excited to be a student, you know? And it wasn't that I felt unequipped to continue teaching.

    I think I have plenty of knowledge to be able to teach something human, but I was just desiring a deeper presence in my own studies.

    And so, I applied, I got in, I'm excited to.

    [26:17] Be a student and a teacher simultaneously. So if you are a teacher and teaching, I also encourage you to just keep deepening your own studies. And I also love taking classes about flower essences and herbs and marketing. And, you know, it can be about all different sides of my practice and my business. You know, I love taking classes about flower essences and plants because that isn't a part of how I make money.

    And so I also love to be a student about things that have nothing to do with my earning potential, but are really separate.

    So something to think about as you continue to develop your own online classes, your own big, bright ideas.

    So I would love to see you in class in July.

    It's gonna be really fun. I would love to support you becoming a teacher of your own, or if you've been teaching online classes for years, it's a great place to think of more creative ways to teach and create a container that is of great benefit to your students, to your current readers and audience and community who is just dying to learn more about what it is you do and what it is you can bring into the world.

    [27:38] Thank you so much for listening. Again, if you want to think more about your own online class, grab the Creative Ideation Portal at marleegrace.space slash common shapes.

    Thank you to everyone who makes this podcast possible. Thank you to Lucasa Brampfmann-Varissimo for our art.

    Thank you to Salt Breaker for our music and to Softer Sound Studio for editing.

    And thank you for sharing it with a friend, giving us a five-star rating or writing a review, sharing it on social media or in your own newsletter, it means the world to me when I hear how you are resonating with the episodes and seeing you sharing them.

    So thank you so much for being a listener of Common Shapes.

Common Shapes is an ad free listener supported show. To receive emails when new episodes come out and get bonus content subscribe to my newsletter

How to Commit to the Life of an Artist with Anna Fusco

This week on Common Shapes podcast, I’m joined by my internet friend Anna Fusco to discuss dedicating your life to art.

Anna is an artist, writer, deep thinker, question asker and truth teller. Her practice consists of writing her Substack newsletter and making drawings.

Together we talk about our daily list practice, creating a gallery show, the challenges of pricing your work, and what it means to be a full-time artist.

Tune in to learn about—

  • The List aka Project Miracle

  • Making art & having art shows

  • Pricing your work

  • Newsletters & Substack

  • How to get started as a self-employed artist

LISTEN WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS SPOTIFY + APPLE PODCASTS + AUDIBLE

“The list has taught me that being an artist — and probably doing anything in life — is cyclical and not linear. There’s no upward trajectory. There’s just being on a roller coaster that’s up and down and straight and around and upside-down. And that in and of itself is the act of being an artist. It’s being a willing participant on that ride.”
— Anna Fusco

  • [0:00] Hello and welcome to Common Shapes. On today's episode, I interview the artist and writer, Anna Fusco, and we talk about The List, which is a practice we've been doing together.

    [0:19] For the last few months, lovingly called Project Miracle. We talk about The Newsletter, We talk about substack, we talk about making art, we talk about having art shows, we talk about the vulnerability of writing.

    And if you are thinking about making the leap into full-time art making as a job, or are just wanting to dedicate more of your time to creation this episode is for you. If you need more support in organizing your projects and your dreams make sure to download the creative ideation portal which is a three-day guide for visioning your projects and bringing them to life. You can find that at marleygrace.space slash common shapes.

    It's totally free and includes a database to organize your projects in Notion. So, jump on in with me and Anna. It's a wild ride to roller coaster tornado people just trying to figure out how to live this life as writers and artists and I think that it will be of great benefit to those who listen. So, So enjoy my conversation with Anna Fusco.

    [1:48] Okay, welcome, welcome, welcome to Common Shapes. Hi, thanks for having me.

    I'm so happy you're here. Anna, so we are what people might call internet friends.

    We are. But we are so much, damn it, It's gonna be so hard not to talk about the list.

    I think we have to talk about the list because it's a spiritual practice.

    Okay, so do you wanna tell the people about the list? I'll tell people about the list. Okay. Thank you.

    There's a book called Project Miracle written by Melody Beattie. She is known for writing bestseller Codependent No More, which I have avoided reading.

    Oh, it's one of my favorite books. This I know from your reading lists that you've shared. I personally am not ready to look at that part of myself anymore than I already have, but you mentioned Project Miracle, I think.

    [2:56] In a newsletter. Yes. And I thought, all right, what's this about? I listened to it in one and a half days and the directive is to cultivate a gratitude practice for 40 days, but instead of just focusing on what you are genuinely grateful for like I have all of my senses and limbs. I have a roof over my head. I have food in my fridge. These are things that regularly appear on my list. One is advised to also write down the things that are currently plaguing them or you know rattling them or disgusting them. It's, like the shadow side of a gratitude list. An example for me would be today I am, grateful that my mother has dementia and the burden is falling on me.

    [4:14] This is not something I'm actually grateful for right now, though I can see a tiny drop in the future where I might be.

    And to me, what's so beautiful is I think a lot about, so today is Anna and I's first time, we're looking at each other right now and we've never looked at And we've been doing the list since, I want to say March.

    [4:47] 13th or something, early March, we're recording this on June 11th, and we've both missed a couple days, but for the most part, we do it every single day.

    And what I want to share about the experience is really for us that we were mutual followers of each other on the internet. And I was about to take a month off of Instagram and the one, I almost feel emotional sharing this, the literal one person I was like, oh, I would be sad to not get to DM them anymore was Anna. And so I emailed you and asked for your phone number. And this is such a good lesson because so many of my students, readers, audience, community always asks me like, how do I find adult friendships? And I'm like, you just have to ask for their phone number, I think.

    So I asked for your phone number and you texted me your list without saying who you were.

    [5:56] No context. And maybe you were like, it's Anna. And it was so personal that I was like, it couldn't possibly be Anna Fusco, Lord Cowboy, the stranger. I don't really know.

    And it was. It was.

    And I remember being like sort of taken aback and then just being like, okay, I think this This is who I do my list with.

    [6:22] Not only has the list provided me so many miracles.

    [6:29] But I think the biggest surprise was like how similar our brains work around stuff with our relationship with our moms, our creative practice in our relationships, friendships, romantic partnerships, and just how similar we are.

    I mean, that maybe was the most beautiful miracle of the whole thing was just the constant state of like, oh, I'm not alone in my feelings.

    So one thing I left out about the list is that Melody, after setting up the sort of the structure, which is starting your day every day, writing down 10 things, you can choose to have an accountability partner, a list buddy.

    But she says, you know, this person has to read Project Miracle and agree to the sort of tenets of this project.

    And you also have to get consent from them to make them your accountability partner, which I didn't do.

    I full throttle just said. You took a risk.

    I said, well, I wanna do this. and Marley is the only person I know who has read this.

    So I'm just gonna throw it out there.

    [7:55] And it's like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

    And as soon as I sent it, I felt, oh my God, I just kind of dumped my list on this person, and I'm a stranger and this is not okay.

    [8:09] It was beautiful. I will also just pause to say the title of the book is something different.

    The title of the book I want to say is like 40 Days to Miracles or something.

    Don't you, listeners, worry.

    [8:29] Well, I think let's let the list integrate its way into our conversation as it does.

    But I think my first question, which almost seems like, you know, the list has for both of us has both been very much about our work and nothing about our work in the same moment. But I, I do I do want to know, my first question is like, how has doing the list impacted your art practice?

    And tell us, just give us a little, now that we've talked about the list, who are you, Anna, and what is your art practice? I'd love to know how the list has impacted it and just a little bit about where you're at right now.

    Well, I'll start with the introduction, which is, my name is Anna, Anna Fusco.

    I consider myself an artist and a writer.

    [9:28] Deep thinker, question asker, truth teller.

    I try, my truth, right? My practice consists of a newsletter on Substack, which I write three times a month, and making drawings, some of which are original drawings that I make for myself or for buyers or for galleries, if I'm lucky enough to have a show.

    And then lots of sort of digital illustration, text-based work that turn into prints, that I sell from my online shop.

    Those are the two ways I make a living and show up for my work every day.

    And the list has taught me.

    [10:20] Again, that being an artist and probably doing anything in life is just so cyclical and so not linear. There is no upward trajectory. There is just being on a roller coaster that's up and down and straight and around and upside down. And that in and of itself is for me, the act of being an artist. It's like being willing participant on that ride. And instead of fighting it the whole time.

    [10:57] Being like, ah yes, here we are for the 304th time at the part where it goes upside down. Yeah. Because being able to, so now we've, you know, this list project says try it for 40 days and see what happens. And when you and I reached the 40-day mark, we both agreed, let's do this forever. And so like, are we cool text messaging each other for the rest of our lives, our lists? Yes, please. And so now it's been months and I have accumulated three tiny books of lists. And reading them chronologically, both to end or end to beginning has been incredible, truly incredible because never before have I made a succinct daily bullet point list of just my most raw, on like just the meat of who I am in that moment.

    I mean, these are books that when I cannot find them.

    [12:14] I have panic attacks that someone else will. These are books that nobody, I want nobody to see, nobody. My life would change if people saw these books and in ways that I'm not ready for, right?

    [12:32] So it's so honest since I'm really able to have a quick five-minute reflection period of, Oh wow, two weeks ago I had this exact same thought and right now I'm having it again and then the next day I'm on the complete 180 side of that thought.

    You know my morning pages have always served sort of a similar function in terms of like if I write something down enough days in a row I'll want to change it or I'll need to change it because I just can't believe how much I've been talking about it and I think that's where.

    [13:12] Specifically I just experienced with my relationship to Instagram just like writing every day like how bad I was feeling about myself being on it. It's like I'm admitting it three times, I'm admitting it to myself, to another person, and to God when I write the list. And so it's like, Like, I just can't ignore it, and so that was part of what, to me, a big miracle was, handing over my password to be like, I can't, I can't look here anymore.

    And that was a list, a list miracle.

    A list miracle, yeah.

    It's all obvious, I guess. The concept is obvious, like, emotions come and go like clouds.

    Hang on to them because you never know, the next day it'll be fine, or you'll feel differently. impermanent.

    I know this, but I have a tendency to get really myopic if I'm stressed or hormonal or overwhelmed, and I can lose sight of the impermanence of my feelings.

    And so this list has been the most impactful thing.

    [14:31] For me to actually recognize. It's like my proof. I'm holding these tiny little books of proof.

    Wow, I'm up and down. And then being able to witness yours, oh, they're up and down too.

    And I don't think that you and I are just uniquely up and down.

    I think what it's showing me is, ah, yes, we are all up and down. Life is up and down.

    [14:57] Okay, so I can stop fixating so much on striving towards balance or being incredibly hard on myself to be on the up and up all the time, whether it's emotionally or with my practice.

    Yeah, I definitely agree that reporting back and forth to someone else, because, yeah, like you said, both of our lists are always really have this nice mixture of filled with those really epic things we're grateful for.

    Living by the water, the people we love, these really special things.

    And then like the hardest, worst shit possible is next to them.

    And I think that's where it has pulled a new honesty out of me that my morning pages don't always get to capture.

    Well, I also do morning pages. And I think that the idea of writing three pages is important in its own right. But getting that honest about something three pages worth might be intimidating or honestly impossible at that time, or just uninteresting. Like I maybe don't want to write three pages about, this incredibly raw, fleeting, emotional thought I'm having, but it's important for me to list.

    [16:24] It, to name it today. Yeah, I think the list helps me. It's like It's really like fact check.

    I definitely miss the list way less than I miss morning pages.

    I mean, I basically almost never miss the list and definitely miss my morning pages sometimes.

    So.

    [16:49] One thing I got to watch you do, and this was so cool. You know, something I talk about on this podcast a lot is like, I love getting to visit artists in their studio and getting to watch the list.

    Kind of felt like I got to go to your studio while you were working on your most recent solo show in an art gallery.

    And so I'd love to hear, I believe it was your third solo show. Yes.

    And I'd love to hear just like everything about the process, especially for other artists listening who maybe want to have their own art show.

    Like yours really had a theme and a name. And so like, how do you pick the vision?

    And you're someone who just makes so much work that like, how did you narrow it down and pick the pieces?

    How did you even get an art show? Like, tell us a little bit about what's the process of getting an art show, having one, et cetera?

    Those are great questions because I think, I really love the way that I got this art show, which is I moved from six months being in Mexico.

    [18:00] To the central coast of California, not knowing anybody.

    And my friend in LA sent me an Instagram profile profile of a new very small gallery in Cambria, which is a town that's about 30 minutes away from where I live.

    And she just said something like, this guy seems cool. Doing cool stuff in an area that we have a lot of gift shops with t-shirts that say Highway 1, beach with an arrow, bad coffee shops, things like that.

    [18:37] So I checked it out, and really, I just resonated with the vibe.

    Charles owns the gallery, and he is extremely eloquent and kind of flirty and flowery with his language in a way that really spoke to me. So I just cold emailed him right when I moved there and said, hi, hello, I'm Anna Fusco and I make drawings. Here are some of the drawings I've made in the last year. This was my last show.

    I would love to have a show with you if you're looking for artists. Bye-bye. And I felt, I mean, it never feels incredible sending those emails because the chance of rejection is there. But, I also felt pretty good because by this point, I had already developed a following and, you know, I had a little clout that I haven't had before, and so that felt like a cushion.

    It sounds silly, but I want to name that, which is that it has helped my confidence and reaching out to people, to have an audience of people who support what I do.

    [19:58] So I didn't hear back from him for like a really long time. And I kind of forgot about it.

    And then occasionally, it was like, oh, I guess he wasn't into it.

    And I'm not going to follow up or anything.

    And then sometime in the fall, I got an email. And he was like, I can't believe I didn't see this.

    I would love to. Yes, please come by.

    [20:27] Resounding enthusiastic yes. And so I went by, met him, we clicked. We're both talkers. So we just talked our faces off at each other for a couple hours. And that's when we knew. And.

    [20:46] And so the, the great thing was that he said, Okay, I'm not gonna have time for you until the spring. And this was in really early fall. So I was looking at having the entire winter to make work, which I time was what you know, time that I felt I needed because I had not really been making drawings. And at the same time, it was a weight like a giant boulder that I felt like I was dragging from September until May 20. I imagine that there is a sweet spot where it's not too long, but it's not too short. I also know that some artists have shows of work that they've already made. So it's not this, feeling of waiting while also creating. That's like a special kind of hell. But the work that I made for the show was all original. It was for this gallery, it was for this community. It was completely related to the last year of living on the Central Coast and my subsequent reflections.

    Beautiful. And tell us a little bit about how you picked the title of the show and the theme and sort of the vision for how it all fit together. Yeah, so originally I was just gonna focus on.

    [22:14] Landscapes, which is something I really enjoy.

    You know, I really loved drawing the land and sort of adding my own imaginative abstractions to it.

    But then I was on a hike in Arizona with my partner and started joking about writing young adult fiction at some point in my life.

    [22:42] And having it be a sort of like very traditional title, kind of like, you know, the, a prairie called home or like, what are the Laura Ingalls Wilder books?

    Little House on the Prairie. Yeah, that, Little House on the Prairie.

    And so I was sort of thinking of like that energy and yet inside the book, it's like full frontal snogging And, you know, A Princess Diaries meets 2023.

    I'm like, you're gonna write that at some point. That's what I wanna read.

    I wanna read like Princess Diaries meets Little House on the Prairie meets 2023.

    Right. The unknown of that.

    [23:30] Yeah, so we're walking and we're talking about this and I was like, and it's gonna be called The Rolling Hills of Jenny West.

    And Jenny West is a name that my mother and brother gave to me when I was a baby.

    I mean, I don't really remember them ever calling it, you know, me that name, except maybe when I was very small, like four or five briefly, but I do remember them telling me that they used to joke that I was adopted and that I was Jenny West, just this like random baby.

    And I don't know if she was a character.

    My mother says that it's after my grandmother, whose name is Giovanna, which is the name that we share, then turned into Jenny moving from Italy to the United States.

    So moving from east to west, so it's Jenny West. There's really some folklore around this name and how it started being attributed to me, but Jenny West has always been an alter ego of mine.

    A secret alter ego. And when my partner and I got home from Arizona and I started making the drawings, I kind of forgot about the young adult fiction thing and I was like, I'm not there yet.

    That's for my forties.

    It's like straight up, that's for my forties. And so right now I have to make these drawings.

    So I started drawing these hills that I'm surrounded by.

    [25:00] And then I started thinking about home and living around all of this seemingly vacant, beautiful agrarian land.

    The Central Coast is just the most incredibly beautiful place I've ever been in this country.

    And I can't believe I live there now.

    Rolling endless hills and valleys. And then there's the ocean.

    And...

    [25:26] For me, it's really brought up like place and time and will I ever have a home or a home like this or what is home and what is land and how do you get it and who are the people that own that land and this land and the competitiveness of even renting on land like this.

    So these were some of the questions coming up as I was just spending a lot of time looking at the world around me, and then I just imagined a love story as I am one to do. And the two sort of merged, and that's where the narrative arc of these drawings sort of came from.

    [26:23] Bye.

    When you have work for sale in this way, these original drawings, how do you emotionally prepare yourself for none of them selling, half of them selling, all of them selling?

    How do you price your work? I think a huge question of artists is like, how the hell do we choose how much something costs?

    And so, I'd love to hear about your process of like, you know, you just told us this beautiful story of like how you came to the work and then you have to decide how much it costs.

    It's like, yeah, talk to us about pricing, expectation around selling that side of art making.

    Yeah, this is a great thing to talk about because the experience of pricing this work was unlike any I had ever had before.

    The show before this, the owner of the gallery, I came to him with my prices and he, knowing his audience, basically doubled everything.

    [27:33] Wow. It was incredible because he set the bar for my future, in a sense.

    He was like, mm-hmm, okay, so we're gonna present you like this now.

    Yeah.

    And I was like, you're crazy. Nobody's gonna buy a drawing for $1,000.

    Are you nuts? No one's gonna buy this one for $2,000. I mean, these were prices that, I was selling things for like $150.

    Right, right. And he was just like, mm-hmm, what's gonna happen now?

    So here we are in this new part of your life.

    [28:08] Set it and forget it was kind of the, like, let's just see. So he did that, and all the work sold, at the prices that Miles had set.

    So that was incredibly expensive for me because I realized that there actually are people in the world with money who wanna buy art.

    Wow. Wow. Wow. You all hear that? Say it, wanna say it one more time?

    There are people in the world with money who want to buy art.

    Whoo shocking shocking shocking something that I forget is that not everyone else is an artist in the same way that I can get myopic about my experience and feelings like at the risk of sounding like a total narcissist or totally self-obsessed person I also forget that other, other people live completely different lives with different paychecks and nine to five routines and ways of relating to money or finding it or having it.

    [29:24] I forget that my experience with money is not ubiquitous. And so this is something that I have to continually return to as I'm making and pricing work.

    I am not making work for Anna Fusco. I mean, in my heart I am, but I'm not making 24 drawings to hang in my own house.

    [29:48] I'm making them for other people. So this show was different in the pricing because Charlie and I priced the work together and it took three days, which was a lot of time.

    It was unexpected.

    It was a barrage of texting back and forth, sometimes late at night, within this three-day period of, I think we're good, I think we should stick to the prices, yes, let's do it, let's set the bar high, I'm not messing around anymore.

    And then a half an hour later being like, please do not release that price list.

    That price list is insane. That's the price list of a crazy person.

    We need to lower those prices.

    Who do I think I am?

    And so the first day of pricing, I walked into the gallery, I looked at all of my art on the walls, lovingly custom framed by my partner. And I mean, the frames alone, I'm like $3,000 for something that's nine by nine. Because I love my partner and I love the work he did and the wood and everything. And I know how much labor it took for me to then put the work in the frames and mount them and everything, let alone the drawings. So I'm walking around the gallery and I'm.

    [31:16] Yeah, that one, 2,000. And I'm just like rattling off prices. And Charlie is indulging me and he's like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And he's writing it all down. And we calculate at the end of it that it's like, if we sold everything, it would be a 50,000 or $40,000 show. And I was like, great, see you later. And then in the coming days, I went to bed and right before going to bed, I looked at all the art and I lowered the prices. And then the next morning, I woke up and before coffee, did it again, lowered the prices. Had coffee, did it again, lowered the prices.

    And each phase of that was a different page in my notebook, and it's really incredible to just flip through the pages of every single drawing title, handwritten, with a price.

    And then the next page, it's like $100 less. And the next page, it's $100 less. And I think, I did that five or six times, all the while communicating with Charlie.

    I went to the gallery one last time, we lowered the prices again. And that was not because I was selling myself short or undervaluing my work, but because I asked myself.

    [32:41] What do I truly need this show to mean to me and give to me?

    And how can I align that with other people who are meant to receive this work?

    So that meant getting really real about not only the physical location of this gallery, which, While it is in an incredibly unaffordable town in California, the surrounding towns are not necessarily full of young folk with tons of disposable income.

    And I wasn't sure that the people in the town with money would resonate with my work because I'm not 50 plus.

    [33:42] Making oil paintings of the ocean.

    So I priced the work closer to who I imagined the local community and say like friends in New York, friends in New York, friends of friends in L.A., like, you know, not close friends, because my close friends are also artists who are struggling, more or less, but.

    People within an arm's or a couple tentacles of reach. That's what felt good to me.

    [34:23] Yeah. I do want to circle back to the, not everyone is an artist moment of how we price things, because I really have to think that way about when I price an online class that I teach. And especially with my quilt class, which some of my classes might help people earn income.

    So I don't feel as weird charging a certain price. And with quilt class, sometimes I, I used to have like guilt or fear around the price.

    And then I realized the people who are taking it are often like literal lawyers and doctors who have plenty of money to, you know, pay that price.

    Or I started noticing like the scrappiest queers who were like farmers, would ask their rich parents for quilt class for Christmas or for their birthday.

    Like I am not in charge of how other people can access the money to buy the things that I offer.

    And, you know, I feel like this is maybe where like your prints come into play as like, and I have ways.

    [35:35] Like I charge that much so that I can offer payment plans, scholarships, it's like you charge that much And then you also have like prints and other ways to access your art that aren't the same as original drawings.

    So, yeah, I just wanted to sort of...

    [35:53] Put a little spotlight on the we are in charge of, How other people come up with the money to buy our work even though?

    Yeah I think that my work occasionally extends beyond the work itself and part of my work of course is pricing it so that, It can be received by an audience and also support me to keep, surviving and making more work, but.

    [36:21] I think my job is just the work of numbers and pricing, and somehow, of trying to steer clear of like, micromanaging what I assume the audience looks like, or can feasibly do.

    Yes. And I like I think what you actually just really showed us was also this beautiful thoughtfulness of like, who are the people locally who are interacting with this work? And like, what is their income? Like, what is their interest? Like, because at the same time, like, yes, and a lot of people who take my classes are, you know, the niche audience is often like, struggling queer artists, you know, that's who's taking my classes, like artists on the outskirts, marginalized people.

    And so I am always playing that puzzle of like, how do I charge For the people who aren't those identities or or or are those identities and have access to money, you know it's such a just dance of being in like deep consideration and, asking who I want in the room and.

    [37:33] Not assuming people's financial abilities at the same time. Yeah, and that's reminding me to of like of we, You know, I had one art show and we set the prices at a certain place and then it's there's an assumption that, Now that I am a year and a half more established from that show the work has, Increased in value and price and so the next show will be maybe slightly, more expensive than the last one.

    And that trajectory is sort of anticipated with emerging artists, right?

    That's the goal. And then I made this, and then I made this, and then suddenly I'm selling an airbrush painting for $65,000.

    [38:24] But I just feel like right now in my life, I have a more holistic, grounded approach wherein I'm not really interested in relating to my work that way because I'm learning about how important the context of the work itself being made and who's receiving it is to the way it's then valued. So.

    [38:56] Right now I looked at my current finances, where I need them or want them to be, who the audience is, who the maybe external digital audience might be, how much money it cost to make the show, what Charlie kind of hopes to earn based on the rent of the gallery itself. These are all things that are so unique to this one show. My next show might have no overhead, might not require any framing, might be when I was paying less rent or came into a big lump sum of a grant.

    Like, you know, I might be in a more flexible situation where I'm like, hey, I'm feeling generous.

    Like this work, let's price it here.

    Or it could be the opposite where I'm like, the overhead of the show was totally insane. I went nuts.

    I am in over my head.

    I did not get the grant. And yeah, I'm really gonna ask a lot from myself and the audience right now.

    This is where I'm at. Thank you for sharing all of that so honestly with us. Yeah.

    [40:17] I would love to move towards speaking of the newsletter. Yes. unsupervised with Anna. So, tell us what the newsletter is about. What the hell do you write a newsletter about?

    What the heck do I write about? Do any of my readers want to chime in? Just kidding. Just kidding. I actually feel called and usually I don't just sort of like brag is maybe the wrong word, but me and Anna are in the top 10 art and illustration sub stacks on the leaderboard.

    And I think that that is really cool. And I think that that is, you know, I do like to tell the story that when I first saw your sub stack, it reminds me of like find other artists who intimidate you or make you jealous or nervous and become friends with them. Like, I remember being like, who is this other blonde, dirty hair looking person with hats and coats who takes film pictures and writes about feelings? That's like what I do. I'm scared, my friend.

    [41:24] So we also have the same like some of the same tattoos. Oh, yes, absolutely. Of course we do. Yeah, we're I'm like seeing your tattoos for the first time.

    Yeah.

    So, anyways, I just wanted to share about my experience finding your sub stack, and I just, I, I'm a huge, huge fan of your writing. You make me a better writer.

    So do you. Thank you for saying that you really do. I felt the other side of that, which is, I had read your sub stack for probably a year before starting mine, maybe six months, but a while before. And you were expansive for me. This is a person who does this and shows up and is making it part of their practice. I think I can do the same because I know that.

    [42:14] I can articulate my experiences pretty well. But I knew that I would be or was already on your radar and I felt very self-conscious that you might feel infringed upon or like I was stepping on your toes or like, oh my God, another sub stack, you know, and I had to hold that and move confidently in the direction of my dreams anyway. So it was like, I'm so glad you did.

    Right. And I'm glad I did too, because what I've learned is that there's just no two substacks and other things that are ever going to be alike. And so I had this fear that I would be copying Marley by having a substack and yet every week I continue to write the way I want to write. And I I continue to read your sub stack and they are nothing alike and they will really never be anything alike. And it's, it's so, it's such an incredible reminder. Like whoever you are afraid that you're copying, you're not going to copy them unless you literally copy them, which has happened. And that's another story. But you know, so my newsletter, I love it.

    [43:39] Just love it so much. I just want to live in there. Mmm.

    I write about myself. People say, what do you write about?

    And the easiest thing is just to say, myself. How did you come up with three times a month?

    Because I feel like that's something I try to encourage people is, you know, I write like anywhere between four and eight times a month.

    And I think sometimes people see that and I tell people, you know, know, on the podcast or in my classes, like make a newsletter and they're like, Well, I can't write that much. And I'm always, like, No, you can write a newsletter once a month or twice a year, but like, that channel feels so important. And so why three times a month? And how has having a newsletter felt important to you, separate from the other channels of marketing you're sharing like social media.

    I started with two times a month. That was my public announcement. Hi, hello, this is unsupervised, it's going to happen twice a month. And that was because I felt the weight of what a weekly practice, meaning four times a month, would mean.

    [44:54] Having read your substack religiously and also Lisa's substack, which are two that occur Sunday and Monday, regardless of what happens pretty much.

    And I didn't want to set myself up, I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew.

    This is a new thing that I'm going to incorporate into my life.

    I'm not going to go out blazing like, hello, I can write four essays of quality a month.

    No, I don't know that, actually. But I know that I can write two things of substance because that gives me about a week to write and a week to edit. That sounds good.

    So I was doing that, and everything was fine. And then I just naturally found myself Wanting to do one more, and that just pushing that edge of adding one and then you know publicly announcing it and.

    [45:56] Uh holding myself Accountable to it my readers holding me accountable to it based on their paid subscriptions, Has felt like a challenge and a growing edge in the perfect way right now, you know, I don't suggest to everyone who takes either newsletter class or shapes of our offerings like my different classes I don't say to everyone make a profitable newsletter like I think there's a lot of value and just having a free email marketing newsletter but of course we both have newsletters that both market our work but are also offerings within themselves that generate income so I'm curious how, How do you decide what goes behind the paywall and what is free?

    What's that experience been like, having the exchange of money for your writing and deciding?

    [46:51] What goes in what container. I wish I could say that it was a formula like I always do q&a and that's for subscribers who pay or I only reveal my current recommendations to paid subscribers or something like that. But what I have found is that, for me, it is a much more intuitive, ad hoc way of determining because as I'm writing and when I finish a piece, I really just say to, myself, who is meant to read this? Who do I trust with this?

    I think it's those two questions. Who is meant to read this? And also, who do I want to read this? And then who do I trust with this? My relationship to my readers feels very much like a container of mutual trust. I write incredibly personal things on there occasionally, and those without fail do go behind a paywall, because that's just the way it is.

    [48:01] You want to read my journals? You want to see what it's like to have an insecure attachment style while being a full-time artist? Here you go. Here's the keys to my castle.

    Subscribe to Monday Monday and unsupervised.

    Yeah, exactly. Well, and I loved, it happened so seamlessly that you had sort of just started really writing about your relationship and love, and I made this declaration because I had spent years writing about my partnership and my, not my partnership, but my place sort of within my my partnership and made a really clear decision to stop writing about how I'm specifically in relationship to someone I'm dating.

    And I remember this beautiful thing that people who were reading both of our newsletters sort of had this beautiful experience of reflecting back to us like, we love that Marlee won't be writing about this anymore, and we're so glad that Anna does." And it was just that other example of, like, when one of us puts something down, the other one can sort of pick it up for the people or something.

    Yeah, like the floating idea completely. It was the same week that you said, I am hereby announcing that I'm no longer sharing my relationship.

    [49:27] Which was such perfect timing for me because it was the same exact moment that I had publicly displayed my relationship like I have never before by doing a live Q&A with my partner, who does not have social media. So, I mean, I couldn't have made us more vulnerable. Everyone was like, is this really happening? Like, is she really doing this? Yes, I am.

    And of course, there was a vulnerability hangover and reading your newsletter about not writing about this and not sharing this.

    I did have a moment of like, oh crap, did I just make a grave error?

    And no, but it's always good to have, to ask the hard questions, which are like, what is the motivation behind flaying myself publicly?

    Well, and when we first opened this conversation, I love that you identified as a truth teller and then we're like, my truth, you know?

    It's like, we tell our truths, not the truth, which I like. Yeah, I tell my truth.

    There is no the truth.

    [50:39] So another huge part of your practice is Lord Cowboy. Tell me about how it started.

    So it was COVID, it was lockdown. I was living alone in Orange County, which I have no relationship to except for the fact that I at one time was involved with someone who's from there.

    But at this point I was all by myself in a very sunny, beautiful apartment.

    And I had been living in New York where I was going to school for the five years leading up to COVID.

    And so, when it happened, I felt very far away from my people and very distraught and concerned and at once grateful that I was not there for the meat of that situation, but also really like wanting to be there, like, God, I just want to get in there and help.

    And I worked in the service industry the whole time that I was going to school.

    A few friends of mine started a mutual aid.

    [51:59] Process of raising money for undocumented service workers who were no longer able to work and would not be receiving the wonderful New York benefits of unemployment. And I just was.

    [52:21] Like, yes, sign me up. How can I raise money right now? And so I made a drawing on my iPad, which was based off of a sketch that came from my notebook. I digitized it, I decided it should be certain size, certain quality of paper, I was connected to a printer that I trusted already through the work of a friend and told Instagram. And at the time, me telling Instagram was telling like 2000 people. Hi, everyone, here is a drawing I've made. If you give me $40 for it, I will print it, send it to you. And all of the proceeds will go to this organization, the Service Workers Coalition of New York.

    And I will receive the money through Venmo and take your address via DM and put it into a spreadsheet on Excel.

    That was the, that was the, that was my system.

    Yeah. And I think I sold something like 40 posters to friends and friends of friends, to all people I knew, but, you know, or knew through one degree of separation.

    [53:39] And that felt so good to just raise $1,000 overnight, basically, from a drawing I made.

    And it made me realize that I like giving back, I like making art, and there's an audience for it.

    They always say all you need is 100 people, and I had more than that, but not that much more.

    And that worked. I was like, cool, okay, I'm going to do it again.

    So I did it again, and I did it again, and I did it again.

    And then it just spiraled. People were DMing me, hey, do you have any more posters left?

    Hey, you should just like have a website with these for sale for yourself.

    Like it's cool that you're giving back, but do you have a shop too?

    You know? And so that was in, I would say, April of 2020. And by October of 2020, six months later, I opened a Squarespace.

    So it took about six months for me to get organized.

    [54:50] You know that was such a beautiful story about lord cowboy and how sort of the online shop started, I think the question that so many people have is really like, How do you even get started as an artist specifically as like a self-employed artist and having it be?

    Your job, so i'm curious What you might say to someone really wanting to dedicate their life to art, outside of money and You know, how do you make it a job?

    Well, I would start by saying that it's going to look different for everybody, because we're, all coming from different places of privilege or lack thereof, and I would be doing a disservice, if I said that being a full-time artist for me is unrelated to a lot of my unearned privilege.

    [55:57] So we can just sit and let that sink in. And maybe someone's listening to this and is like, wow that's a bummer because i want to be an artist and i don't come from a lot of privilege, I have always been an artist. I've always been making something and I've always made the time, to create something with my hands. So for years before going to school for art and finishing in New York, I was working as a barista at a general store in Putney, Vermont, making minimum wage. But in my free time, I was, apprenticing at a weaving school down the road. And in exchange for I think $100 and helping the owner.

    [57:10] Of the weaving school out with a few things. I had access to yarn, looms, books, and her guidance.

    And I just wove and wove and wove and wove. And even though textiles aren't part of my practice anymore, They might be one day, but I'm telling this story to illustrate the fact that wherever I've lived, whether it's been in New York or Vermont or Martha's Vineyard or San Francisco, I've always kind of found a way to make sure that I was always making something.

    When I moved to Brooklyn after living in Vermont, I Google-searched textiles and found the Textile Arts Center in Gowanus and discovered that they have an intern program and applied and became an intern there.

    So I think it's really important to just use Google to find the art centers or communities or people.

    [58:27] In whatever area you are in and go towards them. Be around them because it will be inspiring to you and it will make you want to make time for your practice.

    That's my theory. I'm speaking generally, I'm giving directives, but I find it much harder to imagine that I would have just maintained my practice while sitting alone in my house, waiting for it to come to me.

    It's not gonna come to you, especially not at the beginning, all the time.

    You're lucky if it does. So you have to go to it.

    [59:13] And that is something that I, it requires the privilege of time, sure.

    [59:20] But I paid my own rent, and I worked service industry jobs, and I still had two four-hour periods a week to intern for free at the Textile Arts Center, which was, at the time, the lifeline I had to a creative community in the city I lived in.

    [59:41] Yeah, I think something that comes up for me is because I host so many digital spaces and so much of my job is like in the digital realm. Just yesterday, I was even thinking about, you know, the place that I live and being like, I want to be a little more tethered to the places here. And I think that has really become a theme in the interviews with my guests is like, look around you. That just reminded me Michigan State motto is if you seek a pleasant Peninsula look about you. Wow. I know. It's really good. It's really good. Um, and yeah, I love look about you just like, yeah, like look around, you know, like what is near you that, you know, we don't have to like invent every new thing ourselves. Like actually we'll have often already made something that maybe it's better for us to like be a part of or see how we can be of service in those spaces. Yeah and maybe look about you and put yourself in shoes that feel maybe a little.

    [1:00:55] I don't know how to say this but when I was an intern at the Textile Arts Center I was like 26 years old and had very real expenses and did not feel as though I could afford to work for free, like organizing crayons for their after school program and like printing out signage for their craft bins. But I did it anyway because it meant that I could take classes there for free and meet weavers and meet artists who were established in the city that I lived in. And those are all things that expanded me into the artist I am today. Yeah, I think that's like you said, there's the, there is the privilege of time. And it's a dance of like, I feel this with redistributing my finances, I feel this with redistributing resources and time, is this like, there's both the privilege and there's like, the risk or the trust that like, the more I give, the more I receive, and whether that's spiritually, monetarily, energetically, and I just really, believe that to be true, so.

    Yeah, I do too.

    [1:02:22] Anna, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listeners of Common Shapes today?

    You know, I listened to another podcast a few weeks ago with the author Seth Godin, whose books I really like and I highly recommend if you're thinking about making art and sharing it and making it part of your daily life and or income. He was a guest on a podcast and the host asked him something like, you know, what's your formula?

    What's your daily routine? Walk me from the beginning of your day till the end with the intention of like, revealing to an audience. This is what Seth Godin does. And so if you listen and take notes, and maybe do the same thing, you might be as successful as Seth Godin. And in response to her question, he just kind of laughed and was like, I'm not telling you any of this. I'm not telling you my routine. I'm not telling you anything I do. Not because it's something he wants to be cagey about, or withhold, but because he acknowledged that it is irrelevant information for the people listening to the podcast.

    [1:03:41] Because what works for him has nothing to do with what will work for another person. So here we are recording a podcast about my trajectory and how I got started and what I think has helped me and what maybe people can do.

    But I also wanna hold a little space for the fact that.

    [1:04:07] Whoever is listening to this knows what's calling them and what's going to work for them.

    And if they don't know it yet, the best thing to do is to start listening to yourself.

    Maybe you make a list. Project Miracle. Maybe you start by making lists of your honest to God truths every single day. Or just sitting still. But your answers to your practice and it being fruitful are already inside of you.

    And Seth Godin finished by saying, the only thing that sets me apart from a person who has yet to begin or quote unquote become successful is that he's learned to work with the inevitable resistance, that we'll always encounter.

    And I just thought, yes, Seth Godin, that is the truth.

    [1:05:08] So we're all gonna have resistance. It's a rollercoaster.

    All you should focus on, I'm talking to myself, I'm talking to Marlee, I'm talking to a listener, is that how can there be less resistance?

    How can I work with my resistance? How can I dance with my resistance?

    And that just comes from knowing yourself, taking time to get to know yourself.

    Yeah, gosh, it's like the thing that what I think of is.

    It is not the resistance itself that causes my suffering, it is my resistance to the resistance that causes suffering.

    Yes, yes.

    I feel the resistance and I'm like, time to take a break, time to relax, time to do something else.

    I have much more ease than when I fight against it. And when I'm speaking for myself, when I'm in ease, around my practice and my relationships, they just somehow, call it the universe, it somehow just kind of works better.

    Kind of just works better, and that is a miracle.

    Yeah, because I think we subconsciously respond to one another better when we recognize ease and play.

    [1:06:36] And generosity of spirit and attitude in one another. And so I think to myself often, yeah, do people wanna support an artist who's like fighting tooth and nail to get the message out and so stressed and pulling my hair out and being so hard on myself but I'll buy this poster though.

    Or, do they want to support someone who's like, hello world, it is a crazy hellscape out here sometimes, but you know what?

    Sun's shining even if you can't see it, so I made a drawing.

    And tomorrow I'm gonna not make a drawing because my body says stop.

    [1:07:19] Maybe you want it. Maybe you don't It's there I'll be okay and work at the movie theater, If nobody buys it then i'll start my flower farm, which, You know, I put my seeds in the ground, you know I just that's the thing about as i'm trying to like do this brand brand new thing, and of course gardening is like the best metaphor for everything, but it's like, I've been so Obsessed with like trying to figure out how to do it and ahead of myself where it's literally as simple as like you put the dirt in the box, Then you put the seed in the dirt Then you water the dirt then you wait to see if the seed pops up and right now I'm waiting for the seed to pop up and it's like every morning I wake up and I like look in the box and I'm like seed. Have you popped up yet? And it's like not yet, Not yet. Not yet.

    Not yet. Planting and gardening, it's such an incredible metaphor for everything, but also for believing in oneself and patience because it's like you plant the seed and you water it and it's underground and nothing's showing, but you have faith.

    You know something's going to happen.

    You're like, yeah, it's there. It just takes time.

    [1:08:43] So you live day to day with this belief in your seed, even though you can't see it.

    And I think that's really important to carry with us.

    So you might not see your audience yet, you might not see money flowing to you yet, but, can you think of it like a seed that is just sort of germinating inside of you and believe that it's going to come for you, even if it hasn't sprouted yet. I know it's cheesy. I'm doing the metaphor thing. I know, it is, but it's so... I literally bent down yesterday to the seeds.

    I put the flower seeds and said, are you guys in there still? And it's like, yeah, we are. They're in there. Yeah. So just say that to yourself. Are you in there still? Little creative version of me.

    Anna, thank you so much for coming on to Common Shapes. It was an absolute blessing.

    This was the best day of my day.

    Goodbye, listeners. Bye.

    I'd love to thank everyone who's made this podcast possible. Our music is by Saltbreaker, our graphics are by Luke Haza Brampfmann Verissimo, and this podcast is edited by Softer Sounds Studio. Thank you for being a listener of Common Shapes.

Common Shapes is an ad free listener supported show. To receive emails when new episodes come out and get bonus content subscribe to my newsletter

Six Tools for When You Don’t Know What To Do Next

I think the great fear of most creative people is that we’ll run out of ideas and not know what to do next.

I come up against this time and time again in my own work, so I’ve developed a series of practices for releasing fear, removing blocks, returning to center, and discovering what’s next.

LISTEN WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS SPOTIFY + APPLE PODCASTS + AUDIBLE

“You don’t have to identify as an artist, but as a creative person dedicated to noticing and seeing the world, it’s an opportunity to be closer with that part of yourself.”

Tune in to this episode to learn my six favorite tools for when I don’t know what to do, including—

🐋 Morning pages & artist dates

🐋 Movement

🐋 Phoning a friend

🐋 Setting up an easy practice

🐋 List-making

🐋 Recovery & spiritual practice

After you listen, go get my free Creative Ideation Portal, and join me in dreaming up what’s next for you and your work.

Links

🌕 Get the Creative Ideation Portal

🌕 Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday

🌕 Get Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way

🌕 Find all these links & more at marleegrace.space/commonshapes

  • [0:00] Hello and welcome to Common Shapes, a podcast about practices, systems, and rituals for a creative life.

    Today we're talking about what to do when you don't know what to do.

    Introduction to the Speaker and Topic

    [0:21] I'm Marlee Grace. I'm a writer, a dancer, a teacher, a quilter, a thinker of what the hell do I do next? A tornado person who rides the waves of confusion and stress and resistance to what is and is deeply devoted to finding a little more ease in my practice and in my life. So today I want to talk about six things to do when you don't know what to do next.

    This is a common problem for the squiggly-brained people, as the folks at Holisticism call it, tornado people like me, whether you're neurodivergent or just someone who doesn't know exactly what to do after the thing you just finished.

    Embracing Uncertainty and Taking Small Steps

    [1:17] I hope that these six ways of recentering, getting to center, if you will, help you to to find a little more relaxation amongst your choice-making.

    Introduction and Invitation to Download the Creative Ideation Portal

    [1:34] Before I jump in, I'd love to invite you to download the Creative Ideation Portal, which is a three-day guide to help you vision and dream up and organize your beautiful projects and release them into the world as an act of service to yourself, the people, and your practice.

    You can find that at marleygrace.space slash common shapes, which is also where you can find all of the episodes of this podcast, the show notes and more.

    It pairs nicely with the first few episodes of this podcast.

    And I think also really supports you as you listen to the interview episodes and you're feeling inspired by other artists and want a place to dream up your own new ideas, ideas, businesses, hobbies, passion projects, and think about making them public.

    So grab the Creative Ideation Portal, listen to the first few episodes, and may they serve your process and your practice.

    Six Tools for Creative People

    [2:38] So today I want to offer my six tools that I most often come back to, and they are, morning pages and artist dates, movement, phoning a friend, setting up an easy practice.

    [2:56] List making, and recovery slash a spiritual practice. I think it is the great fear of of most artists or creative people, writers, that we will run out of ideas or we just won't know what to do next.

    Or we're experiencing sort of a fight or flight or freeze or fawn situation, right?

    Where we're just not really sure what to do next, whether that's on a small scale or a large scale.

    So I'm both using these tools in my day-to-day as well as the bigger seasons of my life.

    So if I complete a big project and I don't know what to do next, I turn to my morning pages or I phone a friend, right?

    Seeking Inspiration and Ideas from Others

    [3:44] So all of these tools can be used hour to hour, year to year, lifetime to lifetime, you know, whatever length of time you need them for, they are available to you.

    So I wanna start with talking about the artist's way, which right now I'm in the midst of week one of hosting the Artist's Way Book Study.

    The Artist's Way Book Study

    [4:08] So if you're listening to this live and it's June of 2023 and you want to join us, please do.

    [4:17] Head over to marleygrace.substack.com to become a paying subscriber of the Monday Monday Newsletter, and you can join us with the Artist's Way Book Study. You can actually join us any week.

    So if we're on week six and you wanna join in and type in week one, how your week went, go for it, right?

    You can start at any time.

    And if you want to create a cluster of accountability for your own with your friends where you live or your own digital cluster, I highly recommend.

    But the two main tools that come out of the Artist's Way, which is the 12-week book for creative nourishment and recovery by Julia Cameron, the two tools are morning pages and artist dates.

    And you can employ these at any time. You don't have to be actively working through the artist's way to do them, right?

    So I strive to always be doing my morning pages. And of course, they come in seasons.

    There are seasons where I'm not grabbing my notebook as much in the morning, or I'm doing some of these other practices in the morning, right?

    Whether it's movement, list making, my recovery. So morning pages are three pages of journaling with a pen with no editing.

    You're just writing your thoughts in the morning and getting them on the page.

    And the reason this helps me.

    [5:39] Do something when I don't know what to do is you can't lie to the morning pages, right? It's this, truth portal of seeing exactly what is in front of you. And when you write something enough days in a row, whether it's a hope for what you want to see created in your life, or it's something that's been distracting you or bothering you, you write it enough times and you think, okay, this needs to shift, or I know what is next. It's my way of talking to God, talking to Spirit, admitting the truth to myself. So morning pages, I say them first for a reason. I think they really are the through line that brings me back to myself and shows me clearly what is next on the path, both on the daily level, because I do them every day.

    [6:35] And on the bigger level.

    I notice the cycles, the cyclical themes that come up that I want to shift or that I want to turn my attention towards.

    So I definitely recommend some journaling practice. If 30 pages feels like too much, try one.

    You can try half a page. We'll talk about lists as well. And so I also wanna say, you can also do a list making practice.

    But I think some sort of daily practice of pen to paper with feelings is going to shine a light on what to do next when you don't know what to do next.

    Weekly Artist's Date for Nurturing Your Inner Artist

    [7:15] And the other part of the artist's way is a weekly artist's date, which is a solo adventure to nourish and cultivate your inner artist.

    And that could be going to a museum, going to a cute shop and looking for new tools for your painting practice.

    Maybe you wanna buy a new watercolor set. Maybe you wanna go to a movie by yourself or watch a documentary at home.

    Maybe you wanna grab your Polaroid camera and take a walk in the woods and take pictures.

    It's anything that you design that is to remember that you are an artist.

    If you're listening and you're like, but Mar, I'm not an artist.

    That's okay, you don't have to identify as a capital A artist or anything like that, but as a creative person, as a person dedicated to noticing and seeing the world, it's an opportunity to be closer with that part of yourself.

    So tool one, morning pages and artist dates.

    Movement and being in your body

    [8:25] The second one is movement. So at first when I was making the list, I just wrote walking outside, but I think dancing and walking, really go hand in hand for me, as well as working out, putting on my little ankle weights and wrist weights, working out with a trainer or in a class, or just putting some music on on my own and doing some bench presses with my 15 pound squiggly weight, anything that brings you into the body.

    So, I'm a Gemini, I have five planets in Gemini.

    I'm recording this in Gemini season, and it feels really like a season of like, what do I do with my days?

    What do I do next? We're still sort of coming out of winter, even though it's mid-June. It was only six weeks ago that it snowed here, right?

    So sometimes I expect myself to be fully in summer mode when the season is still, shifting into something else But movement and being in my body...

    Really keeps me knowing where I am. And that also includes swimming, walking, dancing, right?

    Anything that sort of makes me remember I'm alive, right?

    [9:51] So in the many planets in Gemini, in Gemini season, that's all to say I'm in my head.

    I'm thinking, I'm communicating, I'm talking, I'm like neck up.

    My body only exists from the neck up a lot of the times. And I have to remember to bring my thoughts into my body to really be able to feel them, which is scary sometimes.

    I have had to add a lot of tools in my toolkit from my outside help, from my therapist, from medication, from so many different modalities so that I can feel safe in my body, so that I can feel safe sort of connecting my mind to what is below it, right, as above.

    So below goes for the mind and heart and body as well.

    And so if I don't know what's next and I'm really stuck and I don't even wanna pick up the journal or call a friend or make a list, like putting on music and dancing, it's like intermission.

    I can just dance and I don't have to record it. I don't have to show anyone.

    It's just for me. It's just for me to move around and put on a fun song, put on my Justin Bieber, put on my Taylor Swift, put on my Beyonce, and just absolutely jam out in my living room with my dog, pop a fresh LaCroix, and that's what's next, right?

    So if you're like, what do I do next?

    Walking as a way to come back to ourselves

    [11:18] Maybe it's turning towards a walk. And the only thing to do is tie your shoes, right?

    We have it stacked. We make it simple.

    We just put our shoes on, and then we walk.

    We hop in the car, we drive to the trail, we grab the dog, we grab the treats, and we walk.

    It's a way to be close with God or the universe. It's a way to come back to ourselves.

    And then we hear the answers, right? So when I swim, I hear the answers from Spirit, loud and clear. I can't bring my phone in the water.

    I hear the answers. When I'm on a walk, I hear the answers from nature, from trees.

    Maybe I am listening to music or a podcast, and I'm just in touch with myself and my own research practice.

    And when I'm dancing, I don't really hear anything, and that's why I love it so much.

    But then afterwards, the answer appears.

    So there's a lot of trust and movement that what to do next will emerge.

    Phone a Friend: Simple Step to Ask for Help

    [12:28] The third tool is phone a friend, and it's as simple as asking for help. Phoning a friend to ask them if they need help, right? So I might text a friend to say, hey, how are you?

    It's that simple. That's the next step. And more often than not, that friend is perhaps really glad someone asked them and is there for them to support them in their own day, right?

    A great way to get out of my own head is to ask someone else how they're doing, if they need anything, or to just offer support in a way that you might know they need. Phoning a friend is also an opportunity to just connect with another human. A lot of these tools are solo activities, and so that could also be setting up a Zoom with a friend and doing a studio visit with them. It It could be FaceTiming.

    It could be writing a letter to a friend.

    Just connecting with another person will not necessarily give you the answers to what's next, but it is what's next.

    Companionship, connection, community, being a part of.

    Artists need each other. And so we are reminded we are not alone in our thinking or our practice by phoning a friend.

    Fourth Tool: Setting Up an Easy Practice

    [13:52] The fourth tool is setting up an easy practice. So let's say I'm on the couch, I'm going through emails, I'm working on my newsletter, I'm just doing things on my computer, some of my computer work, and I'm finished, or I can sense that I'm starting to maybe burn out on the screen time and I want a break, but I'm wanting still to be creative and access my creativity.

    I'm not necessarily ready to fully take a break or rest or make lunch or something.

    I will have a basket of knitting next to my couch at almost all times so that I know that I can grab it.

    Something I often suggest is having a watercolor station by the dining room table, just some paper, some paint, a paintbrush, and a little Mason jar for water so that you can pull out painting as a practice whenever you want.

    That's for everyone. You don't have to be a painter to paint, right?

    You don't have to be a writer to write. You don't have to be a knitter to knit.

    Although I might argue that once you do those things, you become them.

    So.

    [14:59] Having an easy practice to access. Sort of circles back to movement, right?

    I try to remember that dance is something I can access all the time.

    It's why I started personal practice, my project where I documented myself dancing on Instagram every single day for a year and then continued for many years after that.

    And it was a practice in just seeing I don't need a dance studio to dance.

    So that's the other thing about having an easy practice is colored pencils and paper.

    [15:33] By the kitchen counter or a book to read, right? The easy practice could be wanting to read a book and keeping that book on your nightstand and committing to reading 20 minutes before bed every night. It's not that the practice itself is easy, but you are making it easy to pick up up the practice.

    Fifth Tool: List Making

    [15:53] This sort of brings us into the next tool, which is list making.

    I make a gratitude list every day as part of an accountability practice, and that notebook stays on the couch so that when I'm watching TV.

    [16:11] I'm doing my nightly activities, it's right there.

    I know I can pick up the practice because I really try not to move it.

    I try to keep it exactly where it is.

    Another trick, I remember years ago buying this book that was called like Easy Organization for People with ADHD, something like that.

    And one of the things was like having a coat at every door because if it's cold outside and I'm towards the back door and I wanna go outside, if there's not a coat hanging there, I won't walk all the way to the front door to grab a coat and then walk back.

    Or like I keep shoes by the back door.

    There's a pair of Crocs that lives by the back door. I do not move them from the back door, right?

    That's an easy practice that lets me go outside, that allows me to just get out and go and walk out the back door. That's where I walk out with June to the backyard.

    It's where I walk out to sit and drink my water or drink my NA beer.

    I can go and sit back there. So easy practices. Those could be creative practices, setting things up so that it's easy to leave, right?

    To help you get to the next thing.

    Lists as Tools for Productivity and Creativity

    [17:27] So the next is list making. And you can decide which lists help you.

    So that might be a to-do list, a list of goals, a list of things you love to do.

    There's so many different inventories and lists you could make.

    I, of course, love a daily gratitude list, but if we're thinking seasonally what to do next, it could be a list of all the different ways you want to make money this quarter.

    Right, so.

    [18:00] How do you want to earn this month? Maybe it's adding a new offering.

    Maybe it's taking away an offering. Maybe it's focusing on a collection of physical objects that you're making.

    Maybe it's picking up some more client work or freelance work, right?

    So a list of money-making ideas. It could be a list of books you want to write or classes you want to teach.

    It could be a list of people you want to call back, right? There's so many different lists you could make, but when I don't know what to do next, especially within a day, I will stop and make a list.

    [18:41] And so it's not necessarily like I make a list of what I want to do that day, although that generally is one of the tools I implement, but I could just say like, I wanna make a list of books I wanna bring on this trip.

    I want to make a list of reasons I feel secure in my current romantic relationship.

    I want to make a list of things I'm grateful for about my home.

    I want to make a list of projects I want to do in my home. That's one I really love to do.

    And they're all just ways of checking in with the self and finding the answer.

    So think of your own lists that you want to make.

    Like what are the different kinds of lists and what could bring you closer to what is next, right? Because these tools both serve as the thing to do next and tools that give you the answers to what is after doing the tool, right? So when you don't know what to do next, you could make a list. That's the thing you do next, right? But that gives you the answer.

    Making Lists Helps Find the Answer to What is Next

    [19:56] To what is next. What doesn't appear on my list is also like doing nothing, just vegging out, just watching TV, just doing nothing, right? That's always an option. This episode is a little more like what's next for the sake of productivity and creation, but I want to just throw in that resting is a tool.

    It's a non-tool, it's a tool and a non-tool. It's something we extract from everything else.

    So if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, these are all to-dos, these are more to-dos, please add in the bonus of napping, hydrating, doing nothing, staring at the wall.

    Obviously, make your own list of tools. I don't have meditating on my list, but for me, like walking and swimming maybe would be in the meditation category.

    So again, make your own tools and your own lists.

    Every episode I make, take what you like, leave the rest.

    But for this one especially, I feel very called to throw in rest and doing nothing as a tool for what's next.

    Because the answers come when we rest and we feel restored when we rest, right?

    Recovery and Spiritual Practice

    [21:23] And lastly, I have recovery and spiritual practice on the list. And for me, my recovery lives in the 12-step realm. And I put spiritual practice on here and recovery because I will never use this podcast to suggest or promote any 12-step programs as per the traditions of those programs, but I will share that they work for me. And I think that what works for me is being a part of a group and a process of self-inquiry and doing that in an accountable space. And so that could look like anything. That could be you finding a cool, queer, Unitarian, Universalist church to be a part of.

    Shout out to Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. But you know, that could be digital community as well. Anywhere that brings you towards people and God or the universe.

    [22:24] Great spirit, anything that brings you towards finding what's working for you and what's not working for you. And so I'll share a little bit about why I have this on the list, and it kind kind of goes back actually to rest and making sure we're not finding ourselves so addicted to productivity or capitalism.

    Let's say I'm struggling with money. I'm struggling with my relationship to money and I'm feeling really stressed or I'm noticing some of my compulsive spending creeping in.

    Turning to Spiritual Practice to Ease Anxiety

    [23:01] I might phone a friend or a fellow, right? That's one of the tools.

    And sort of share what's going on, hoping that they'll have the answer or like a tool that fixes that thing, right?

    [23:17] But often what actually eases my anxiety or obsession about the thing that I have deemed wrong is turning towards my spiritual practice.

    So in the 12 steps, I'm gonna be actively working those steps, which again, if you aren't a part of a 12-step program but want something like that, it's really just finding any book.

    You could check out Codependent No More or just any book that brings you into alignment, with asking yourself where you're at today.

    And.

    [23:59] Doing that practice is what eases the obsessive loops for me about the thing that I think is really wrong with me, right?

    So if I'm like, oh, this thing, I'm doing this thing again, this habit, this loop, this pattern, I'm fucking up.

    The answer isn't to like fix the thing, it's to turn toward my spiritual practice.

    It's to turn towards God and see the spiritual solution that I have in front of me to every problem or situation that I encounter.

    Again, I want you to really pick what works for you with this one, with this suggestion, in terms of whether it's a spiritual group, or a grief circle or a women's circle or a queer meetup.

    Tools for Finding What's Next

    [24:53] It's both about the group environment, but it's also about turning toward talking to God, instead of turning towards trying to fix things by yourself.

    I think that's what all of these tools are about, is employing the universal source that we all have access to, as well as our community and our own internal compass.

    Those are the tools to finding what is next.

    So, I hope that you use these tools both in your art practice and also in your relationships.

    I think another bonus tool is to pause.

    I love the phrase, God is in the pause.

    To not rush, to not rush through answering other people, to not rush through answering an email or a text or a call, especially if urgency is on one side of that.

    [25:56] Someone else's urgency is not your emergency. You are allowed to move slowly, as you respond to people and respond to the impulses you feel yourself, around your creative practice and your life, and you're allowed to follow the momentum.

    Maybe you're feeling quick about something and it looks like you're a tornado person, but really you just know.

    That just is your intuition. And that's beautiful and I hope that you follow that.

    [26:34] So the six tools are morning pages and artist dates, right? Returning to the artist's way.

    Again, I would love it if you joined our book study.

    Walking outside, dancing, swimming, anything that is included in your own movement practice.

    That could just be stretching, Laying on the ground, staring at the sky.

    [26:57] We have phoning a friend, right? Reaching out, asking for help, asking someone how their day is. I think expanding on that is just being of service in your community, right?

    Phoning a friend could be being a friend, being a neighbor, being active in the places that need you, where you live.

    Number four, setting up an easy practice. So being able to grab creativity wherever you go.

    I love having a notebook and pen in any backpack or fanny pack I have, right?

    I always have the option to create. My notes app is my easiest practice. It's where I collect all of my ideas.

    [27:40] Number five is list making, whether it's making a gratitude list or different inventories.

    And then, of course, that's where we found our bonus tool, which is resting and doing nothing and staring at the wall or vegging out and watching TV, just letting ourselves rest or numb out if we want to. And then lastly, we have recovery and spiritual practice. I could, also see this being setting up an altar, writing things down that we want to let go of and burning them, full and new moon rituals, practices of lighting a candle and praying, reading a daily reader, these are all things that help us to know what is next.

    Recovery and Spiritual Practice

    [28:26] So when you don't know what to do, and you don't know what to do next, may you try some of these tools on.

    I'd love to hear how they went if you want to share about them.

    [28:40] Thank you for listening to Common Shapes. I love sharing the tools that have worked for me in my own life, and I hope that they are of benefit to you as well. If you want to dream up some more ways to make your own tools, definitely check out the Creative Ideation Portal at marleygrace.space slash commonshapes. Listen to the interviews on this podcast, gain more insights and inspiration from artists like you. I hope that you go forth today knowing that whatever is next that you choose is correct for you. And as we say in the 12 Step Rooms, to thine own self be true. Only you can know what is right for you. And it sounds so cheesy and simple, but I really think that that is so true and overlooked, especially with the noise of social media.

    Being True to Yourself in the Social Media Age

    [29:43] I feel like we get these suggestions for how to be in the world.

    [29:48] And we just sort of start believing them without coming into clear focus with what we actually want and what we actually desire for our own life, whether that's the life that you live privately or the life that you live publicly.

    So many blessings as you go on your journey of finding yourself and finding what's next.

    Credits and Shoutouts

    [30:16] I'd love to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible. Thank you to Lukeza Branfman-Varissimo for our art.

    Thank you to Saltbreaker for our music and to Softer Sounds Studio for editing.

    Thank you for listening to the show and sharing it with a friend, reviewing it on Apple Podcasts, and giving us a five-star rating on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

    Thank you for being a listener of Common Shapes.

Follow along on Instagram

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter Monday Monday

Storytelling as a Throughline with Tamara Santibañez

This week on Common Shapes podcast, I’m sharing the mic with my friend Tamara Santibañez for a conversation about oral histories, tattooing, freelancing, and art as activism.

LISTEN WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS SPOTIFY + APPLE PODCASTS + AUDIBLE

“I love talking about these things with people. I love listening to other people. That’s something that I try to be really adamant about in spaces where I’m writing, teaching, or saying what I think. Just being like, “I don’t know. What do you think?” Because that’s how we arrive at meaning together. That’s how we arrive at meaning and action collectively. ”

Tune in to hear us discuss—

🌼 Tamara’s studio practice

🌼 Oral histories & oral traditions

🌼 Tattooing as liberation work

🌼 How to balance many projects as a freelancer

🌼 Making time for movement work

🌼 Coalitions & political responsibility

🌼 The different feelings/functions/forms of Instagram vs Substack

Links

🩰 Visit Tamara’s website

🩰 Follow Tamara on Instagram

🩰 Subscribe to Tamara’s Substack

🩰 Get Tamara’s book, Could This Be Magic? Tattooing as Liberation Work

🩰 Get the Creative Ideation Portal

🩰 Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday

🩰 Find all these links & more at marleegrace.space/commonshapes

  • [0:00] Hello and welcome to Common Shapes, a podcast about practices, systems, and rituals for a creative life.

    [0:07] Music.

    [0:15] It is one of the greatest blessings of my life to interview artists about their process and their practice and their commitment to social and political movements, their hopes and dreams and visions.

    And today on the podcast, I am interviewing Tamara Santibanez about all of those things.

    Tamara is an amazing painter, ceramicist, sculptural artist.

    [0:44] They are a tattooer. They're the author of Could This Be Magic?

    Tattooing as Liberation Work.

    And Tamara is also an oral historian. And we get to talk about how all of these things weave together, their commitment to abolition and how it intersects with art making.

    We talk about showing up as queer people, non-binary people in the world, how everything weaves together.

    And it is my hope that this episode serves your own practice and commitment to the work at hand, both in your own life and in the world.

    [1:28] If you haven't already, you can download the Creative Ideation Portal, which is a three-day, guide to visioning your projects and bringing them into the world. You can find it at marleygrace.space slash common shapes. It pairs nicely with the first four episodes of Common Shapes. And also, I think that just as you are listening to Tamara and I speak about our own work, And if you're feeling excited and inspired to dream up your own projects, and how they can be of service, the Creative Ideation Portal supports you in doing that.

    So as you listen, may you keep an open mind and prepare for your own expansion, and may it serve your practice and your process. and I hope you enjoy this episode of Common Shapes.

    [2:23] Welcome to Common Shapes. Tamara, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

    I'm so excited to be on the podcast. And I have been ever since you first told me about it and that you wanted me to come on it.

    And ever since it came into the world, that excitement has just been building with every new little episode that is birthed.

    Thank you so much, friend. Thank you, thank you. I'm looking at you in your studio in New York City.

    You are a tattoo artist. You have written a book.

    You are just an amazing artist in so many different ways and mediums.

    Tell us a little bit about your studio, maybe a day in the studio life, anything you wanna share about your painting practice.

    [3:12] Right, well, we started off the recording with this gorgeous view of my like sun dappled painting area with my huge paintings that I'm trying to finish currently.

    And now you get to look at a less cute view of my sink and my storage. I love that.

    Yeah, so I guess like you said, I am an interdisciplinary artist is the term that feels the most broad and useful.

    And I work mostly, I do a lot of painting. I do a lot of ceramic work.

    I also do some leather tooling and incorporate all of those things into a more sculptural and multimedia visual practice.

    When you arrive in the studio, Do you have any rituals or?

    [4:04] Practices to start the day? Like, how do you decide which painting you want to go towards? Or if you want to be looking at ceramics? Like, how do you even decide where to start on any given day once you're in the space?

    That I would say is a rhythm that I'm still trying to learn how to how to work with a little bit more and how to get dialed in because everything I do is very time intensive. I don't do a lot of quick sketches or renderings that are final products. So, you know, for the paintings to take shape, they really just do need many days of me sitting down and putting a number of hours into them, which is hard.

    It's a hard flow to get into. Some days I come to the studio, I'm here for 10 hours and I do nothing. Sometimes I come to the studio, I'm here for two hours and I get into the flow and I make huge amounts of progress. So that's something that I'm trying to be, more accepting about is just the showing up every day and knowing that different amounts of focus will happen from time to time. And when I usually when I get here in the morning, I usually start by burning a little bit of incense, just trying to get a sense of.

    [5:18] What I want to work on, looking around at everything, just saying hi to all the work that's in progress and just taking stock of what stages of being finished they're at.

    And ceramics is the same way. Ceramics is so cyclical in terms of having to think of the stages, like the drying time, the firing time, the different rounds of greenware, to bisque, to glazing.

    So that's something that's sort of always in the background of knowing, OK, I have to attend to the stage of ceramics today. maybe I'll start my day with that.

    And then once I'm done, I'll go and do some painting.

    One thing that I love about your painting and your ceramics and in your tattoo practice is the theme of flowers.

    You use calla lilies in a lot of your work and you have a tattoo shop that's literally called Flower World.

    Can you tell me a little bit about why you love flowers?

    [6:12] I love this question. And I'm so happy to answer. I keep joking that I'm in my flower era, because I've historically just been such a goth guy. And a lot of my early work and we still today, like the themes remain. But so much of my early work was just making images of ice, these isolated objects with really taboo associations, whether they were leather boots or a leather jacket, or, you know, what have you and sort of isolating them to make visible just the assumptions of the viewer, right? If you just see the object, what readings are you bringing to it? A lot of accessories of subculture. And that's still something that I am consistently exploring. But I don't know. I mean, the world is a very heavy place and flowers are equally laden with symbolism.

    [7:13] They're just not as edgy upon first glance, you know? They're something that can be really welcoming, really benign, but are subject to just infinite, like, manifold interpretations, depending on your cultural associations, your personal history. And I wrote this poem some time ago about how, this is a little bit dark, but about how I had gotten flowers at a show that I I had a few years ago, I showed up in the gallery, kind of surprised me with these flowers.

    And my first thought based on the interpersonal experiences I was having at the time was like, oh, these flowers are a threat.

    A stalker sent these flowers to me. And they hadn't, it was from my brother.

    It was actually a really loving gesture of support that no one in my family had really done before.

    [8:05] And that moment was really striking to me, right? Because I was like, oh, this bouquet of flowers, something that we might assume is, without question, loving or supportive or celebratory can have the opposite implication, depending on even a moment-to-moment mentality or expectation.

    And so maybe that's what the fascination with flowers is, is this very initial impression of them as something of beauty, something of love, and there being all of these more fraught connotations that are just below the surface or just as readily accessible, depending.

    And so more recently, I've been trying to track the ways that flower metaphor is used in political movements, right?

    There's like the flower in the barrel of a gun, or flower power won't stop fascist power, or even more recently in Hong Kong, somebody was arrested for holding up a bouquet of flowers because the police interpreted it as a protest sign.

    And.

    [9:09] That's what I've been trying to explore more recently. Calla lilies have their own particular symbolism because of the way that they're used in, Mexican craft, folk traditions, art historical traditions, mural traditions.

    But I've been, I guess, especially invested in flowers as visual signifiers of, abundance, wealth, kind of all these key words that you see associated if you're like, oh, I want to send a bouquet of apology. What's the color of apology? It's yellow roses. It's stargazer lilies. What is the flower that says the thing I want to say?

    [9:46] And yeah, just trying to encode a meaning or language or a sentence or an impulse through this language of flowers. I've been thinking about it just the last couple days as in Michigan, it's spring is springing right now. And in front of my front door is this huge, rose bush that's on like a trellis. And just in the last couple of days, it started growing.

    Like it's now all of its like leaves are out and its thorns are really fresh. And it started growing in front of my door. Like I have to actually duck under it. And at first I was like, oh, I guess I should probably trim this back or something. I'm very new to understanding how to, care for and steward the plants and land that I live on. But then I was like, I really felt the metaphor of protection, like the rose as this flower of self-love and the thorns as this, don't mess with me. And then in the back door where I usually let June out, there's wasps building a nest, which I do understand I might have to get rid of for me and June's safety, but it's like, I'm just noticing these like, protective.

    Spinning thing. Mm-hmm.

    [11:14] I mean, as someone who just has so many interests, you know, most of my job is a writer but I'm about to go back to school to learn more about quilts and quilt history.

    I just love that your main job is as a tattoo artist, that's how many people know you, but you also as we've been talking about are a fine artist and just have so many different hobbies and interests and things that you are committed to.

    And then you went to grad school for oral history.

    Tell us about why you picked oral history and yeah, let's start like why the hell did you decide, I'm going to go to grad school for oral history.

    [11:51] My joke that I find as endlessly amusing is that I have two degrees in two incredibly niche things that people are mostly unfamiliar with. So my undergrad was in printmaking, and people always would say, oh, what, like t-shirts? And now I have a degree in oral history, and people say, oh, what, like podcasts? So it's not new to me to have to explain like what the hell that even is. But I swore I would never go back to grad school, first of all, right? It took me six years to get my bachelor's degree, to get my BFA and I went to three different art schools before I finally got it.

    And I really, I think at the time, I was so young when I started school and really believed the idea that college is for everyone and that you just have to find the school or the program that's the right fit for you.

    And it took me a long time of, I don't know, bouncing around, fucking around, to realize what I was actually interested in was craft and the handmade, because I originally went to school for fashion design.

    And I did fashion design. I was also doing fiber arts, illustration, and I was much more excited by the fiber arts than I was by the design.

    [13:11] And I finally went back to school for printmaking, got my, you know, finished my degree, and everyone loved printmaking because it was the punk major.

    It was like, you want to make zines and T-shirts and show posters and all of this ephemera. and it was great.

    [13:30] But while I was in school, I went straight into tattooing while I was finishing school, so as soon as I was done, I had this career and this sort of new craft that required a lot of my dedication, a lot of my energy, and I just threw myself right into that.

    And I guess flash forward to 16 years later, it's been so long, and tattooing has always been, I guess, the nucleus of everything else that I was doing.

    But I was doing a lot of other things outside of it, my own artwork, my own studio practice that wasn't, you know, collaborative or commercial in that sense.

    And I was also becoming a lot more involved in prison abolition spaces and work.

    And so I found myself having, I guess in these more just generally social justice and organizing spaces, feeling a little bit uncertain about how to explain how I got there.

    [14:31] Because I was like, I don't know, I'm like a tattoo artist who has a printmaking degree that's a prison abolition enthusiast, here's the experience that I have that maybe helps explain why I'm here, but there just wasn't a short answer for it. And I really was feeling like I needed something to kind of tie the room together. Like I thought about going to law school. I thought about going to social work school. And a client of mine actually told me about this oral history program at Columbia that I felt pretty intrigued by because the work that, my client was doing was interviews with queer elders around the U.S. and just all the projects that they were talking to me about coming from that program were really, really interesting work and touched on all of these things that I was interested in. And I can't remember if it was around the same time or not I had.

    I guess what the order of operations was, but I had also trained, done a training for a LGBTQ crisis hotline. And that was a really formative experience, just in understanding, talking to people on the phone, right, who are in these crisis moments.

    [15:48] And that really shifted how I saw tattooing, how I saw the exchange of what I, what the client was sharing with me, I was just bringing my attention to the storytelling aspect newly. And I started following this program. I applied once really, really late, kind of at the last minute deadline, I didn't get in, I was on the waitlist, didn't get in. And they were very encouraging that I apply again. So I did. And, you know, the timing was very divine when I finally did end up going because, I got to work with certain professors that hadn't been there the year before. And I would have been there during the pandemic so it would have been all virtual. So it worked out well and it was only a one-year program if you did it full-time and of course trying to be I mean I want to be also transparent that there was a certain strategy and economy to wanting to do that too right because it's very expensive to go to grad school. It really disrupted my career and flow in other areas of my life. I basically didn't see friends for that whole year of my life. But I was like, okay, a year. It's a year. I can do anything for a year. And I'm so glad that I did it. I'm so happy to.

    [17:03] Think about storytelling in different ways, because I think that's ultimately what it comes down to. When people ask me what those things all have to do with one another, storytelling is really the answer. And I was surprised by it when I got into the, you know, the nuts and bolts of So this program.

    Part of me was like, oh, I kind of feel like I've been doing oral history all along.

    This doesn't necessarily feel new.

    There's frameworks and there's lineages and there's, you know, pedagogy that feels new to me, but the practice of trust building and this creating the space together and active listening, these are all things that I have been doing for a long time now.

    So that was a really interesting thing to go through, especially in one year, because that year feels like time traveling in some senses. I'm like, did that even happen?

    Here I am. Where did that time go?

    But yeah, I guess storytelling is the answer, the short answer.

    [18:09] That's beautiful. I mean, I feel the same of like having a BFA in dance.

    Like, I think when people read my writing or see my quilts, they're like, Oh, of course that person has a degree in dance.

    It's like the fluid or, you know, the way that your work looks. But yeah, I felt that when I was sort of trying to choose feeling like, Oh, I want more. I want to be in a classroom space and quilt studies. Yeah, it didn't have like a clear link to, well, I do teach quilt class, it does have a clear link. But in some ways, it felt like it didn't have a clear link other than like that's what I'm interested and I actually see it like tying the threads of all the other things together. And it seems like oral history does that sort of for the many different things that you do. So when you're doing an oral history project, do you literally like sit in front of someone and like hit record on a device? Like what does that look like and is there anything you're working on right now you can share with us or something that's exciting you about your own oral history practice?

    [19:16] Well, I tend to be of the mind that oral history can look like any number of things, and I think it's important to just give a really brief rundown on the differences between a sort of academically defined oral history with like a capital, I don't know, like a trademark oral history and what people have been doing for as long as humans have had language and exchange, which at least my program calls oral tradition. So I would say, at least in the ways that I've seen it and experienced it, that there are certain distinctions made between those two, do, especially by academic spaces, and.

    [20:01] What tends to distinguish the oral history is that it's recorded. So there's an audio record of the exchange, even though there has been so much knowledge passed down through oral tradition, in many different ways and before audio recording capabilities existed. So that is at least the ways that I sort of understand the ways that people distinguish the two. But I think that that distinguishing is really problematic, you know, just as binaries tend to be. And a lot can get lost in trying to categorize one or the other or one of them seeming more legitimate or important or official. I use heavy quotation marks with all of those things. But anyway, all that is to say that I think it was exciting to me to be in oral history school at the time that I was because it's a field that I think is rapidly changing and expanding, at least in my brief time being a part of it. I think that there are a lot of people really challenging the established order of how to do things. Even for example, like having my voice in the recording. A very traditional oral history might really be the interviewer asking questions and then trying to be as silent as possible while the narrator tells their story. But then you have different versions of that where somebody is really having more of a back-to-back.

    [21:21] And forth exchange or the interviewer offers more about themselves or you can laugh and have a rapport and even that might some people might consider non-traditional. So it really is so subjective it depends on who you're talking to, where they trained, what generation they're from, but there's also So I think really important queer and trans interventions, even into the idea of chronology in an oral history of like, when does a life begin?

    What does a life story look like?

    What do familial ties look like? So I'll let us to say that oral history can be so many different things, but it does usually start with sitting down to an interview and recording that interview somehow.

    And I like to start by doing that, by doing, usually it's between a one and two hour interview session.

    At least for me, it helps to break it up and to come back to it.

    Sometimes you wanna listen back to what you've gotten and see if there's things that you forgot to ask or that you want to include to come back to.

    And my own work has focused primarily on the intersections between tattooing and the prison industrial complex.

    So that's something I've been doing, ongoing interviewing around for, I guess, since 2019, and did a lot of when I was in school. I'm still doing some of it now and.

    [22:46] Another thing that I think is nice about oral history, at least it nice for myself and the way that I've been working is that I don't feel as much pressure to produce a project with it. It's just not a very easily consumable type of media, for the most part, you know.

    [23:06] Like we were saying at the top of this episode, it's not always about the flow or about the banter or about making it engaging for a listener, it's really about the narrative.

    That can be incredibly long form. Not everyone wants to dig through archives to listen to three hours of one person talking about themselves.

    There's so much that's there. It's very rich. It just demands a certain kind of attention, but it's not for the current way that we consume media, I think, which is like a short TikTok video, a short Twitter conversation.

    And that's something that really drew me to it, right? That it had to, it required of me practicing, like a rigor and a patience and a presence that I don't get asked to do in my life otherwise.

    You know, there's not always like a jazzy intro or like a commercial break to give your mind a pause.

    And it can be really draining.

    After doing an oral history interview, sometimes you're like, I have to go to bed because I just sat with deep presence with this person for three hours.

    And now I'm so tired, this type of detailed listening, I just don't do very often.

    And noticing those differences has been really cool.

    It's been very cool.

    [24:27] And yeah, oral history projects can look like so many things.

    You can make a five minute audio compilation.

    You can make a podcast, you can make a more abstract audio, you know, oral history sound piece, and you can make an interactive public display.

    That's one of the cool things about it, that you have this material that you generate that can then be used in a number of different forms and formats. But...

    Yeah, original oral histories can be quite long. As you know, just from our friendship and you telling me so much about oral history, I am now also obsessed with oral history and have decided to be an oral historian and love just learning more about it from you because I think, you know, something that's always been important to me as someone who lives, as like a queer person who lives rurally in small towns is like, I love getting to know my elders in the town and like the stories passed through generations and yeah, sometimes they're so beautiful to hear and then they feel like they evaporate a little bit into the air.

    So yeah, I love thinking about capturing them and like, you can feel the texture of it.

    Like when you, I think you said the word archives, like I'm like, ooh, I like picture going through like dusty folders and side of oral history.

    [25:54] Can I tell you some of the things that make me really excited about oral history, please. So the first is that oral history tends to consider the interview as a unique historical event of its own, because you will not tell the the same story the same way more than once.

    And that's shaped by the conditions under which you're telling it, who you're telling it to, what year it is, right?

    If I ask you to do just a full oral history of your life, a life story five years ago, and we did it again today, they would be totally different.

    And so there's something about capturing this really unique singular telling that is very exciting and very special.

    [26:40] But oral history also considers memory quite differently than a lot of other academic fields.

    And I don't know, I have a lot of reservations about calling myself an academic.

    I don't know that what I would describe, the approach that I have is particularly academic.

    But so much of how we try to make meaning of the world through research is through, you know, quantitative or qualitative data.

    Data and oral history can often be left behind when they're trying to make these hard numbers or hard conclusions about human behavior and human thinking and or human psychology or experience because oral history is so driven by memory and and by individual meaning making.

    And so, but oral history.

    [27:27] At least in the ways that I was encountering it, really, we had a lot of conversations about.

    [27:33] How that's all important information too, right? Like a misremembering or a contradictory.

    [27:41] Memory where if you're like, well, I remember that that door was always closed and I say, well, I remember that that door was always open and that's how the dog got out that one day.

    There's a lot of information there in those differing perspectives and differing remembrings.

    And that to me is also really exciting because it generates the idea or it calls to mind the idea that collective memory and collective meaning making is really the way to get the.

    [28:15] Most detailed tapestry of an event. That there is no singular voice that can objectively represent what something meant or how something happened and it, challenges, yeah, just the idea of like a singular objective historical record or retelling and the ways that power and dominant culture shapes how those things get committed to the history books or committed to our cultural memory. So it's, very thrilling to think about the fact that, sure, you could read one thing in a history book, but then you could talk to ten people that were there when it happened, and what huge distance there would be between those two ways of knowing something.

    That is all so amazing, and my jaw like dropped when you said that it's a historical event in itself, which I just think is so cool. And then, I know this isn't technically, we're not doing an oral history project right now, but I did then think this is a moment in history.

    [29:18] Right now. This is its own historical event, it's us recording the podcast. But that is so, thank you for sharing all of that. I just feel like it's a world that I think more people should know about and hear about, so thank you for sharing with us.

    I would love to shift gears a little bit to talk about writing books, something that you've done, something that you're doing. And many people know you from the beautiful orange groundbreaking book, Could This Be Met, by doing his liberation work, which I honestly think is just relevant for anyone doing one-on-one work or even group work, but really just for those who are like in relationship, body to body with other people.

    And I would love to hear.

    [30:15] About the book coming to life process, especially around publishing. Did you work with a small publisher? Did you self-publish? I think many listeners of Common Shapes are interested in making books, and it feels just like a really overwhelming, mysterious process. So yeah, it's my hope that on the podcast we can sort of cut through some of the mystery. So I'd love to to hear about the making of the book and how it came to be.

    Well, to give you a little bit of original context, I come from an independent publishing background.

    Like I said, I went to school for printmaking. I just made zines.

    And so everything was self-published, was really the default. You were like, I have something to say. I want to put it out. I'm just going to do it myself.

    And the publishing world fell, and I would say still feels very far away from me too, as somebody who has published a book.

    So I ran a publishing imprint for a little bit, a very indie, very DIY one called Discipline Press.

    And we published books. I published books and scenes and pamphlets and all kinds of printed matter.

    And that also, I mean, I was doing art book fairs.

    [31:31] I wasn't, you know, really even selling at bookstores necessarily very much or feeling very involved in the publishing world. It was more that I had this deep investment in the material that I wanted to support being, accessible.

    I mean, you can see it. I have this printing press tattoo. This is my printmaker tattoo that says, the tyrant's foe, the people's friend.

    But that was so at the core of what I was so down for with independent publishing was just the dissemination of ideas, the democratization of access to those things, and just trying to find ways to put stuff out that I thought was really important, and a vehicle for me to ask questions of people, which is the groundwork for oral history, because I got to do all these interviews with people that I was publishing for and generating articles.

    [32:21] But, guess I had not really written a book before at all, in any way.

    And I decided that I had to because through that experience of training for this crisis hotline, I started to think really differently about what the tattoo exchange was doing for people.

    Because I think largely through the rise of tattoo television, or the general attitude that I had encountered in tattoo shops that I had worked in, was that it's so annoying when people want to tell you their life story when you're tattooing them.

    And it's so annoying when people want to tell you all the reasons that they're getting the tattoo, because you're just there to do the tattoo, and it doesn't really help you in doing your job.

    And as I shifted into being a private, yeah, not a private studio artist necessarily, about more of an appointment only artist doing custom work for people.

    The clientele that I was working with really shifted and I was tattooing pretty much only, you know, women, people of color, trans people, queer people, people who just had very different experiences of being in their bodies and moving through the world in the bodies that they inhabited.

    And it changed the way that I saw a lot of those conventions about tattooing and how you interact with people socially or what rules you want to enforce about what people think a tattooed, because there was so much old school.

    [33:44] Rule enforcement about things like oh, you can't get a neck tattoo if you don't already have Sleeves or a lot of other tattoos and I was like, I don't know It kind of feels like shit to tell like a trans person what they can and can't do with their body like I think that they have no illusions about what choices they're making and so that.

    [34:03] Had me thinking very differently just about what I had inherited as tattoo wisdom or or guidelines or ways of practicing.

    And after I did this training, I realized that the things that people would call into the hotline about were the same things that people would talk about in tattoo sessions oftentimes.

    And maybe not to that same extent of being in crisis or needing to be hurled around something about, around a violence that they had experienced, but just about what happened to them as a person and what their experience in life was like and how tattooing touched those things.

    And so I just realized that there was no resources around the emotional work that goes into tattooing.

    It felt so inseparable from just doing the job and doing the craft and applying the thing.

    And I felt like I had to synthesize all of these things that I was learning.

    It felt very urgent, I guess I will say.

    [34:59] I was like, I'm seeing all of these things in all of these different places that I'm a part of.

    Other people aren't getting to see these.

    It feels like it's my very urgent job to synthesize them, put them in one place and help people connect with these ideas that they might not otherwise connect with.

    And that's how I started writing this book and it would just started with a million different post-it notes and chaotic outlines and rough drafts.

    And I did not think that anyone would wanna read this book because it was maybe in 2018 or 2019 that I first started writing it.

    [35:36] And these just weren't conversations that the tattoo industry was having at the time, at least not in a larger way or a cohesive way.

    And I approached my friend who had a tattoo publishing imprint.

    They made and make very gorgeous tattoo art publications.

    [35:57] And he agreed to publish it. And we were like, I don't know, we could start with like a hundred copies because I seriously was like no one is gonna care about this at all and what happened between then and the book coming out into the world is that 2020 happened and so the pandemic happened that was really life-changing for tattoo artists, and then the George Floyd uprisings happened and it really just shifted the political landscape that the book then came out into. And I had started teaching a little bit of workshops I guess during the pandemic, like pretty early lockdown, because I felt like people needed.

    [36:44] I just saw this kind of long distance or like long game need where I was like, okay, people really need a space to talk about how we're navigating these shifts, how to share information about how we're practicing tattooing safely through this pandemic now that we're reopening.

    [36:59] How are the new costs of PPE, like changing the way that we do our businesses? Like what does it look like to hold space for people for whom we might be the first person that they've been in the same room with outside of their pod in months?

    And yeah, so I started teaching workshops also a little bit.

    I was teaching, I have taught over the last few years, like an intro to trauma-informed tattooing.

    That was kind of the language and framework that was foundational to the book that I developed.

    And that's language that I don't necessarily like to use at the forefront of the writing.

    But my book was called, Could This Be Magic? Tattooing as Liberation Work.

    And the second half of that is what I like to focus on most, the sort of like liberation work and how tattooing can touch on different political systems and be a type of intervention.

    [37:52] I think what I've really seen this whole conversation is like the way that everything you do really does get woven together.

    Like it feels so seamless. Like I really see the way that your tattoo work weaves into the oral history, weaves into the book, weaves into your activism work, weaves into your painting, your ceramics.

    Like it all is this really beautiful, you know, as Lucchesa calls it, the web of all this work that you have.

    And you're working on a lot. I know this as your friend.

    I know this as someone who's very inspired by you.

    [38:35] So, are you feeling overwhelmed? Are you feeling burnt out? You have a lot of plates in the air, sort of at all times.

    Tell us a little bit how you tend to that part of you that maybe gets a little bit overwhelmed or when there's just a lot that you're turning your attention towards.

    So much of that is being a freelancer, which is ultimately what I am.

    Something I've always loved about your content and this, I guess this podcast specifically in what you've put out so far is the ways that you talk about the, just the details of that, the specifics of that because it is so nebulous and sometimes I see people who do so many different things and I'm like, that must be a rich person. Like how else could you sustain so many things when I can't quite even tell how you make money from them, which is part of why there's so many plates in the air all the time because when you freelance you don't always know when a paycheck is gonna come in or how long how many billable hours you're even logging until the project is done or if a painting is gonna sell or if you know a show is gonna return any of the money that you invested into putting into it. So that I think is the little, treadmill hamster wheel of capitalism moment of a lot of.

    [40:03] The ways that I do the things that I do is because you kind of just got to keep the momentum going. And at least for me, trust that those returns will happen when they need to in ways that will keep it going. And at the moment, tattooing or I guess historically tattooing has paid for everything.

    Tattooing has really been the glue that holds it all together because it's the most regular thing.

    It's the most long-term career that I've had that's now the most reliable.

    So I know I can, you know, work this many days and more or less make X amount of money that will cover my bills.

    And then anything else is, there's a little more flexibility around, but that's changed a lot since I finished school.

    And I'm trying to do things a little bit differently and bring my focus to certain new things, but that also can look like in one day, I work on tattoo designs for a film, and freelance articles for a book and oral history interviewing for another book that's coming out and being on a selection committee for a residency and trying to do my own paintings, and answering emails for all of those things.

    So my days are really varied as a result, and I think that that's the thing I find myself.

    [41:30] Coming up against most often is that when you say yes to the thing You don't always predict when the bulk of that work is gonna come back to bite you in the ass, Really cool. I said yes to this thing Abstractly down the line now, it's a month later and I'm doing four of these things all in the same week in a way that I didn't anticipate so trying to be, less stressed when those ebbs and flows happen.

    It's very, it can be very feast or famine for freelance work, I think, where you want to say yes to everything because you don't want to miss any opportunities.

    And then suddenly you have more work that you can handle and you're like, wait, this is supposed to be a good thing.

    Why do I feel so stressed out? Why does this feel like too much?

    Or sometimes why do I feel like I'm not bringing my best self to these things that I was so excited to say yes to?

    So, I think these days I'm trying really hard, it's an ongoing practice, to even if I feel excited about the idea of doing something, to really check in with myself and say, when will I have to be putting in the most effort?

    Is that something that's viable for me? Or can I say no and trust that maybe a similar opportunity will come back at a better time, And I can bring all of my energy and focus to it.

    [42:49] Music.

    [42:55] Something that inspires me so much about you is even when you have all these different projects happening and you're really busy with work, I always see you carving out time, for being a really active participant, in the movement work that happens right where you live.

    I think that so often, especially in the digital age, as artists, we can get sort of overwhelmed with like, where should we be putting our attention?

    Like, where should we put our time and energy? And I'm curious how you got involved in teaching in jails and prisons and the prison abolition work that you're so dedicated to.

    And you mentioned working with the crisis hotline, how has that existed in your life?

    Can you just tell us a little bit about like...

    How do you find out about things that are happening? Where, how do you move towards them?

    How do you move within them? And how does that show up in your day-to-day and in your life?

    Well, I think the first thing that I have to say is that, that kind of political consciousness is something I've.

    [44:07] Had around me since I was really young.

    And I feel so grateful for that, especially in the last few years, because not everyone was able to have that.

    And I just by virtue of being in punk was always around people who were politically involved, were doing organizing, were doing activism in a very DIY grassroots way where they weren't necessarily waiting for a chance to volunteer with a non-profit. They were like making food from donated groceries and doing food not bombs in the park or they were just showing up to protest.

    [44:47] Because something happened, I needed a response.

    And it's funny to think back and be like, I really, I think myself and the people around me really believe that we could do anything.

    It was just so that the DIY community, where you're like, I can grow my own soybeans and make my own tofu from scratch, or I can brew my own beer, or I can build my own bike.

    I'm really dating myself. this was really the time and place that I was involved in.

    But there was something so formative about that for me to think, okay, how do we find the resources or how do we find a way to start that is already exists within us or is already nearby or is already a resource that maybe I don't have but somebody I know could have or a friend of a friend of a friend could have and how do we look to those networks?

    How do we look to that community that can often be very hyper-local because the internet also just wasn't the thing that it was, that it is now, it wasn't that then. So...

    [45:54] That was, it's taken a little bit of refinement and unlearning and discernment as I've gotten older to notice the things that I, I can't do. Maybe I could try to do them, but someone else is doing it better. Someone else has maybe been doing it longer or did it first or has built that and, and so I think that that's a balance I try to strike now is to bring my attention to something, to look around, try to tap into places that people are already doing it, try to be honest with myself about my own skills and capacity and resources that I have to bring to that table where it's like, okay, maybe I have less time than I wish that I had, but maybe I have more money to give than I thought I had.

    Or sometimes it's the opposite that can really change.

    But so much of what it comes down to for me these days is about interpersonal relationships.

    [46:48] And so I would say that a lot of what I am involved in comes not from, I don't know, typing something into like a Google search bar and meeting somebody and them saying, oh, I do XYZ every Sunday, you should come by.

    And me saying, great, that's actually in my neighborhood. That's so easy for me to do.

    I would love to show up. Thank you for inviting me.

    And yeah, I think that that's really the balance about making it sustainable for yourself, about recognizing the ways that things can be, some things can be more urgently needed in the moment. Some things are more long-term work.

    How can we build our capacity for both of those? It's like, okay, somebody got arrested and we need money to bail them out. We need jail support. That's urgent. That's a short-term thing. This person likely is not getting arrested every single week. We don't have to do that long-term for this single individual but how can we then work on bail reform maybe or fundraising for bail funds so that everyone can be getting out when they need to get out.

    So I think that that's what I try to bring my attention to it's funny. I I Wouldn't say that I describe myself as an activist or I wouldn't describe myself as an organizer. I.

    [48:07] Really just think of myself as a person who?

    Has this long? ingrained practice of scrutinizing power and That feels like it's my, work Sometimes I'm like, who am I? What am I doing? What does my art do? What does tattooing do?

    What do any of these things even do? Especially in the face of very urgent conditions of rising fascism. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that just is where we are. And sometimes it's like, okay, what does making a painting do to make trans people safer? Maybe the answer is directly nothing. But how can I connect those things more directly? If I sell the painting, can I donate to relocation funds for people who live in states where they can't access trans-affirming care? And how can I plant those seeds both in, I think, an abstract way.

    [49:03] Because I also wouldn't think of myself as a teacher, but I've seen firsthand the power of conversations, the power of interpersonal connection, and the power of exchanging knowledge and listening across difference, and had people come to me and say, you know what, I had never really thought about this before, but then I heard this thing that you said, and I thought about it differently, or I had never quite considered that this is something I should pay attention to, so thank you for bringing it to my attention. And like changing hearts and minds is not the full distance that we are trying to go. We have to change the material conditions, we have to change the material realities, and how do you make that leap? How do you bridge that gap? Do I have the answers? I don't think I do, but it feels like a multi-pronged project, and yeah, I think it has to be done in coalition with other people, but I think we're also responsible for our own work. There's a lot of responsibility, and I hope that people take those responsibility seriously. And I do believe in beauty. And I do believe in flowers. But I believe in flowers that intervene on political systems.

    [50:25] A couple different times when you were talking that it's actually so much of what you just said answered the like, what's the point of it all? And I think that it's part of why I made this podcast and wanted to have guest episodes on the podcast, because, you know, it's definitely something I can experience is the like.

    [50:47] Both in my mental wellness capacity and in my art capacity, just the like, what's the point of doing any of this?

    And there was something about the way that you just explained all of that, that it reframed it for me, where sometimes I think I can be like, there's so much happening, I'm overwhelmed, where do I start?

    And instead it's like, there's so much happening, like what a blessing to be an artist in this world and have so many entry points to take action.

    And, you know, it's like, it's not necessarily a blessing so many bad things are happening.

    I don't mean to say that, but like, there's just, there's so many places to start.

    And that's a beautiful thing, because we all get to like have our different role in the garden of possibilities.

    You know, it's like, you all need to start somewhere. I don't know, there was, that was just everything you said was so beautiful.

    I also feel a lot of gratitude that my entire life started writing a monthly column for GR Screamer, the punk website, and when there was, yeah, we were not making TikToks.

    [51:58] We were not making sub stacks yet.

    You know, it was like, my column was called the art of, and was basically just an essay every week about me trying to figure out how to quit drinking.

    And somebody else's was their favorite vegan recipes week. And, you know, I miss that sometimes. I think sometimes the world, the digital world has sort of pulled me from some of those roots. And I feel like I am always trying to sort of circle back.

    Yeah. And I just want to say, everything I just said, very first draft, as I'm speaking, I'm thinking, but I love talking about these things with people. I love listening to other people about these things. That's something that I try to be to be really adamant about in spaces when I'm.

    Writing or teaching or saying, just saying what I think to be like, I don't know, what do you think?

    Because that's how we arrive at meaning together. That's how we arrive at meaning and action collectively. Yeah, I think that's a really important part of my own, teaching and writing and this podcast is I think right in the trailer in the first episode I was like a huge value to me is take what you like and leave the rest and that I don't have the answers.

    Like you said, it's like part of answering these questions is asking more questions, and you do that so beautifully.

    [53:21] I do want to ask, you started a Substack newsletter last year. We love to talk about newsletters here at Common Shapes. How does the newsletter as a channel of communication, as a form for holding your work and your thoughts. How has that felt to have sort of a writing channel to your audience and a place to express yourself creatively? Tell us a little bit about the newsletter in your world. I love newsletters. I know I'm in good company here. You are the person who encouraged me to finally make a newsletter after I took your make a newsletter class and I've been thinking about it for so long and kind of on the fence and you were like I you should just do it and I saw I did and I've been thinking about the newsletter so much there is so much I've been seeing and pinning that I want to bring to it and it feels a little larger.

    Then I've been able to sit down and synthesize I was doing it doing it every week, which was a lot and now I'm think I'm finding the rhythm of how often I can actually do it and do it well, but I love the newsletter because I guess when I think about attention and consumption, Instagram and social media has sort of been at the center of how we scrutinize and how we think about those things right it was all about building a big following and.

    [54:49] Somebody who started tattooing or was involved in art before Instagram was really a thing.

    [54:59] I, that was a time when I think there was a very much an attitude of like all, all visibility is good visibility. That anytime anyone wanted to interview you or feature you or or what have you that you should just take the opportunity because it was all going to help you and be supportive. And as we've seen that is just not the case, right? The ways that we can be exposed to audiences beyond ourselves and beyond who we want to be reaching is just terrifying to me. It's very scary. And I've never wanted to be somebody that was trying to talk to everyone at once. I think that that dilutes your messaging and even now, the idea of an audience makes me self-censor in a way that maybe is good. You know, it makes me pause. It makes me really reread what I wrote a hundred times before I send it out. But it also can be stifling. It can be, really generate a lot of insecurity where you're like, what if this is misinterpreted? Or what if I didn't offer enough of a disclaimer to this thing? And the end result, I think of having a large Instagram audience is that I just felt like I was talking to everyone and no one at the same time. And so the substack has been great because.

    [56:17] There is a little bit of a sense of talking to no one, but you know that everyone chose to be there and even though it's a smaller audience, people subscribed because they're showing up. They agreed to be there. It feels like a new round of invitations.

    Right? It's like, okay, yeah, maybe you signed up to follow me when on Instagram, when I was mostly just doing tattoos. I don't really post that kind of stuff anymore. So maybe you don't really like being here anymore. And maybe that's okay. And it's nice to feel like I can regenerate or generate a new thing, a new space where I want people to show up for a different kind of content. And everyone knows transparently that that's why we're there together. And I love that it just shows up in your email inbox. I love when the newsletters I subscribe to just pop up in my email inbox.

    It's such a nice little treat. And I love getting texts. I love getting person to person feedback.

    A client comes in months later and is like, Oh, I really loved this one newsletter that you wrote about getting older and tattooing or about XYZ. I'm like, cool. I kind of forgot that I wrote that.

    I really didn't think anyone read it. And this is really nice for it to come back around. And and now we can have an in-person conversation about what it brought up for you.

    [57:35] And so I find the newsletter really fun. I like that I can be more responsive.

    You know, with a book, you're trying to make something that's going to stand the test of time or at least be a document of a particular time and place and way of thinking.

    The sub-stack is like, it can be really goofy one week, it can be a little more serious another week because there's more serious conditions to be responsive to.

    I can make a sub-stack that's just things that I'm really excited about that I want everyone else to look at, too, and.

    [58:03] That flexibility is really enjoyable. Yeah, I love Substack.

    It's also helped me become more confident in calling myself a writer, which I never felt like I could do before, even though I had published a book.

    I have had that experience on Substack as well, even publishing newsletters for a decade and having four books out, and writing since I was a child.

    There was something about the container of Substack that I also felt like oh yes like I, am a writer that has has been helpful for me. Anything else you want to share with us that we didn't cover? Where can we find you on the internet? Yes so you can follow me on Instagram, at Tamara Santibanez and the Substack is just my name dot substack dot com. My website is also So just my name.com.

    And I would say between those three things, you can get some information.

    I've been so elusive and so bad about sharing the things that I'm doing, but maybe the newsletter is actually the best place now that I'm thinking about it, now that I'm saying it out loud.

    [59:14] Yeah, do you feel comfortable marketing, period, question mark.

    Do you feel like the newsletter is a place that feels a little more comfortable to share upcoming things more than Instagram these days? Like what's your relationship to marketing feeling like?

    Yeah, I feel incredibly reluctant about it. Like one of my very old friends used to have as her Instagram bio, a list of things I can do for you.

    And I always think about that because that sometimes feels like how we have to produce anything.

    It's like, okay, is my newsletter a list of things I can do for you?

    Is my website, a list of things I can do for you, is my presence online anywhere, just a list of things that I can do for you. And maybe that's why I feel resistant to it.

    Maybe with how large the internet is, it feels really nice to just preserve something for literal word of mouth.

    Like if I see you, I tell you about the thing.

    [1:00:16] If you read my newsletter, you'll tell you about the thing.

    So it is not a very effective marketing strategy, usually.

    Yeah, but I think all I think what I run into is that those spaces just have such a short memory.

    I come across so many people that are like, I did not even know that you wrote a book.

    Or if I post about my book, they're like, congratulations, as if it's coming out for the first time.

    It came out two years ago. So in some ways, I think it doesn't matter how much I talk about my book or don't because.

    [1:00:49] There's always a person for whom it will be new. And it's fun for me to be places like this because I get to just talk about Thank you for watching.

    [1:00:56] What makes me excited about things. And I'm bad at the part where I'm like and now you can check out my upcoming blah blah blah.

    Yeah, I feel like I couldn't even tell you what my upcoming blah blah blah is at this moment. I can't even think of what It is or could be.

    That's okay. Well, and I think that's why I tell people to have a newsletter, you know, even if they think they might send it out twice a year, you know, to just have somewhere so that when when you do get to be on someone else's podcast, or are in these spaces where you can, you know, quote, market yourself, that it can be a little more natural that you can just say, Yeah, subscribe to my newsletter. And when I have something exciting, I will tell you there.

    One thing I will say, this actually does feel important to say, is that so much of the social media that we consume is shaped by these evil algorithms that are censoring us. And as we have so aptly learned from people doing sex work advocacy and organizing around things like like Sesta Pasta and just internet free speech.

    [1:02:11] Political speech is punished online and that is so much of what my work revolves around and I'm not even being, I'm not even using explicit language, but if you post about something, say, like free Palestine, no one will see the things that you post for the next week until you share a picture of like yourself and your dog and you drawing a drawing.

    And I think that is maybe the one thing I would say is if you like the things that somebody does to follow them in the way that makes it most easy for them to connect with you in most alignment with what their message is and what the thing that they do is because, yeah, if you want to follow someone who is a porn performer, you do need to follow them on Twitter or you do need to be on their email list.

    List. And the same goes for a lot of organizers, a lot of social justice people, that Instagram is going to bury that content and you aren't going to get to see it even if you really want to see it.

    So maybe just that, having some media literacy about how you are or are not being shown things, and if you really are invested in connecting with what someone is doing, I mean, finding the way that they can do that most freely.

    That brings us to the end of our time together. Tamara, thank you again so much for being an amazing friend, an amazing artist, and such a fun guest to have here on Common Shapes.

    Thank you, this was so fun. I loved our conversation.

    [1:03:37] Music.

    [1:03:45] Who's made this podcast possible. Our music is by Saltbreaker.

    Our graphics are by Luke Keza-Branfman Verissimo.

    [1:03:51] Music.

Follow along on Instagram

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter Monday Monday

Finding the Pace of Our Work

This week on Common Shapes, I share four practices for checking in with your creative pace — internal seasons, intuitive sharing, weather systems, and the earning pathway.

This episodes feels like an updated version of How to Not Always Be Working, and I hope it serves your practice, your pace, and your deepest alignment.

LISTEN WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS SPOTIFY + APPLE PODCASTS + AUDIBLE

“Marketing as a creative practice is about getting creative. It’s not about constantly sharing the thing.”

Listen in to learn—

🌸 Why lists are how I orient myself in my life

🌸 How to identify & live by your internal seasons

🌸 What it means to share intuitively

🌸 How to cultivate your earning pathway

🌸 Why it’s so important to find your own pace

After you listen, go get my free Creative Ideation Portal, and join me in making our art and pacing ourselves.

Links

🪐 Get the Creative Ideation Portal

🪐 Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday

🪐 Take my class, Organizing A Day

🪐 Find all these links & more at marleegrace.space/commonshapes

  • [0:00] Hello, and welcome to Common Shapes. You are listening to episode six, four ways to pace your work, marketing, and creative practice.

    I'm Marlee Grace. I'm a writer, a dancer, a quilter, a teacher, the host of this podcast, and also the author of the book, How to Not Always Be Working.

    I first self-published How to Not Always Be Working as a zine in 2015, and it later became a book in 2018.

    This is to say that for at least the last eight years, I have been deeply dedicated to understanding the gray areas in my own work and job and art practice.

    I am dedicated to following the flow of my intuition of when to invent the next offering and decide what shape it will make.

    [1:07] But I've also created this system to check in with myself about the pace.

    Am I releasing too much publicly, whether it's using social media or my newsletter?

    Is the frequency of my email marketing too much?

    Does the frequency or consistency of my podcast match my current capacity?

    So the four ways I use to check in are internal seasons, intuitive sharing, weather systems, and the earning pathway.

    This feels sort of like an updated version of how to not always be working.

    And I'm so excited to share it with you today.

    I hope that it serves your practice and your own pace of creation and consuming, and public sharing and private sharing.

    May it bring you into greater alignment with your own seasons.

    [2:15] If you're looking for more support to vision and dream up your projects, download the free creative ideation portal at marleygrace.space slash common shapes.

    This guide pairs nicely with the first four episodes of this podcast, walking you through making a beginning to your projects, creating the creative containers that they will go into, to, the art of making a newsletter, and your art as an act of service. So check out the guide. It's really fun. There's a project database to help you organize each project and sort of look at it as if they are the boxes that Twyla Tharp uses to create her dances. So enjoy the Creative Ideation Portal. Again, you can grab it at marleygrace.space slash Common Shapes.

    That's also where you can find the show notes and more details about each episode of the podcast.

    [3:15] Common Shapes is a podcast about practices, systems, and rituals for a creative life.

    And today we're gonna really dig into a system of mine, which is an inventory practice.

    It's something I talk a lot about in my class, Organizing a Day, where I bring you through these different inventory practices of a day, a week, a month, a season, et cetera.

    So the system of understanding the pace of our work is an inventory practice.

    I suggest that anything I bring to you today, you bring it to a list.

    So list-making is the primary way primary way that I understand where I'm at in my life.

    [4:05] Whether it's my relationships to other people, my relationship to my work, my relationship to my home, my relationship to myself, list-making is how I understand my lived experience.

    So if you wanna grab a pen and paper and start thinking about lists or just integrate that later, Go ahead, otherwise, take what you like and leave the rest.

    Use whatever practice or system works for you. So I wanna just start with the first way to pace our work, which is our internal seasons.

    So as a person who has a menstrual cycle, I like to track it.

    I like to track each week and how it affects my creativity differently, my capacity changes, right?

    So as my hormones change throughout the week, so does my ability to focus, my physical stamina, right?

    Right? So all these different things change for me week by week.

    And even if you are a person who doesn't menstruate, start paying attention to just week by week, how does your energy change?

    [5:20] I would think that maybe some weeks you notice that you have more interest in reading or watching documentaries or consuming art.

    And other weeks you might feel like you're in more of like an output time, right?

    So in week two and three of my cycle, that's usually when I'm really excited about writing and inventing. And it's like kind of like the springtime of my cycle. Whereas in week four, especially as someone who struggles with PMDD, that is like a wintering season, right? To sort of borrow Catherine May's language of seasons, you know, I'm in sort of like a hibernation phase. I usually don't want to host any public events during that time. I don't want to overly commit myself during that time.

    [6:10] So there's a lot of different resources out there about the different phases of the menstrual cycle and I also find that it helps me as a non-binary person because it can definitely be dysphoric to be a queer person or a non-binary person or trans and have a menstrual cycle. And so tracking the cycle helps me see it in sort of a different way. It's like I'm not identifying at all with like, I tap into the goddess nature of the womb, like that's not happening over here. But I do really appreciate it more as this sort of tracking system for how my mind works and how my body works and and how I interact with other people, places, and things.

    So internal seasons, you can check out how does your menstrual cycle link up to that, and then also just start paying attention to the times of day of your internal season, right?

    So I'm recording this in the morning. I generally like to do my sort of best thinking and creative practices in the morning that require my brain, my magic, my creative spark.

    [7:29] So if I'm writing my newsletter, I'm doing that in the morning.

    If I'm recording my podcast, I'm generally doing that in the morning.

    When I teach, I usually teach sort of midday for me. I still have the energy that I'm looking for, but I'm also matching time zones, right?

    So that's another part of how we pace our work, how we choose the timing of our work.

    I'm on Eastern Standard Time in Michigan, but I was just looking the other day at my newsletter subscribers, and I have the most newsletter subscribers in the state of California.

    [8:06] So a lot of times when I'm picking times for my classes or my offerings, I'm actually thinking about what is the best time for those in the PST time zone, but that still links up with my internal season of creation. So I felt that when I first hosted Flexible Office, the timing was really early for people on the West Coast. It was at 8am. But I knew for me my best time to do the the kind of work I wanted to do in flexible office was at 11 a.m.

    So I had to make that choice that served my practice first, right?

    Maybe that wasn't the best business move, but it was the best move for me in my internal season.

    And I actually wanna share a little bit about a pivot that I just made in flexible office.

    I know some of you joined that space, and I actually made a decision to end it earlier than I originally intended to.

    And part of that is because of my internal seasons and also the weather systems.

    So we'll jump to that in a little bit, but the weather system of summertime coming up.

    [9:19] And being honest with myself that I didn't wanna be tied to two chunks of time a week, when I actually love to have that time as being outdoors.

    And my own needs for my own creative practice and the projects I'm going to be working on in the summer season, it didn't quite make sense to have those hours for myself blocked out.

    And so when I first started Flexible Office last year, I made a decision to have it be in seasons, two month seasons, so that I could have breaks and tap in to another of the ways of pacing our work and sharing, which is intuitive sharing.

    I would have the season of Flexible Office, it would stop and then I could wait to intuitively feel when the next time I wanted to host Flexible Office was.

    [10:11] So people love Flexible Office. People love coworking.

    I love coworking. It's a beautiful community. And I felt this deep desire from the community to be more consistent with Flexible Office. And so I thought, you know what, I'll give it a try.

    And pretty quickly, I realized as the summer changed, as the weather system shifted, that it wasn't in alignment for me to host that over the summer.

    [10:39] So again, I'm sort of going to bring us through a really nonlinear way of sharing about these four, different ways to pace ourselves in our work because they're really all interconnected. So.

    [10:52] Just follow me here. Just keep following me here. So again, our first one is internal seasons. Pay attention to what times of day spark you around what types of projects and modalities and mediums you want to work in. Maybe there's a time of day that you best love listening to audiobooks or podcasts. That could be a great time to sew, to paint, to do something that doesn't involve words, right? Writing or podcasting. Just start to sort of track your time throughout the days and throughout the weeks, throughout the month to say, yes, I love to do X, Y, and Z at these times, right? You can also track the moon. Around new moon days, dark moon days, when there's truly no light in the sky, my depression often gets a little bit turned up. Nothing is illuminated, right? It's like I'm just sort of in this vortex of like the void. And I can either resist that.

    [11:51] And try really hard to make something and push something, or I can see what I can do to even just 1% let myself sort of empty out and be a little bit more of a vacant, void person, right?

    That doesn't always have to be a bad thing. I think we sometimes name that lowness or that rest or that low capacity as being bad when really it's just a sign that we get to pivot and shift.

    [12:27] Before I keep going, I just want to name, as always, I'm not a therapist, I'm an artist.

    I'm just a person who is trying to understand my own relationship to work as a self-employed person for over a decade, and there's a lot of privilege in the act of self-employment and the act of.

    [12:54] Being able to shift these things without a boss who is demanding a different timeframe of me.

    So I just wanna name that.

    And if you are listening and struggling with not being able to pace yourself.

    [13:10] Because of the demands of being a parent or having a job or a relationship or obligations and responsibilities that are outside of your control, I just wanna say that I see you And I invite you to apply any of these principles, again, even 1%, even one degree.

    A reader on Substack recently mentioned that part of how they rebuild their self-esteem is just like the one degree method.

    Like, what can I do today to just bring me one degree closer to my goals, to my dreams, to my vision?

    So I just wanna name, you know, that I'm speaking as someone who works for themselves, That obviously also comes with its own challenges and hardships of inconsistent earning and fear around people not signing up for things or just there's no one else to report to other than yourself.

    So I don't wanna glamorize it at the same time. I think that being an artist is a job and being an artist amongst artists is being a worker amongst workers.

    And yeah, I just wanted to name that I also understand there is a very different struggle.

    [14:24] Of having constraints that aren't your own.

    So again, with every episode, take what you like and leave the rest, but I just wanted to honor that fact.

    [14:37] So the second part of how to pace our work, our marketing, our creative practices is intuitive sharing.

    So something I definitely like to study as an artist is intuitive business.

    I'm a student of holisticisms classes.

    That's a place where I learn a lot about intuitive business.

    I definitely have just a huge community of other self-employed artists and writers who I talk to about the pace of our work.

    So on this podcast, you will often hear me suggest that you find other artists to be in community with and to talk about, to sort of check in with them about what's their intuitive sharing process like and how do they take the inventory of understanding.

    [15:29] What their intuition even is.

    So if you're like, I don't know what my intuition is, how do I find my intuition?

    Well, the best way that I know how to find mine is to do my morning pages.

    So the morning pages as a practice comes from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, and it's three pages of journaling every morning.

    So if three pages feels like a lot, try one. Try just making a list.

    Try a daily gratitude list. Whatever sort of gets you in to the practice of looking at what's working, what's not working, what needs to shift, et cetera.

    Part of intuitive sharing for me is really about the pace of my offerings.

    If you're thinking about making a newsletter after listening to the episode, the art of newsletters, or thinking about making an art show, or writing a book, or teaching an online class, or starting a membership community, or the objects that you're creating or wanting to launch a new series of products on your online shop, whatever it is.

    [16:37] Whether you're one month into your self-employment journey or five years or 50 years, we're always going to want to be taking new inventories to figure out, is the pace working for me? And so part of the intuitive sharing process is looking at leading my readers to their desires.

    So in marketing language, you'll often hear like, find the pain point and give them the solution.

    And I don't necessarily wanna name that as like bad or good.

    I think we can always learn from different spaces of marketing and teaching, but I really like to reframe it as like, what are my readers desiring?

    And how can I use my tools and my knowledge to guide them in a way that is generative for both of us and all of us and the people they may benefit with their work?

    So, what that means is...

    [17:53] I really notice when people respond to my newsletter, what are they excited about?

    What are they feeling drawn to? What am I feeling drawn to, right? So when I'm developing, a longer form class, I usually within like a month or two before that will maybe teach a less expensive, less time commitment, two hour class.

    [18:19] That might sort of prep and excite them for the journey that would lead them to wanting to take a longer class.

    And for me, I have found that the pace is, I usually do two to three longer classes a year and then quilt class a couple times a year. And then I'll sprinkle in a few two hour classes.

    And then I'm experimenting with lead magnets, which is a word from the marketing world, or the business world, which is a free something.

    [18:59] Whether it's a guide or a class or a checklist, something that is given to your audience or your readers or your community.

    And usually it is in exchange for their email address.

    And those few things sort of make up my income earning system.

    This is where we'll get to the earning pathway is our last part of the way that we pace our work.

    But for now I'm drawing them out as these are the different things that I'm intuitively on the pathway for, right?

    So the earning pathway for me looks like my newsletter, book writing, my online classes, and the occasional creative advising session.

    So my earning pathway directly relates to my intuitive sharing.

    So I have found that in terms of...

    [19:58] Preserving my energy and not having to overly market so many times in a year, I have found that it works best for me to have these sort of longer, bigger courses where I can really dig in with my students a couple times a year. So I don't teach a three week course every month. I do it maybe every few months so that it gives my students, my readers time between the offerings to decide if another offering is correct for them. It also allows me to be of service to them in between those times with my newsletter. My newsletter is also a place where I offer free resources and writing and inspiration so that my students start to pick up these little breadcrumbs of, oh, this interests me, this makes me want to dig into this topic more myself. And then after a few weeks of sharing about something in my newsletter, and noticing that my readers are excited about it, I get that information that oh, this would probably make a great online class. Right? So recently, the art of beginning was created through writing about my own practice of beginning and notice how how much my readers were gravitating towards that material.

    [21:23] Right, so I write in my newsletter, I notice what people are excited about, I develop courses outside of that, and then with my intuition, with my list-making practice, I decide, is this a two-hour class, or is this a three-week class?

    Is this a five-week class? Is this a 12-week class? Is this an eight-month class, right?

    You get to check in with the weather systems, the earning pathway, the internal seasons, and your own intuition to decide what length of time do I wanna commit, to this subject and this teaching matter.

    And in terms of the other creative containers that you have outside of the earning pathway, so this could be your podcast, a newsletter, a subscription service, anything you have that's ongoing and more consistent, you get to decide how often that comes out, right?

    So for me, the weekly newsletter is the correct pace for me.

    For you, it might be every other week. You might wanna send something out every new moon, every month, every other month, right? There's no wrong way to do a newsletter, a podcast, et cetera.

    So before this, my yes, yes advice column existed in podcast form and it was once a month.

    [22:51] You know, and often you'll hear people be like, a podcast needs to be every week on the exact same day. When I did the Have Company podcast, it came out whenever I felt like it. Sometimes seven episodes would drop at once in a season. And that was just how that project worked. It wasn't a huge part of my earning pathway. It was just a part of Have Company, my bigger project. So I really used intuitive sharing when I was doing that. And so I do think that consistency can be a beautiful way.

    [23:26] To not stray from a container, right? It's like my newsletter comes out every Monday.

    Every Monday I sit down to write it. That pace works for me. Now again, when I added Common and shapes that comes out every Wednesday.

    It added another ongoing project, which made Flexible Office feel less relevant and important and a part of my process, because that was also ongoing, happening every Tuesday and Thursday.

    So even though it wasn't public, it was still another ongoing practice in my business ecosystem.

    And suddenly I had too many ongoing projects. I needed more things that were in these seasons.

    So tap into your intuitive sharing. Just believe yourself when you're like, you know what?

    I think this needs to be a three-week class.

    I had to really check in when I first shifted from Patreon to Substack because I knew I was gonna take a big pay cut.

    [24:33] But I could feel that spirit was like, this isn't the container for you anymore.

    There's a new container and it's gonna take a while, but you're gonna build it up and it's gonna be bigger and better and more abundant and that was true.

    So there have been many pivots and shifts in my own career that maybe I did take a cut in my income or my resources went down for a little bit, but it made space for something new to take its place.

    And that's part of learning that intuition is also practicing pivoting.

    [25:07] And seeing where the new thing will emerge.

    So, we have our internal seasons and our intuitive sharing. The next one is weather systems.

    And I mean this both about factual weather and about the systems that we weather around us.

    Okay, so a little play on words here. But the first part of weather systems is, you know, I'm living in the Northern Hemisphere in Northern Michigan.

    It's a place of extreme seasons, right? So we have hot, hot summers, a beautiful freshwater lake to swim in, and in the winter it's very cold and very snowy and sometimes dangerous to drive on the roads, right?

    And then of course we have spring, which we're in right now, where the leaves are popping out and the flowers are coming through.

    [26:06] And then we have fall where the leaves fall away and things get crisp and the apple orchard are full and vibrant.

    So I'm speaking a little bit from the perspective of someone who's living in those seasons, but I noticed that this is true for my students who live in California or in the South or in the desert, in the Southwest or in the foggy, rainy Northeast.

    So I notice that in the summertime, My own internal season really matches the weather system of like, that is a time that I'm not teaching quilt class.

    Quilt class. I will usually teach one class, maybe in July.

    [26:57] Where it maybe preps people for their own future season. So like I might teach a class helping artists develop their own online class or services or newsletter class or something that helps artists create their own offerings in fall and winter.

    I find that fall and winter, just like we're kind of programmed for school seasons, It's when class is in session.

    It's when people want to sign up for online classes and be in community spaces.

    Summer is like fast-paced, we're outside. I want people to be outside and swimming and using their weekends, right? So I won't really usually teach on Saturdays and Sundays in the summer.

    I won't promote as much on Saturdays and Sundays. It's like I'm really letting myself have a weekend and encouraging my students and readers to have a weekend as well.

    So the pace of the weather system is guiding me to decide my longer term vision of the year.

    [28:09] So because I use intuitive sharing, I don't always plan out a full year at once.

    I generally am looking at the next couple months. So I'm sort of matching that intuition with the weather and what I know about business, which sometimes feels very little.

    And then sometimes I can be honest with myself of like, oh, I've been doing this for a few years.

    I notice these things work.

    So, for instance.

    I've taught quilt class in May, the last two years, not this year, and that's always the least amount of signups, right? I think once we reach towards spring, we're not thinking as much about warm blankets, right? But in November or January, I can sell out multiple sessions of a quilt is something human. So I notice, okay, what am I teaching, right? If you're teaching a class about swimming, you are going to want to teach a class in the summer, right? So, I'm, again, I'm speaking about my offerings and the seasons that I follow, but I want you to sort of apply it to whatever seasons you're in and you're teaching. So, if you want to do a project where you swim every day for the month of July and invite other people to do that with you.

    [29:31] You'll do that in the month of July, right? That's you following your weather systems and and intuitive sharing and deciding how to invite people in to your orbit and into your ecosystem, right?

    So we're gonna get to the earning pathway next, but this is also an example of how to invite people in.

    [29:54] To your ecosystem, which is often with a free offering. So whether it's your newsletter or a podcast or leaning into this lead magnet world, a lead magnet doesn't have to be like a downloadable guide.

    It can be an invitation to do something together for 30 days or for a hundred days or a book study, right?

    Just something that invites people in who then become nurtured and loved and cared for by you, an artist, a singer, a musician, a writer, an herbalist, whatever you are, you bring people into your creative ecosystem and say, hey, I would love to share this thing with you.

    And then they feel like warmed up to being in your world. And those people will probably want to buy a two-hour class or sign up for a longer course. And we also want to do this because.

    [30:55] It aligns us with the right people, right? So I want to like pause to say, I'm not saying like make a bunch of free work and work for free. I think it's really important to be paid for our offerings and for our work with our clients, readers, audience, community, etc. But I do find that sharing generously has brought the best people into my world of creation. So something to consider as you're sort of mapping out the different shapes of your offerings and the pace of putting them into the world. So it's like, you know, my newsletter is free every Monday, And then once a month, there's the free advice column.

    And then I started doing the Friday threads. So every Friday, paid subscribers can share with each other resources about a specific topic.

    So the weather system, however, as it changed into spring, I started thinking about, oh, I really want to do a book study.

    So I launched the Artist's Way book study for paid subscribers of my newsletter.

    And we'll use that same system. We'll use the threads in Substack to share every week.

    [32:12] And it also sort of took the place of flexible office, right?

    I needed something that supported my creative process, but was also of service to the people.

    And I wanted it to be accessible, but I did want some closer container of the people, which is why I made it available to paid subscribers of the newsletter.

    [32:34] It's also a great way to boost my paid subscribers who I then hope continue to be paid subscribers and engage in the newsletter in that way.

    So these are some of my systems, practices, and rituals for how I create offerings, the pace of putting them in the world, et cetera.

    [32:59] I want to circle back to sort of how all three of these integrate for our marketing before I jump into the earning pathway, which I've sort of already touched on. So for our marketing, you know, I really pushed up against this a little bit just having the podcast come out where I was like, should I send another email every week, every Wednesday when the podcast comes out. And you know, that is too many emails for me. I don't want to overwhelm my audience.

    I don't want to create audience fatigue. And there are some people that I interact with their work where they send a lot of emails, like they're sort of in that email marketing teaching world.

    And I just get so many emails from them. And sometimes I like that. Sometimes I like like that many reminders, but I think for me as an artist and a writer and a teacher, I don't want to.

    [34:04] Encourage constant consumption of the email form.

    And so to me, it's really important to just make my Monday newsletter really be this container that holds so many different things, right?

    It holds my writing, it will hold the new episodes of the podcast and it will also hold the things I'm paying attention to and the things that I wanna promote that are happening in my own business ecosystem.

    And then on Fridays, I'll send something to paid subscribers of the newsletter or I might take a break and take a couple Fridays off, right?

    And just send the one email a week and check this out.

    I have permission to not send a Monday email if I don't want to.

    That is a free offering. That is a free part of my business ecosystem and I don't need to send it every Monday if I need to take a break. So that sort of pacing is important.

    When we're launching an online class, when we have a book coming out, when we have an art show happening, a new line of products, whatever it is that we wanna be sharing about, we're gonna be turning up the volume on the pace of sharing, right?

    [35:23] And that can be overwhelming. And sometimes, and I'm really speaking to myself right now, I just had this experience promoting my last two-hour workshop, The Art of Beginning, was like, I was really using my Instagram stories and the art of beginning was like, I was really using my Instagram stories it got me in my head a little bit and got me a little bit exhausted utilizing that app so much.

    And I did see a little bit of an increase in sales for the class, but I almost wonder, if I hadn't been putting my mental energy in that bucket, in that container, would I have had more time to focus in on my own deep work? Maybe I would have emailed a couple friends to to say, hey, could you share this this week?

    That reaches so many more people having even just five friends share my class to their audience, rather than me pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing to the people who have already seen me share it so many times.

    So this is where part of picking the pace is also understanding that sharing more Power isn't always how we bring in more people.

    Marketing as a creative practice is about getting creative. It's not about constantly sharing the thing.

    [36:51] So more emails, more Instagram posts, I don't think are the answer.

    And this is something I'm really learning to accept and embrace within myself.

    Because I think we don't even know what that time and energy and resource could go towards until we experiment and try it.

    Maybe you'll take that time and make a cool slideshow for your class.

    Maybe you'll take that time and make a brochure that goes with your series of paintings.

    Maybe you'll make a small zine that goes along with the release of the quilts that you're putting up for sale on your online shop.

    It is, I really believe and I'm wanting to dig in myself to seeing where can my energy go that isn't this app or that isn't sending a million emails?

    How can I be really, really intentional and thoughtful and craft one really good email a week that serves my readers in the best way that I know how and serves my own practice, and vision for the world that I want to see.

    [38:03] The last part of the four ways to pace your work, marketing, and creative practice is the earning pathway. And I've talked about this a little bit already. And again.

    [38:16] I want to just name that everyone who is listening to this podcast is coming in with very different platform size, earning capacity, salary, income, right?

    Some of you are millionaires, some of you are scraping by to pay rent this month, and I just value each of you and where you're at. And you might be a millionaire and also have a ton of debt. I know that right now I'm in this balance of my debt is really high and my earning is a little bit lower than it was at this time last year. And that fluctuates, right, as self-employed people as artists, as freelancers, our income fluctuates season to season and year to year.

    And that can be scary. And you might have consistent income, but be unhappy in your job and your work. And so the earning pathway is going to be different for all of us. I'm going to speak to what I know as a self-employed artist and writer and author, and I hope you can take what you like and leave the rest, as I say, and apply what works for you to your own earning pathway.

    [39:37] Only you can know what you want to be a part of your job. This is what How to Not Always Be Working really brings us through, is really naming what is my job, what is not my job, and what are the gray areas.

    So for me, as a writer and someone with a newsletter, it's sort of a beautiful way that I tricked myself so that I can write about any of my hobbies and writing is my job.

    So the thing I do might not be part of my earning pathway, but I let myself write about it.

    Swimming is my greatest example, right?

    I have a promise to myself that swimming will never be my job.

    I will never train to be paid for swimming. I will never teach someone to swim in exchange for money.

    Swimming is not my job.

    But I take a lot of pictures of the lake and the ocean. I share those pictures in my newsletter and I share about swimming as a part of my practice of understanding myself and understanding the world that I walk through.

    [40:48] So my earning pathway doesn't include swimming, but it does include a newsletter that I do earn money making.

    That newsletter comes out every week with a paid option every month.

    I've shared this already on this episode, But I say this to say, okay, this is one container of my earning, and I also use that container to share about my projects.

    If I have an art show or a new book coming out or a class I want people to take, those things exist in my newsletter. That's the place that I tell people about the things that I do and the things that I want to invite them into.

    The pace of my earning pathway with my newsletter is weekly.

    Now, every other part of my job, about the other 2 3rds or so of my income, comes from teaching.

    [41:39] And the way that I understand this pathway is really by integrating my internal seasons, intuitive sharing, and weather systems. However, they don't always match up.

    And sometimes I am suddenly like, I need money for this thing, right?

    Whether I'm saving up to do something in my house or when I had my radical reduction top surgery last year, or having a mortgage now to pay for every month, right?

    It's like when I know that a big thing is coming up, it might spark me to push myself for promoting and marketing, right?

    I might put an old class recording on sale. I might see a dip in my income and be inspired to create something new, right?

    And I try not to ever do this out of scarcity or need, but to really follow that intuitive sharing practice.

    So sometimes the earning is down and we have a sale or the earning is down and we're like, okay, I want to push myself to teach a longer form class that maybe would increase my earning in these different ways.

    And this is the part where really all four come together.

    I want you to trust that the systems are in place.

    [43:00] So once we put these systems in place, right, having channels for speaking about our work, whether it's on social media, newsletter, podcast, a flyer at the coffee shop, we trust that they will reach the people, okay?

    And this is such a dance of not spiritual bypassing, not gaslighting ourselves, not just being like, yeah, manifestation is great, right?

    But when we put the work in to having these channels of communication, We need to trust that they will reach the people they are supposed to reach.

    So this goes back to like, if I'm feeling like, oh, I wanna put a class out, that doesn't mean email people every single day and constantly tell them the class exists.

    Trust that maybe a week after you send the email out, they will open it.

    Trust that maybe a month after you put your podcast episode out, someone will listen to it and buy your book that you mentioned.

    The earning pathway is both checking in with the realities of your bank account and your desires for earning and wanting to invest in yourself or your home or your relationships or your travel needs or invest back into your business.

    But it's also about trusting that you have created structures that work.

    [44:27] So also the earning pathway could look like emailing one to ten people who you think might be interested in being a client of yours, right? That one-on-one relationship marketing or way of, selling your services that isn't just broadcasting to the world.

    [44:48] I had a friend recently who wrote a really popular article and they sent it to me in a text.

    And I remember thinking, wow, you thought to text me this article to make sure that I read it, even though it's in a major media outlet and tons of people are sharing it, but it felt so good to have a friend who's a writer be like, hey, I think you would really like this.

    And I was like, I do really like this. And so I encourage you to reach out one-on-one to people that are a part of your earning pathway and a part of your ecosystem of creativity, hobbies, relationships, right?

    Everything in your orbit and your world.

    And we decide our pricing, right? That's the other part of the earning pathway is like how much do things cost?

    We can decide that based on what other people in our industries are doing, based on our own selling history, and based on our intuition.

    So you'll absolutely see some classes that look like some of mine be $3,000 or be $40, right?

    [46:00] And my class might be $425. That's a price that I've chosen based on what other people in my field are doing.

    That's a raise in price of my first online classes that were four weeks long that were $195 in 2017, right?

    So I try to raise my prices intuitively and also based on the own level and success of my career.

    So as I have more successes and books that are published and features in media outlets, whatever it is, landing on the Apple Arts Podcast chart and the Spotify Arts Podcast chart, these things that I can point to and say, look, my work works and I want to invite you to understand your work in the same way that I understand mine through this teaching portal.

    You know, I gain that confidence and price things in a way that both pays myself fairly for my time and matches my desires for my income and my earning and my spending, and chipping away at my debt, and being generous to my family.

    [47:14] So these are all the questions to be asking yourself with the earning pathway, and then creating systems and seasons that make sense for you.

    Maybe you teach a dance class and you teach it five days a week, and that's the pace.

    If I were you, I would probably then take a week off every other month. Something like that.

    Make sure you're giving yourself downtime in marketing and then coming back to make sure you say, hey, classes this week at these times.

    It makes sense to maybe share more often when you are doing these ongoing things more consistently.

    But also trust that the people who come to dance class tell other people to come to dance class.

    Make it easy for them to tell people.

    Make it easy for them to tag you on Instagram or share your newsletter or whatever other resources you have to offer.

    Maybe you have a free 30-minute dance class that anyone can download to get them into their body, so then they really want to desire taking dance class with you live, right?

    So these are the different ways we start to put all of these containers together for the.

    [48:31] Pace of sharing our work. There's no right way to do any of this.

    I speak again from my own experience of the last decade of working for myself and tapping into my own intuition, the seasons of my life.

    That's the other thing about our internal seasons. That also includes grief.

    That includes joy. Maybe you've experienced a death of someone close to you, and it's time to go inward.

    Maybe you just got married or are celebrating a huge win in your life, in your personal life, and you want to do that privately, off the screen, away from the public eye.

    Right? That's part of our seasons. What is our life asking of us?

    Because really the point of all of this is to be in our life.

    [49:29] I was just reading a Thich Nhat Hanh book and he talks about when we wake up being so grateful and celebrating our 24 hours to live. What a gift to have 24 hours ahead of us to make our work and to rest, right? Don't forget that part of your internal seasons are knowing when to hibernate and when to rest and when to close the computer and pay attention to your family and yourself.

    Thank you for being an artist. Thank you for even thinking about pacing yourself because having burnt out, stressed out, broke, suffering artists is not what we need in the world.

    You have the tools and the resources to pace yourself in a way that makes sense, while honoring your needs for money, for earning, for living in systems of oppression that are not built for your success.

    So if you're struggling with anything that I named today, you're allowed to be mad at me, but also remember to question the systems and the structures that are in place to break us, not to serve us.

    So may you put an anti-capitalist lens on everything I talked about today.

    [50:57] Your hat of dismantling systems of oppression, of work addiction.

    [51:03] And may you find a pace that really works for you and works for yourself and works for your audience and your readers and your community.

    Pay attention to how people are interacting with what you make and if it feels good to you or if you need to shift, permission to pivot over and over and over again.

    [51:29] Thank you for listening to this episode of Common Shapes. Thank you to Lukeza Branfman-Varissimo for the art.

    Thank you to Saltbreaker for our music and to Softer Sound Studio for editing.

    If you want more support, remember to grab the Creative Ideation Portal, a free three-day guide to help you vision and dream your projects that goes along with the first four episodes of this podcast.

    You can find that at marleygrace.space slash Common Shapes.

    I would love it if you subscribed to the show wherever you listen to your podcasts, as well as share it with a friend or on social media or in your own newsletter.

    Thank you for being a listener of Common Shapes.

Follow along on Instagram

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter Monday Monday

Our Work Is A Web with Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo

This week I’m welcoming Common Shapes’ very first guest, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo.

“I’m at this moment where I’m realizing that my work is my job. And, you know, job doesn’t always mean financial, and financial jobs don’t always mean pleasure or nourishment work. But I’m at a point where I’m thinking a lot about the claiming of one’s work as your main income stream — and how totally wild weird and wonderful that is.”

Lukaza (they/them/Lukaza) an artist, abolitionist, educator, storyteller, cultural worker and person of multitudes. Through a practice based in the printed multiple, community-based work and installation building, they invite the viewer to recall and share their own lived narratives, offering power and weight to the creation of a larger dialogue around the telling of B.I.Q.T.P.O.C. (Black, Indigenous, queer, trans, people of color) stories.

Listen in to hear us discuss—

🕸 The web shape for creative work

🕸 How to craft a studio practice

🕸 Claiming our work as our main income stream

🕸 How to weave your values and your activism into your sharing practices

🕸 The radical history of newsletters

Links

🌼 Get the Creative Ideation Portal

🌼 Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday and become a paid subscriber to join The Artist Way book study

🌼 Find all these links & more at marleegrace.space/commonshapes

More from Lukaza

🪑 Visit Lukaza’s website

🪑 Follow Lukaza on Instagram

🪑 Subscribe to ROOTS WEBS NETS BRANCHES BULLETIN BOARDS

  • [0:00] Hello, and welcome to episode five. Today on the show, we have the artist, the curator, the storyteller, my friend, the brilliant Lukeza Branfman Verissimo, and I am so excited to share this interview with all of you today.

    [0:25] Common Shapes is a podcast about practices, systems, and rituals for a creative life.

    And I am delighted to share that it debuted at number 15 on the Apple Podcast Arts chart.

    And that is because of you, dear listener. That is because you shared it on social media and in your own newsletters and texted it to your friends.

    And thank you for all of the beautiful messages. I've gotten so many DMs and emails and texts from friends and strangers and students and readers who are listening to the show.

    [1:08] And sharing with me how it's changing their practice.

    And that was my truest hope, was that this podcast would serve as a way to become closer to your own process of art making and creation.

    So, thank you for listening.

    It was so sweet to see my podcast amongst big network podcast people and names.

    And, you know, this is a self-published podcast, thanks to Softer Sound Studio for editing and guidance.

    It's just me with no marketing budget, no big plan for rollout, you know, as a non-binary queer person, it was just such a gift to see my work and this container taking up space in that realm. And that is something that I have really worked to feel comfortable doing.

    And so thank you for being on that journey with me and supporting the show and sharing it.

    [2:18] The first four episodes of Common Shapes pair with the Creative Ideation Portal, which is a three-day guide that helps you vision your projects and become ready and willing to bring them into the world. So if you haven't already grabbed that, you can head over to marleygrace.space.commonshapes. You'll find all of the episodes there, all of the show notes and the creative ideation portal. And so the first four episodes walk you through the guide and just give you some extra support.

    [2:58] I am so excited about today's episode. It is such an honor to share Luke Hayes' work with all of you. You're already familiar with their work if you've seen the art for this this podcast.

    Luqueza also created the art of Monday Monday, my weekly newsletter.

    And I first met Luqueza in 2019. I was hosting an artist residency with John Hansen, who's an amazing artist, perhaps most famously my ex-husband.

    He also made the music for this podcast. And a few years after John and I got divorced, We had this wild idea to move back in together and facilitate an artist residency for nine months in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

    It was beautiful for us together to host Lou Kesa and to get to know them and their practice.

    And my hope is that today's episode really invites you into considerations around your own art making process.

    [4:09] The importance of art at the table of activism and movement work, the importance of beginning on your own block and in your own neighborhood.

    And I hope that it reminds you of the beautiful gift of being an artist and being a cultural worker and being a member of a community, and your role in it is so unique and so specific and may you honor it and embrace it and be a part of it, whatever it is for you.

    So thanks so much for listening. Enjoy this episode of Common Shapes with Lucas Brafman Verissimo.

    [5:04] Hello and welcome to Common Shapes. I'm here with Lukeza. Hi. So good to be here.

    Oh, so good to be with each other. Let's just dive right in. Well, first of all, I want to just shout out Lukeza made the artwork for this podcast and the artwork of the Monday Monday Substack newsletter. So many of you are already familiar with their work in some of the the shapes that my offerings make.

    So, Lucchesa, thank you for shaping the visual journey of the podcast.

    It's so fun to see that text and shapes floating around the interwebs and worlds that you're creating. So, thanks for bringing me in always.

    So, on Common Shapes, the sort of vision and hope here and hope here is to talk about our art practice.

    [6:03] And the creative business art ecosystems that we weave together and separately.

    And so I'd love to just really dive in and start with, this is sort of a beautiful way that you even phrased it right before we hit record.

    I'd love to hear the shapes that you currently put your practice in.

    And you're such a perfect first guest because you do so many different things and they take so many different shapes.

    So I'd love to hear you sort of describe your current practice or how it relates, past, present, and future and the shapes that it's currently taking.

    Yeah, I love thinking so much about shape also as this like continuation of these like vessels our homes or like compartments that we put our work in and around. I am a lover of the web shape. If the web is allowed to be a shape, a community of many shapes go into the web is one of the reasons why I love that formation. I think a lot about all these different kind of like offerings and type of works that share space and that there doesn't need to, well, sometimes it needs to have its own view and its own attention in different ways. But I love.

    [7:30] Getting to be a practitioner of the web shape through my practice in the ways that my writing and poetry practice can share and feed and exchange and live next to and almost cuddle with things that are happening in my mostly visual arts practice. And that there's this constant dialogue and influence. And also, I'm thinking about the web shape is also this shape that supports the essence of a spider web is to catch food or nourishment or sustenance. I'm thinking about that shape also as food for these different components of my practice. So that might be curatorial or cultural work practices or activism work or creation of spaces that support, like.

    [8:28] Folks on the margin. So, I don't know, I keep going back to the web or the net as the shape that holds my practice now because of all the different ways that it can hold and all the different ways that these different parts of my work get to be in dialogue. I have learned so much about the way that you talk about the web. And I love how you just described how all of the parts go together, like your poetry, your writing, the visual work, your activism.

    And I actually want to start.

    [9:05] Sort of in the past if you don't mind, which is talking about Nook Gallery, which is a space that you curated in California, in Oakland.

    I was actually just referencing it today. I was at a local establishment here in Northern Michigan, and the owner of the space was talking about maybe wanting to have art, but it was like a very small corner of her space, And I could feel her wondering if that was like restrictive.

    And I told her all about Nook Gallery.

    And I would love to just hear about that project and how it came to be and your curatorial practice a little bit.

    [9:49] Yeah, so Nook Gallery existed for five years in my apartment kitchen in Oakland.

    There was a really beautiful built-in seating nook, hence the name.

    And when I graduated undergrad, I was thinking a lot about, you know, what it means to be committed to being an artist and to have spent four years at an art school and then get spit out into this world that has spaces that are there to support and spaces that aren't.

    And I just had a lot of questions and I knew that I wanted to be making work for the rest of my life.

    And I was also thinking a lot about visibility and where and how we show our work and the agency of artists over the say of where our art gets to live and what spaces get to feed us.

    And at the time, and still kind of to this day, Oakland is such a...

    [10:51] Overflowing DIY artist space, less so now, but has a deep legacy of artist-run spaces.

    And so, yeah, I was just really curious by that idea what it would look like to not only be an artist in the world, deciding on where my art would go, but also crafting and hosting and holding spaces for other people's work to be in. And, you know, I was influenced by a lot of of artists run spaces that were in storefronts and garages and out of people's cars and in backyards and in people's pockets and all sorts of shapes and sizes that really influenced me to want to be an artist.

    And so, and I'm also, you know, at that time was, didn't have like the funds to rent a storefront or to, yeah, have a space that was like super expensive.

    [11:48] To run this kind of like becoming project out of.

    So I was like, what about a space that I already rent, which is my apartment?

    And it's something that I think about a lot these days, like how can we start with what we have as the tools to give others rather than the need to start and make something new.

    And so, yeah, Nook was kind of this like project space. We didn't ever sell art.

    I mean, well, work got sold, but that wasn't the priority. It was more about supporting projects that didn't have any other space to be in and was really incredible to work with friends, and friends of friends and artists in the community to figure out also where my curatorial role came into that.

    [12:42] Yeah, five incredible years of Nook becoming and forming itself in a seating-centered space.

    Seating-centered space. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing about that space with us.

    I think that was my first introduction to you was maybe seeing someone post about.

    [13:02] Nook Gallery and then finding you as an artist. And it's just that space really, it does remind me and invite me to just look at every space that I'm in differently.

    Like if I see a built-in cabinet somewhere, I always think of that.

    I'm like, oh, that could be a little art gallery. Everything can be.

    And there's like, we need the space, you know, like especially as space becomes such a problem or such an issue for artists to be able to afford and make work in.

    And it's like, yeah, how can we turn this shelf on my porch into a gallery and treat it with just as much respect as we would going to MoMA?

    It just gives me chills. It just truly makes me so excited.

    And I've been thinking about that in my own home a lot.

    [13:52] I'm like, is the front room the art gallery? Will the farm stand be the art gallery?

    Will the little garden shed?

    Like there's so many little spaces to turn into a little gallery.

    Yeah, and I just want to add one more thing on to Nook is that I think another one of the reasons why I started Nook was also thinking about how do we start and create these shapes or these spaces with really deep intention and really kind of like clear understanding for like who these spaces are for, which I think is, you know, definitely a core theme in my work.

    You know, like Nook didn't show everyone's work because not everyone needed to show in the Nook.

    And Nook centered queer and trans and femme artists of color and folks who called themselves artists but had never had a show or artists who felt very artistly.

    [14:50] And had a lot of shows but had never had a show where nothing was for sale.

    And that was also a big influence that Nook had on my practice as an artist today is that we're out in this world and we're doing all these things and they're floating around, and there are wonderful parts to them.

    And also as artists and as cultural workers, there has to be this clear intention of who this work is for.

    And so that was deep in Nook's roots.

    Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think something that I talk a lot about when I teach and I'm always thinking about is like, what are my core values?

    What are the core values of my project? and I love this sort of idea of like, not everyone has to be included, and that is part of the including.

    It's like sort of like, what do we leave out is also part of what do we bring in.

    [15:47] You are one of my most, like, artist-y artist friends. Like, I'm just, like, when I think of, like, an artist, I think of you.

    Like, I'm just, like, Luke Haza is just a true artist. Like, you have such a prolific studio practice and so many publications and murals and prints.

    And there's just so much richness in how much material you bring into the world.

    And I'm curious if you have ever struggled calling yourself an artist.

    [16:20] Like, what are the early moments of like, I'm an artist? Do you struggle with, you know, I loved even hearing you call it like a writing and poetry practice. And do you struggle to ever call yourself a writer? Because so, so much of your work is text-based. And yeah, I'd love to to hear about sort of identifiers, like what are words that you use that are empowering to identify yourself?

    Does it ever feel like it boxes you in?

    And is there ever the famous imposter syndrome around any of your creative identities?

    I mean, all of that floating around always in our brains and our minds.

    You know, I think claiming myself as an artist was maybe one of the easiest things.

    I just have loved making work my whole life and it always felt like this space that I could go in that was mine, and that I understood the like.

    [17:23] Vast language of art-making, like, and finding so much comfort in that space, or, like, literally nourished, like, thirsty, and then, what's the opposite of thirsty? Quenched? No.

    Quenched. Dehydrated?

    [17:43] Dehydrated, and then not dehydrated. Like, after seeing art, or like, like going to like an artist gathering and, you know, I feel really lucky to have grown up in Los Angeles, which is a city with lots of different kinds of art making happening and artists. And there was like an incredible visiting artist program at my local public school. And I got to like literally watch how my dreams were made before me and like space out in math class and like not understand a lot of the academic world, but like have so much clarity within art making in a way that still like quenches my thirst. And so, yeah, I don't know. Like I'm, artist just feels like the right role and the right word, although there are many long list of words that I now include in that artist word that I keep including and growing, but knowing that I could make work and art for the rest of my life was almost like my.

    [18:55] Wings and the ways that I could imagine living and moving through this world.

    Like, it seems like you don't really box yourself in. Like, there's so many different mediums that you're working in, even though some of the like integration of text or themes sort of stay consistent, which is maybe part of that's a huge part of your practice. But yeah, I'm curious if you're trying something new on what do you run up against in those moments of resistance or in terms of like flow?

    I mean, I've been thinking a lot about the ways, and I feel like we've talked about this in the past, like the ways that people know our work. And then when you're like, oh, yeah, okay, cool.

    I love that thing that you know about me. Yes, that's a part of my work. And also like, what about all these things that like, are harder to photograph, like, don't exist on social media, like are held with more hands or held in more secrecy and like what it means to then like choose those things that feel harder maybe for people to grasp and call your work.

    [20:07] So I think a lot about that, like especially lately, like a lot of folks know my work in specific ways and what does it mean to now want to be doing a lot of writing and like where does that work exist within the understanding of my work in a larger audience but also, remain its own thing that is not understandable or that is like to be read only by myself and.

    [20:38] A handful of friends. I think almost like in those moments I force myself to like literally draw a web or make a map of like this ecosystem that is my practice and that the things that that feed me and the things that bring me joy and the things that challenge me and almost like a...

    A reminder that the confusion and the blur and the not knowing where to place these new becoming projects is a part of the web, which is humbling and also more confusing. But I go back to that shape, I guess, again and again, also as this tool for clarity of, yes, I could keep making these text paintings that are understandable and hang on gallery walls and get sold, but what if I wanna like make chapbooks right now?

    And like, how can these chapbooks become like the wallpaper for those paintings to be hung on, or are they really meant to just be read by some and exist in their own space that also like feeds or nourishes other parts of my brain?

    [21:56] That is a beautiful answer, which brings me perfectly to the next question, which you have already answered, which is this practice of sort of ecosystem mapmaking, which I love, definitely something I do as well.

    And I think a question is like, how do you decide what is the next thing you're gonna work on?

    So let's say you've just finished a project, or let's say you're working on a big painting in a space and it's finished, and you have the opening, like, how do you approach knowing what the next thing is?

    Is it like journaling? Is it just intuition? You know, especially when you're working on lots of projects at once.

    I'm even thinking about like, in a day, how do you decide what is the first thing you're gonna work on? Walk us through that process a little bit for you.

    [22:52] It looks many different ways, but I'm thinking a lot about this month, like the last months before this month, I was in a very specific space, making my work in very specific ways, and now I'm in another state, state of mind, geography state.

    And at the end of the day, it's like our work ourselves carry us to the next moment.

    And also within that comes so much confusion and questions of how do you not only best use your time, but when does it make the most sense to make the specific work?

    And I've been...

    [23:35] Really finding it helpful to kind of like place bodies of work in chapters or containers or shapes as kind of this like, Guide to myself that like this work is continuing Always but like specific forms are held in, Last spring or like the new chapter is held this spring Almost like imagining putting things in folders or boxes like that is helpful for my studio practice just so it doesn't feel like a big soup all the time. Yeah, I'm someone who loves the studio. I think that's kind of maybe how I understood artists. I know that's like so stereotypical, but going to an artist's studio and seeing their world and their ways and and like a space beyond home, beyond institution.

    [24:28] Or showing space that could just hold the flowing thoughts and ideas and loves of the artist's brain.

    And so I've, yeah, that's just been like a staple key part of my practice.

    Like I need a studio.

    I like having select studio days or select times that I get to just kind of like focus in the studio.

    I try not to bring my computer unless I have to. It feels like 80% of my studio is like admin work.

    And I've learned to integrate that in many ways and look at the admin, you know, with not just frustration, but also like a, this is a ingredient.

    And also computer is a head suck, kind of takes you away from other parts of the studio.

    So I try not to bring my computer unless I'm like using it for research or reference images, but I'm a big lover of the printer.

    Well, lots of different printers, but I love the Xerox printer.

    I rather like print the article and bring it into the studio than bring my computer.

    It's really hard to work in a space that doesn't have stacks of books everywhere, I realized.

    I was away at a fellowship for three months and I shipped three boxes of books, which at first I was like, this is ridiculous.

    And then I was like, you know what?

    [25:56] I read half of those books and then I ended up checking out so many books from the local library, but just having words and stories and knowledge around me around me felt like these kind of like staple, like the walls or the paint that I need in a space that I'm going to practice in and with. Yeah, and then kind of like material shifts depending on the project, depending on the space. I bring my sketchbook and my planner everywhere, just because I'm such an analog person. And again, if I'm leaving the computer at home, like, and I happen to have a work meeting, like I might need to schedule something. Paper everywhere, lover of paper, paper is my guide. These days, I'm making paper, which is like a mind shift. When you rely on a material, but then you're making the material, what does it mean to call your roots your ingredients? I don't know. I could talk about the studio forever.

    [26:58] I love it. I love you talking about the studio. Something we were texting the other day, and I was sharing about feeling lonely. And I love that you invited me to think of that as an ingredient. And I love how you use that word of just like we can bring it all in to the work, like and even thinking about like what's secret and what's private. It's like they can be ingredients for sort of our private creative discovery or what is someday for the public creative discovery. Yeah, I just got to go to our mutual friend Tamara Santibanez's studio in New York City, and it felt like being in an artist's studio is really like, it doesn't get old.

    Especially when it's someone you love and you get to see their practice, I was just standing in in there. You can feel the ritual and the process, and I really hear you. I'm surrounded by many, many books and how that supports the practice.

    [28:10] Okay, so you're in the studio, you're making your work, you're doing your projects, and the question that the artists of this world so often have is, how do you do it? How do you pay the bills?

    How do you feed yourself with food?

    How do you pay the rent? I know that you just mentioned this fellowship that you had, and you are someone I really look to who just does so many beautiful residencies, And I know that getting grants is a big part of your practice and then many other things.

    So in the sort of like, if we put our business hat on for a moment, I'd love to hear about sort of that part of the ecosystem and, you know, both like, where do you find grants?

    Where do you hear about them? How do you apply for them?

    And then also where else does the money come and flow?

    And just anything you wanna share on the topic of money and income as an artist.

    [29:15] Yes, business hat is always on, you know, that's the thing about this practice.

    It's like, can I take it off? Like, I don't wanna, can someone else do it?

    Which I know like someone else could do it, does do it.

    But it's funny, I was talking with a friend the other day and I was like talking about jobs and I was like, I've had a job since I was 13, 12.

    [29:43] But yeah, I was just thinking about how financial survival has been a part of all of our, not all of our lives, but a lot of folks' lives from the age that you could legally work.

    And how interesting it is to now be at a place at a place where I don't currently have a day job, but I'm at this moment where I'm realizing that, my work is my job. Job doesn't always mean financial, and financial jobs don't always mean, pleasure or nourishment work, and all of that is mixed. But I'm at a point where I'm just just thinking a lot about like the claiming of one's work as like your main income stream and how totally wild, weird, and wonderful that is.

    So three years ago, I decided to move my life across the country and go to grad school.

    And I had done a lot of residencies previous to that, But I was really thinking about this sustainable practice.

    If I want to be an artist for the rest of my life, if I'm surrounding myself with artists, does it mean to reach and really work for the ways that.

    [31:08] My work is the income stream. And I think that looks all different ways and could look a way that looks like this way for the next year and then totally change in the next year.

    But I really was excited and I'm glad that I went to grad school and was also thinking about grad school, less of like the stepping stone to like more gallery shows, but more of this resource.

    Course, like literally these two years of time where I didn't have to work a 9-5 full-time job and I could teach and be in pedagogy spaces that I was craving at the time and also get paid to do my work.

    I think that looks many different ways, but I think that is oftentimes and maybe rarely a case for grad school, but I was really focused on how I could figure out a way to get paid to make my work full-time, and I've been able to kind of like test and lean into that in like one month or three-month residencies and fellowships, and I love teaching, and I love exchange and I also am totally frustrated.

    [32:28] By the institutions that don't let us actually teach what we wanna teach or don't support or pay us a living wage.

    And so what are other ways that I can be supported beyond those spaces?

    [32:41] Yeah, it's hard for me to talk about like capital M money, but I think all of this is like, how do we re-approach these like money spaces If we know we have to get paid, if we know we have to pay for this and that, how do we also use these systems that abuse us in ways that are gonna sustain and support our practices?

    [33:05] Because I think paying bills is real and there's really no way out of it.

    And paying taxes happens, and not getting refunds, and all of this because our job is not understandable by states that are, and powers that be that are in broken systems.

    And also sometimes I find it like challenging to only call it money talk, because if we think about like the ecosystem that we put our work in, it's like.

    [33:39] Yeah, I want to live in this apartment that I can have Nook Gallery in, and I need to pay the rent there.

    And also, if this university is going to move me to this place for three months and let me do my work, then things need to be readjusted. And maybe the anti-capitalist, anti-this-leads-to-this production person, like, is also hard to put it all into just money talk. Like, how do we talk only about money when it is pulling on so many other things?

    I love that. I think, you know, something I have watched you do and something I think you just explained so well is, it's sort.

    [34:26] Of like, you know, if we're, we're sort of working against you know, the like money magic, like we just manifest it.

    It's like we live outside of that, but yet we're in this like grounded pivoting flow as sort of I think our maybe version of what can sometimes feel like maybe more of like spiritual bypassing or maybe like a privileged manifestation is more of just like, yes, I have to pay for these things, and so I exist in these systems, systems, and how do I do that in a radical, generative way? And I think you just explained so beautifully how to do that, and one of those ways is that flexibility, that like, oh, okay, I have this opportunity, I'm going to shift these things to be able to do that and sort of prioritize my practice in this way.

    [35:23] You were just in New Mexico where you were doing this fellowship, and I would love to hear about the digital camera that you got, and the choice that you made to do some walking and some viewfinding without your phone.

    And you are such an amazing documenter of the process. Even in my head when I think of you, I think of the process.

    Like, yes, I own finished things that you've made. I have seen that you do indeed have art shows that are finished.

    But like, when I really think of you, like you were saying, like the studio, I think of the studio and the mess and the process and the in-between.

    So I'd love to hear about the documenting side of your practice and your digital camera journey.

    I was like, your camera journey, and I was like, what camera?

    [36:30] Your little digital friend. It's like so cute and little. I named it Tiny.

    You know, like walks are part of this like sustaining ritual for myself, but they're also these like pedagogy tools that I teach around and that I, practice around and invite other folks into. And on one hand, I'm like, oh yeah, not everyone needs to see everything. Like back to that, like not every space is for everyone.

    And also if we're kind of like reaching for these other spaces that we want to live and work and survive in that maybe we don't see right now but that we know are possible. It's like we have to.

    [37:18] Show the blur and embrace the glitch and know that the pile that is overflowing with library books that need to be returned are those tools. And that whole in-between blurriness is also the work. So I'm excited to talk about the viewfinder practice and this new tiny tools in my life.

    [37:45] So when I first actually got to grad school, it was in the height of early pandemic when we didn't have vaccines and it wasn't safe to be inside with folks, a lot of questions around sharing space.

    And so I was actually kind of like called to the streets before I was called to the studio and learning a lot from activists and incredible trans elders that were leading so many fights at that moment.

    And so I invited friends of friends and neighbors and strangers and artists in the area to go on walks with me, kind of like learning of the city through folks who are from there and have a history there and learning from their block or their ways that they want to guide me as like an invitation into understanding a place.

    So, you know, walks are often a guide for me. Like if I'm feeling lost or having like an off day, I'll go for a walk.

    And it's been helpful to bring and include the viewfinder tool, which essentially is just like a negative space cutout of a piece of paper as this kind of like extension of my eyes and heart and brain into like a slow looking practice that practices the work too.

    So...

    [39:14] Yeah, when I was in New Mexico, I was going on a lot of walks in my neighborhood and just being, totally in awe of the huge sky there and wanting to just look at it as much as I could. Like any opportunity to look at the sky, I was like, yes. And so, yeah, I was going on a viewfinder walks with friends and by myself and also like really like aware of this like sacred ritual that happens between like myself and this piece of paper and this landscape and maybe friends or maybe not, and just feeling so distracted by the phone like I'm so used to you know I love documenting the viewfinder walks too like the documentation is a big part of it for like compositions that maybe go back into the studio or just feed me and that I look at later. But I was like, I hate that I'm like getting so many texts while I'm on this sacred walk and that I'm like ending up like sitting down and answering emails. And a dear friend of mine, Lee, was like, why don't you just buy like a tiny digital camera that you can put in your pocket and hold in your hand and has like a wonderful large screen. And so it was such a treat to just be like, I have all that I need.

    I don't even really need the camera, but the documenting is part of the practice. But.

    [40:42] Yeah, I could just walk out with this camera that won't notify me if anything is happening.

    It won't even tell me the right time because it's so old that it doesn't have the date or the time on it. And I have my piece of paper. And that's all I need. And I've been playing with film cameras too. And just, yeah, I don't know, a little bit more of these like reminders of like, what is the essence, the essence rituals that we come back to, to replenish ourselves with and play with, too.

    [41:13] Beautiful. In terms of documenting and sharing the work, how do we tell the people that we've made art? And you recently moved your newsletter over to Substack. It is called Roots, Webs, Nets, Branches, Bulletin Boards, which is probably my favorite newsletter name ever.

    And I just love, I mean, one of your recent newsletters was about the viewfinder as like a way of finding intimacy.

    Tell me what it was called?

    The viewfinder as intimate space. Hey, there we go. Thank you. Thank you.

    So I'd love to hear about how do you tell people about your work?

    How does it feel to tell people about your work?

    And then what does that look like? look like? Is it just natural for you at this point to sort of share in the way that you do?

    Or are you checking in with yourself? Let's start with the newsletter. I'd love to hear about the newsletter as a practice for you and how it integrates with your, the other parts of your work.

    [42:21] Yeah, you know, the name of the newsletter are all forms of communication, like forms that we communicate or relate or share or broadcast. I love those like kind of like poetic and also practical form sharing space and in many ways that's how I think about the newsletter or even the sharing of my work like on Instagram or even an email or in a show like how is the practical and the poetic and the like informing and communicating always at the center. Let's see I've been And sending out newsletters probably for the last three, four years, previously on MailChimp.

    And I think maybe when I started it, it was like, inform community about all the happenings of my life.

    And I love that it kind of lived in the newsletter shape.

    [43:25] And it wasn't on social media only, you know, like a lot of elders and beloveds in my life are not on social media, but are on email.

    So it felt important to like, pull in like, multi generations of folks into the like sharing of my work.

    And then it kind of like morphed into that, like informing plus like, sharing a little bit more about like a topic or a material that I was exploring or an idea or a little bit more writing about an upcoming show. And I think maybe at the same time I was thinking a little bit more about my like writing practice so that was kind of like immediate like, pulling in of the written material into this newsletter and sharing space.

    [44:17] So I have roots in printmaking. And I say this just because I'm always thinking about how something is understood and the creation of the multiple. And newsletters were originally pamphlets where I think about my communist great grandparents who got the communist newspaper in in a paper bag for safety and all these different ways that we have used the printed multiple to communicate and live with and share our stories and inform and hold each other with.

    And so when I made the switch to Substack, I was thinking a lot about like how this form has become this like connective tissue in my practice that this like informing and holding and inviting others into my studio, whether that be literally into my studio to have a meal or play a game of Boggle, or into the email box and how all these different ways are parts of being part of the conversation.

    [45:24] It's sweet to be in this sub-stack world now. I think a lot about that whole network and how so So many friends and artists that I admire use that space in all sorts of different ways, and that is the coolest part of being in that space.

    But yeah, I think it's this informing, gathering, bringing folks in, nourishing together that the newsletter.

    [45:56] Can do, often does, sometimes does. Thank you. I feel like I'm just grateful.

    I love the way that you always really thread things back to just the history of the ancestors, whether it's bloodline or chosen queer ancestors and thinking about the ways that newsletters and communication and informing have been with us for a really long time.

    I think sometimes as artists, we feel like we have to like invent, invent, invent new, new, new. We're like, oh, I got to get a handle on the email newsletter. And it's like, no, we can really actually connect to those who have been doing these practices for so long before we were here. And they just might look different in the digital realm.

    The newsletter is so powerful, you know, like, I think about like the incredible newsletter that Critical Resistance puts in and that folks incarcerated can subscribe to and how like we We can support the funding of the printing, of the receiving, and the newsletter is so many things.

    [47:05] How can the newsletter not only spread our news, because sometimes our news matters and sometimes it doesn't, but also call in the news that we do want it to shine on, or the stories or the political movements that we are fighting for.

    Yeah, I'm trying to learn about how the newsletter can kind of like shift and change and like, inform folks about upcoming projects, but also.

    [47:35] Maybe be silent when it needs to be silent because we're doing work that doesn't exist in that way and And yeah, I love forms that communicate.

    I love forms that communicate as well.

    [47:53] This kind of perfectly brings us to this last question, and maybe really the question is almost like both sharing with us a little bit how you weave your values and activism work, and it feels so seamless to me. It's really inspired me in my teaching and quilt class to see the seamlessness and teaching sort of like the radical history of the form and the many ways that we can find our quilt ancestors, and just the way that you pay such close attention to elders and who came before.

    And I loved the words that you use and sort of think about like illuminating, like what you illuminate.

    And I think for artists who are maybe sometimes like new to the table of activism, we might say, might say, or who maybe feel a little bit late, or feel like they're catching up. I think we really saw that in sort of the year 2020, when a lot of people, I'll say maybe specifically white artists, were sort of like, oh, I wasn't thinking about a lot of these things before. But just for any listener of Common Shapes who is sort of wanting to, you know, use their privilege of whether it's privilege of identity or like the platform that they have to, you know, inspire more mutual aid and generosity and good between each other and between their space and those they reach.

    [49:23] What would you say in terms of like encouraging words or like just how does that live inside your own body of work and practice and anything that you would just want to share for those listening? Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know. I feel like less knowledgeable in like answering the question of like, what should people do? Because I feel like it's like, do what is, happening on your block, in your neighborhood. Like, there are so many things that we can do, so many messes that we've made, and so many books that we've written to read and and do all of that, yeah, we're doing it all.

    We're trying to do it all. And also like, what is happening on our own block and our own neighborhood and our own city that we're not paying attention to?

    You know, I'm like, start small and then like, how does that like eye opening or like attention towards the here then like echo into the county that you're in or the city or the fight for the jail to be closed in the county over to you.

    Like all of these things are in dialogue and also like, why aren't there any black folks in your neighborhood?

    Like, I don't know, like, there's probably a reason.

    [50:52] So yeah, I think about that a lot. I mean, I have community and homes in so many places, and so I'm also thinking about like, how do all those different homes, how are they in dialogue and supporting each other? And yeah, I think artists ask these questions that people don't want to ask or answer or ponder. And that is one of our luckiest roles, and get to ask these questions that then come with 10 million other questions to be asked, because why aren't we asking these questions? And we get to make it beautiful along the way.

    I always think about Emery Douglas' work in the Black Panther Party and how, yes, they were serving free breakfast in their free breakfast and lunch program in public schools because they knew that kids had to be fed to go to school and fighting to put up stop signs and lights in neighborhoods where folks were getting hit just crossing the street to go to school.

    And they were also had this incredible newsletter that was designed by an artist and an incredible important printmaker and that art was at the table and art is always at the table in movement work.

    [52:08] And so that's the other like lucky thing about being an artist is that we get to ask these questions and these hard questions that no one wants to ask.

    And we also get to have the making of our work of the crafting of a world that is possible at this table.

    So yeah, that's like maybe some of the things that I'm thinking about with like movement and activism and our role in supporting figuring out to survive and live and then also the joys of being an artist. Yeah, and these like multiple roles that we all hold and that we don't all have to hold all of the roles I think is part of it to like sometimes it's like oh and then I have to do like this thing and this thing and this thing. And then I have to start this campaign that's.

    [53:00] Diverting the money. Sure. But in this world that we're reaching towards, we don't need to make GoFundMes every month for our folks who have no money to get top surgery, because.

    [53:13] We're re-shifting and re-crafting the ways that our support and our resources can get used.

    So, yeah, I could talk about this also for hours, but I think the realization of the roles and the realization of what's going on in the block, what's going on in the neighborhood that we tend to just drive past and not think about.

    Yeah, I mean, I'm also thinking a little bit about like our implications in these different systems of oppression and in the question and asking, Like, how is this work supporting, like, the liberation of Palestine?

    Like, how do we come back to that and work hard for folks to get out of incarcerated systems?

    Like, how do we not look away at these things that we know that our block is implicated, in all these systems, even if we can't see it?

    So, yeah, I don't know how to sum that up. I think that's what I'm thinking about in terms of activism work and my role as an artist and asking these questions.

    [54:22] You're so smart and awesome and brilliant and thank you. Well, maybe I can even thread it back of like, we forget that looking at the block or the neighborhood is part of how we look at the other things.

    And I think that's what felt really important to me today to hear was like the implication of the local neighborhood.

    [54:48] In the greater world piece of it all and how they are all interconnected, which brings us all the way back to the shape of the web.

    And, Lukeza, is there anything else you wanna share today today with the listeners of Common Shapes. Did we miss anything?

    I feel like we talked about a lot of things. I mean, I think this work is lifelong, and this work is messy, and there's a lot of clarity within it, and there's also more questions.

    And yeah, may we be like porous sponges always, and read as much as we can get our hands on, Corita Kent says and follow the people who we want to follow and figure this out because we need each other and we yeah I don't know we're nothing without our friends and our neighbors and And yeah, so honored to be in this web with you and get a little bit of time to.

    [55:52] Yeah, think about the things that I think about often, but that I don't talk about often.

    Yeah, thank you. My last question is, where can our listeners find you and support you? I believe that they can become paid subscribers of the newsletter if they so can or able. And where should they follow you on the internet or anything that's coming up you want to share about? Just Where did the people find you, Lukeza?

    Yeah, I'm on Instagram. My handle is bluekeza.

    I've had it since... So good. Like freshman year of undergrad, but I just can't, it's there.

    And my sub stack is lbvstudio.substack.com.

    [56:39] And I have a show that's up currently that's up currently at the Center for Book Arts in New York City that is up until June 24th, which is a mural and installation and includes five recent publications that I've made over the past three years. And many projects always emerging, but you can find that on Instagram World or maybe on my sub stack. Beautiful. Thank you for being the first ever guest, on Common Shapes. It's been a pleasure to have you, and thank you all for listening.

    [57:19] Thank you for listening to this episode of Common Shapes. Thank you again to our guest, Lucasia Branfman-Varissimo, who also made the art for this podcast. Thank you to Saltbreaker for our music, and to Softer Sound Studio for editing. You can grab the Creative Ideation portal at marleygrace.space slash common shapes. The creative ideation portal is a free three-day guide to support you envisioning your projects and bringing them into the world. It pairs nicely with the first four episodes of this show. I would love it if you could subscribe and share this podcast with a friend. It means so much to me to read the reviews and see the five-star ratings. Thank you for being a listener of Common Shapes.

Follow along on Instagram

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter Monday Monday

Art as Service

This week’s episode of Common Shapes is about the fact (yes, it’s a fact) that your art is of service, no matter what you create.

“The world needs art. The world needs art on walls, on the backs of couches, in our living rooms, in our kitchens, in our phone screens, on our computers, in museums, in art galleries, at the farmers market, in libraries. The world needs art. And when we see art or feel art or hear art or use any one of our senses to experience art, we are better. ”

I also share my four containers for connecting with the why behind your work. And I offer many, many ideas for how to market your art in creative, fun, meaningful ways.

Listen in to learn—

🧩 Why all art is of service

🧩 How to figure out who your art is for

🧩 My favorite creative marketing practices

🧩 Practices for visioning our work in the world

🧩 A spell for hitting send

After you listen, go get my free Creative Ideation Portal, and join me in sharing your work with the world!

Links

🧹 Get the Creative Ideation Portal

🧹 Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday

🧹 Join Flexible Office, my digital co-working space

🧹 Take my Newsletter class

🧹 Sam Slupski’s I LOVE TO FAIL

🧹 Find all these links & more at marleegrace.space/commonshapes

Want more support for getting your ideas and projects off the ground? Join me for class on Sunday May 28 Live on Zoom (recorded for those who can’t make it live)

  • [0:00] Hello and welcome to Common Shapes, a podcast about practices, systems, and rituals for a creative life.

    This is episode three, the art of the newsletter.

    I'm your host, Marlee Grace, and if there's one thing you should know about me, it is that I am devoted to email newsletters. I'm devoted to physical newsletters. I'm devoted to emails that tell you about art that exists in the world. I am devoted to marketing as a creative practice. That's what Common Shapes is all about. I'm glad that you are here today.

    So if you haven't already, there is the Creative Ideation Portal, which is the three-day guide that I made that you can download for free at marleegrace.space slash common shapes.

    [1:02] It's free. It takes you through different exercises and visioning practices to dream up all of the projects that you want to make and then put them into the world.

    And so on episode one and two, I talked about the first two parts of the Creative Ideation Portal.

    And today in an episode four, we're gonna talk about art as service.

    And so the best way that I know to be of service is to have an email newsletter.

    It is a list. An email list is something that I own.

    Unlike my social media followers. It is a list that I can move between platforms So whatever you pick today or whatever you picked after listening to episode 2 or whatever You've been using for the last decade. You can switch that at any time, So if you're already stressed and you're like more I can't do it. I don't know where my newsletter should live It's okay. You can always change it. A core value of common shapes is pivoting. We can always pivot.

    [2:14] So I welcome you to this episode. I hope you bring an open mind to the art of the email newsletter. This is for you if you've never had an email newsletter, if you've had one for many years and you want some inspiration on how it could be better or grow or be different.

    And it's also for you if you're like a really famous person and think maybe you don't need a newsletter, right?

    Maybe you are a famous comedian with a podcast or you are a Grammy nominated musician and sell out stadiums or you are an actor with a television show.

    I'm a believer that you should have a channel from your fingertips to your audience that you are in control of.

    Not your agent, not your booking manager, not your editor, not your producer, you.

    You own your email list. So I want you to be open to the idea of email marketing.

    Idea of email marketing, you go, huh.

    [3:26] Did I say marketing? Doop-a-ba! It's true. I said marketing.

    I'm even going to get more comfortable saying the word here.

    Marketing as a creative practice.

    Something I promised you we would do here. So we're going to talk about both the marketing side of a newsletter and the creative side of a newsletter and how they intersect with each other.

    Welcome to Common Shapes.

    [3:57] My own journey with the newsletter started on December 21st of 2012.

    And I'm like, it was a dark day.

    No, I'm just kidding.

    Well, probably. It was winter in Michigan and I had just opened a shop called Half Company.

    I had opened it in a vintage camper and there was a neighborhood shop hop.

    And I wanted to tell the people. So I made a free MailChimp account that is a common platform that people use for their email newsletter.

    It is free to start an account with MailChimp, although it does cost money as your subscribers grow, as your subscribers grow.

    So we'll talk a little bit about who's taking a cut, where's money going, et cetera.

    But at the time MailChimp was free to start an email newsletter.

    I opened up my Gmail and I sent the link to subscribe to approximately 100 something people.

    And I said, subscribe to this newsletter if you want to get emails and updates about Have Company, my new project.

    I sent that out and I think 40 people opened it.

    [5:09] I wanna start by saying there is an importance in the consent of adding emails, right?

    We need people's consent to add their emails to our email list.

    So if you are totally starting from scratch, ethically, I would suggest that you send an email with the link to subscribe to your newsletter.

    We want people to opt in on their own accord. So feel free to open up your Gmail and email everybody that you know and are connected to and say, hey, I'm really excited.

    I'm launching this newsletter. I'd love it if you subscribed, right?

    And we can talk more later about really fleshing out how we tell people about what we're working on.

    So over the first couple of years that I was using MailChimp and had a newsletter, it was mostly for marketing.

    It was mostly to say, hey, these are new tinctures that are in the shop.

    We just got this cool tarot deck in the shop were having a quilting workshop in the shop.

    This is the resident that's here. And I would always send out the new podcast episodes, right?

    So when I would interview a resident at Hough Company, I would upload that podcast episode and send it out with the newsletter.

    So the newsletter was my way to reach people.

    Now, at the time, I was also using Instagram, which is a social networking service that I still use today. and.

    [6:37] I was finding even already then that I wasn't getting people to interact with.

    [6:44] What I was saying as much. And I was like, oh, I really want people to like take in this podcast interview. Right. And so I will also share that even if you have a big social media following or you're finding that you can find your people there, there may be dips in the algorithm or how people are interacting with your work that it might feel really good to have this more direct channel that's not designed or controlled by an algorithm, right?

    You send an email, it goes into people's inboxes.

    In 2017, I started to add an essay to my newsletter.

    [7:23] So instead of just sending marketing information about what was going on, I started to use it in a more creative way, right?

    So this is sort of when I think I started experimenting with marketing as a creative practice. I wasn't just sending emails, selling things to people, and announcing things. I wanted to practice my own skill of writing and thinking about the world through writing and sharing it with people who had opted in to read it.

    And so I've been sending out an email newsletter that is also a channel for marketing weekly since 2017. I have absolutely skipped a couple of weeks, but it has mostly come out every Monday for the last six years or so and it was on MailChimp up until 2021 and.

    [8:18] What happened was I had started a Patreon, the Planetarium portal, which I'm sure some of you listening were a part of, thank you for being there.

    And I had the Patreon and my free newsletter. And so this is where I want you to start thinking about your business ecosystem, because what I'm about to say about my own move to Substack very well might not be correct for you.

    And we're gonna talk about the different ways that the newsletters can exist. So I had a Patreon where I was interviewing artists and writing every other Monday and I was also writing my newsletter every Monday and then adding other things in the Patreon and it just felt to me like I was, I had a few too many pots on the stove of my business this ecosystem, right?

    So I usually like to think about, I have digital coworking, I have online classes, right?

    I have online classes about creative practice, I have online classes about quilting, I have my newsletter, I have writing books, right?

    I have sort of these different pieces of the puzzle.

    [9:31] And Patreon and my newsletter were just a little too similar for me to differentiate.

    And so I had seen, actually my friend Faria was the first writer I had seen using Substack.

    How to Cure a Ghost is her Substack. You should absolutely subscribe and become a reader.

    And I thought, wow, that is such a beautiful place to read writing and look for writers.

    I wonder if I could move over there. And so, what I did was I...

    [10:07] Exported all of my subscribers from MailChimp and all of my members on Patreon and imported them all onto Substack and then sent them a welcome email from there.

    So again, with your email list, you can move it at any time.

    So in episode two, I said, start an email list, pick something, right?

    Flodesk, MailChimp, MailerLite, Tiny Letter, Substack, whatever it is.

    There's also Beehive and Ghost.

    Those are two other email service providers that you can send monetized newsletters with.

    [10:45] There's also something called Moonclerk. Moonclerk is a checkout that you can embed into your website if you want to monetize your MailChimp newsletter, right?

    So there's a lot of different options in the sort of tech world, but what matters is that you own your email list.

    So you can move platforms whenever you want, right? Unlike social media, you don't own those people's contact information.

    And this is why, again, we want good consent when people are opting in for our list, right?

    We're not just adding people's emails that we have, we're really giving them the subscribe form and letting them come to us, right?

    Or we are giving them something, whether it's like a PDF or a guide, right?

    The Creative Ideation Portal is technically part of my creative marketing system.

    When you download that guide, I receive your email, which is automatically added to my email list.

    We will talk about that in another episode.

    I'm gonna keep going though. So I made the decision to move to Substack, and sort of combine the art of the email marketing system that I had created in MailChimp and the art of the paid subscription model over on Patreon.

    [12:07] So when you subscribe to my sub stack, you can either just be a free reader and read every Monday.

    It was important to me, like it was one of my values to keep the Monday email free.

    That's what I had done for so long. My email newsletter had been free for almost a decade at that point.

    And it was just really important to me to keep it that way, and so.

    My newsletter is free every Monday. And then the first thing I offered was the yes, yes advice column podcast.

    And so Substack does let you host your podcast there.

    You can embed audio, photos and video. So there's a lot of different ways that you can be creative with your newsletter in Substack.

    Now, Substack does take 10% of all the money that comes in.

    If you only want to use it with free subscribers, it is actually free to use.

    So if you're bringing in $0, you will give them $0, right?

    [13:12] Flodesk, which if you're listening and you're like, I don't want to do sub stack, I don't want to have a newsletter that isn't offering that makes money, that's great.

    You absolutely don't have to.

    I suggest Flodesk. That is what I use when I want to do a sequence of emails to introduce someone to one of my offerings.

    So for instance, when you download the Creative Ideation Portal, you get an email that says, here's day one of the Creative Ideation Portal.

    And then it might also say, hey, I'm teaching this class in a couple of weeks, you should also come to that, right?

    So I'm inviting people in to my ecosystem and I then have their email to continue communicating with them.

    Are we following?

    Yes, so that is something that is much easier to do on Flodesk.

    So if you're feeling like, I wanna keep my business as is, I wanna teach classes, play concerts, have art shows, whatever it is, be a service provider, a therapist, a chiropractor, whatever your job or work is, or your creative passion or hobby that you just wanna share about, and you're like, I absolutely don't want that to have anything to do with getting paid.

    [14:32] I would suggest using Flodesk to send unlimited emails with unlimited subscribers on Flodesk.

    It is thirty five dollars a month. And if you want 50 percent off, you can find the link for that in the show notes or at Marlee Grace dot space slash common shapes. Now, I will say again, I mentioned there's there are free options. Mailer Lite is a free option. I don't have have experience using that, but it is a free option, as well as using MailChimp at the beginning.

    So if you're like, I have zero subscribers, I don't wanna spend any money on this right now, there are absolutely ways to do this.

    For me, Flodesk makes sense because I have over 6,000 subscribers on just that marketing email list, which includes people who have downloaded the Creative Ideation Portal, my past students, members of Flexible Office.

    So that price makes sense to me because MailChimp would have already been more expensive.

    But again, this is sort of up to you in knowing where are you at in your email newsletter journey.

    [15:43] Also, Flodesk just sends really beautiful emails. It's really intuitive and really easy to use.

    I found that MailChimp was really unintuitive to me and really hard to use, and tech, it doesn't always make sense to me. It's also part of why I love using Substack and didn't love using Patreon.

    The back end of Patreon just didn't make me feel like I was creating beautiful aesthetic things.

    Whereas with Substack, I feel like the blank canvas really lets me speak the way I want to speak with my writing and my images and the other media that I want to include.

    So those are some of the ways that I've made choices around which email newsletter platforms I am using personally.

    So let's talk a little about what the hell you even put in a newsletter.

    And then let's talk a little bit about paid versus not paid. So what you put in a newsletter.

    [16:48] I'm laughing, what you put in a newsletter is literally anything you want. So I want to give a couple examples. So of newsletters and the amazing things people do with them. So I think about my friend Liz Migliarelli, whose business is called Sister Spinster. She's an amazing herbalist and teacher. And Liz's newsletter is truly so beautiful to me. So let's say Liz is teaching like a nettle magic class, right? Liz loves nettle. I love nettle. I actually just found some nettle in my yard yesterday. So let's say Liz wants to teach about nettle. So in her newsletter, she might include a poem about nettle, a folk tale about nettle tea, right? It's like she's she's gonna weave in all these different things.

    So Liz teaches a lot about apple magic.

    And so, you know, sort of leading up to the class or in promotion with the class, she might share her favorite things about apples, as well as her own stories about growing up amongst apple orchards, tending to apple orchards, things like that.

    So I share that as an example of someone who isn't monetizing their newsletter and isn't necessarily using the newsletter itself.

    [18:07] As only a place of creative writing, but is really combining those two practices together of like sharing the parts of her creative practice.

    [18:19] That integrate perfectly with teaching herbalism, practicing herbalism.

    So I'll link Liz's newsletter in the show notes so that you can take a look.

    But to me, that's just a really good example of someone who uses a newsletter to promote their classes and their offerings, as well as uses the container as a creative space to share about what they love and what they're excited about.

    [18:46] Another beautiful example of you can literally make a newsletter about anything is my friend and New York Times best-selling author, Samantha Irby, writes the newsletter, Bitches Gotta Eat, with an exclamation point, and every post is called, Who's on Judge Mathis today? And then it's numbered. So we're at number 265, and the subtitle is, An Idiotic Recap of the Greatest Syndicated Courtroom Show of All Time.

    So Sam writes these amazingly funny and hilarious books that are essays, and then this newsletter has only one theme to it for the most part, which is recapping these episodes of Judge Mathis, and they are fucking hilarious.

    And then when you click on it and open it, which I'm literally doing right now, and you scroll to the bottom, she'll have like a couple hyperlinks of, this is my next event of my book tour and here's my book.

    You can pre-order it, right? She has a new book coming out right now.

    So the newsletter itself is this sort of wild art practice of summarizing this show.

    [20:01] And then at the bottom, she still takes the opportunity to promote her books and reach out to her readers, right?

    And so it's fitting in because of how comedic and funny and amazing her books are, But it's not like every newsletter is a different topic or a different vision she's having.

    It's like, it's literally yet another recap of Judge Mathis, right?

    So I share sort of those two to just show you like this is just another place for you to literally let your freak flag fly.

    [20:38] My friend Kevin Warby, who's a musician, he used Substack in a really beautiful way. When he put his last album out, paid subscribers of his Substack got to hear the demos of the album.

    So that's, to me, another great example of, you know, it's not a huge part of his income necessarily to have the Substack, right? He's playing shows and selling albums and, you know, has a has a huge career outside of his newsletter. But by doing that newsletter, he gets to reach his listeners in a different way and give them something really special that not everyone else would have access to. Right. So just a few different sort of moving examples of what.

    [21:21] To put in a newsletter and who to send it out to. So if you've ever read my newsletter, it's called Monday Monday, it comes out every Monday on Substack. And I use the pretty much the same format every Monday, right? So it starts with a photo, usually one that someone has taken of me or one that I have taken of the world that I see. And then there's an essay that is a creative writing reflection of my week. And then I have a section called paying attention to, which is 10 links of things that I'm consuming, paying attention to literally, and excited about and want to share with my readers.

    [22:03] And so that's something that I've been doing for many years before Substack was having this sort of section that's like, look, I really want you to look at these things.

    And especially as a queer person and as a white person, both the ways that my identities intersect as the oppressor and the oppressed is I really want to use both my power and marginalized identity to draw people's attention to what my values are, which are dismantling systems of oppression, redistributing wealth and resources, and celebrating all things art that people that I love make. So people that write other newsletters are making podcasts, articles that I read, books that I'm reading.

    [22:52] Mutual aid funds to redistribute to, right?

    [22:55] And that's the other thing, with my Substack, a portion of all paid subscriptions every month get redistributed to a different organization.

    And that's something I started doing when I moved over to Substack, and to me, is just a way to sort of redirect some of my privilege, as well as draw, you know, thousands of readers' attention each month to places that I believe are important and making great change in the world.

    So those are just other things that you can think about to start to plug in what do I put in my newsletter.

    [23:32] And when we're thinking about going paid or not going paid, I think this is just something that you can sit with.

    I think if you want to monetize your writing, going on Substack makes a little more sense.

    I don't mean to be the biggest off-the-grid podcast fanboy that ever existed, but Amelia just recorded a new episode that came out that's literally called To Substack or Not to Substack.

    And I really think it was a really helpful listen to me to just always be questioning what am I monetizing, why am I monetizing it, and does it make sense, right? So definitely, I think, just sit with, is this an offering that I want to be my job.

    [24:17] Right? Even if it's your job only a little bit, it might feel like your job a lot, and you might not be bringing in enough cash for that to feel like a reciprocal relationship. So having a free email newsletter that you don't make any money on is awesome. I did it for many years. Sometimes I still miss that, right? I am committed to clocking in every Monday. I don't necessarily have some of that flexibility around it. Of course, I'm allowed to pivot. I'm allowed to pivot to this comes out every other Monday or I need to take a break for two weeks, right? Whatever it is.

    But I do think that an email marketing newsletter that is a little bit less about the offering itself.

    [25:06] Does provide a little more freedom, especially if you feel really comfortable where the rest of your income streams are coming from.

    So like I mentioned, if you are teaching classes or have a profitable podcast or are getting generous book advances or you are booked and busy with one-on-one clients, or you're playing sold-out concerts, or selling all your paintings at an art show, right?

    Maybe you are feeling abundant in your cashflow in other areas of that business ecosystem.

    And if you aren't, then maybe you do wanna think about monetizing part of your newsletter, right?

    You could make a video once a month.

    Now that Substack has video, that's really cool.

    I also wanna just pause that like, if morally or.

    [25:55] Values-wise, you don't like any of the platforms I'm talking about, whether I ever mention Instagram or Substack or Patreon or MailChimp or whatever it is, Flodesk, insert whatever container you want it to be, right? That's sort of why I say newsletter, email marketing, you know, these terms that sort of like Kleenex is a tissue, but not all tissue is a Kleenex, right? We're We're talking brand names a little bit, but if you have, maybe you have like a Mighty Networks or a membership site and you wanna be thinking about like the monetization of that or the tiers of that, like I hope that this can, you can sort of take what you like and leave the rest and translate some of this into that.

    [26:39] So with Substack, or like I said, if you, maybe you wanna do this on Patreon or somewhere else that has a subscription service where people are paying you every month, You can embed videos, or you could do like a little talk.

    Like you could literally give your own mini TED Talk that nobody asked you for, that I'm telling you you should do once a month. You can embed audio, right?

    It's important to me in terms of accessibility to always be providing transcriptions for those.

    But there's all of these different things that you can do that you can choose to put behind the paywall.

    So you could have these sort of free emails still, but then have certain parts of your work be behind a paywall.

    And one thing that you can do in Substack is you can email all of your subscribers without having it publish to the homepage of your Substack.

    So there are options to kind of give a quick announcement, this thing is happening, or things that don't have to necessarily be like the most polished thing ever that goes out to your readers.

    [27:50] So, before we end, now that we've talked a little bit about where to start, what to put in it, I want to give you a little bit of a pep talk for sending your first email newsletter.

    Or maybe you are someone who already makes a newsletter and you're feeling kind of stuck, or maybe you sure aren't, or maybe you still aren't totally sure if it's right for you, is to trust God and hit send.

    And so I say that a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but also I mean it, right?

    And if you ever hear me say God, talk about God, write about God, insert good orderly direction or spirit of the universe, clouds, rain, water, whatever it is that you like to think about, something, anything that is greater than you, trust that, even trust yourself, trust the higher power that lives inside of you, and hit send, right?

    If I would have waited to hit send in December of 2012 until I felt like I was ready, I probably wouldn't have ever hit send on that newsletter, right?

    So as listeners of Common Shapes, we are committed to not waiting to feel ready to hit send.

    Whether you are a novice newsletter creator or you have been making newsletters for years and years and years and years. You are also not too late to make a newsletter, right?

    [29:18] I really ran up against this storyline when I was making this podcast was like, everybody has a podcast. Why would I have a podcast when everybody has a podcast, right?

    The more and more people who do move to Substack, it could be easy to be like, well, everybody has a Substack or everybody has a Patreon or everybody has an email newsletter.

    [29:40] We don't talk like that to ourselves here. We hit send anyways. We want more art in the in the world, that is what we want. We want more behind the scenes moments, right?

    It's like behind the music on VH1.

    That was so cool to watch.

    And people want that. People want more from you as an artist.

    And in terms of the frequency, you can hit send once a month, you can hit send once every other month.

    I hit send once a week, plus one to three more times a month for my paid subscribers, but you don't have to go all in, right?

    I had some faith that I could move the numbers of my former Patreon members and my Instagram followers over to Substack and convert that into paid subscribers, and that has grown really steadily.

    You can do that. You can chip away at getting those subscribers to be paid subscribers and be really interested in what you're doing, or if the subscription that's paid is not the goal and the goal is to get people into your class, into the seats of your dance shows or your theater performances, send the newsletter.

    Just hit send. It doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, I imagine people might see your imperfections and think, oh, me too.

    [31:04] Me too, I feel that too. I have typos. I misspell things.

    I put words backwards sometimes. You know, whatever it is, Let your anti-perfectionism be an invitation to your readers that it's okay to be clumsy and start anyways.

    [31:23] It's okay to be mediocre and still hit send. That's what I want for you. So, in order for all the projects that you dreamed up and started writing about in episode one, you invited your spiritual comedian in episode two. You invited your spiritual comedian in episode two. And now we are preparing for our art to be an act of service, by making it public or by sharing it privately, but we're gonna be thinking about sharing it publicly.

    And so to do that, I encourage you as a listener of this podcast to have an email list.

    [32:11] Start your list today if you haven't already. And we'll keep digging into this space as the weeks go on of season one. This will not be the last time you will hear me talk about the email newsletter.

    When we're talking about art as service in episode four, we'll even dig in a little bit deeper to some of the ways the newsletter itself is of service and it's of service to you, right?

    It's serving me every week to dig in to that mirror of the self of like, what's happening in my inner and outer world?

    How can I write about and synthesize this for the people? So there's so much, there's so much.

    The art of the newsletter is juicy, it is fun, it is exciting, it's a cool place to go.

    It's a place that if you think that it's cheesy or whack or just not cool enough, you're wrong.

    [33:09] And if you're still feeling like, who am I to make a newsletter? You are the only you there will ever be. And I really hope that you experiment in this space, right? It can be an experiment to try out having a newsletter. If you hate it, you never have to do it again.

    But I promise you that it will become a channel to reach the people who will take your classes and show up for your offerings, right?

    Whatever shape your offerings make, this, I have found, is the most direct way to bring those people deeper in to your ecosystem. So, many blessings.

    I hope that you have so much fun either reworking your newsletter or taking it a little less seriously or inviting people to subscribe.

    Whatever it is, I hope that you have many newsletter your email list blessings rain down upon you.

    [34:10] Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Common Shapes.

    If you haven't already, you can download the Creative Ideation Portal at marleegrace.space slash common shapes.

    That's my free three-day email guide where I walk you through visioning your projects and focusing on your art as service. I want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible.

    Thank you to Softer Sounds Studio for editing.

    Thank you to Salt Breaker for our music.

    And thank you to Lukeza Branfman-Varissimo for our podcast art.

    And thank you so much for being a listener. I'd love if you subscribed and shared it with a friend.

    Thank you for listening to Common Shapes.

Follow along on Instagram

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter Monday Monday

The Art of Newsletters

Today’s episode of Common Shapes is about why I love newsletters and why you (yes, you) should have one.

“Just hit send. It doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, I imagine people might see your imperfections and think “me, too. I feel that, too. I have typos. I misspell things.” Whatever it is, let your anti-perfectionism be an invitation to your readers that it’s ok to be clumsy and start anyways. It’s ok to be mediocre and still hit send.”

Together we’ll explore the marketing side and the creative side of newsletters. I’ll also share—

🌸 My journey starting my newsletter

🌸 How to choose your email service provider

🌸 The newsletter tech I recommend

🌸 What to put in your newsletter

🌸 Examples from my favorite newsletters

🌸 How to decide if your newsletter should be paid or free

After you listen, go get my free Creative Ideation Portal, and get ready to hit send on your first (or next) newsletter today.

Links

🪁 Get the Creative Ideation Portal

🪁 Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday

🪁 Join Flexible Office, my digital co-working space

🪁 Take my Newsletter class

🪁 Use the code MARLEEGRACE to get 50% off your first year of Flodesk

🪁 Newsletters I mentioned in this episode: Fariha Roisin’s Substack How to Cure a Ghost, Liz Migliorelli’s Sister Spinster newsletter, Kevin Morby’s Substack

🪁 Off the Grid episode, “To Substack or Not to Substack”

🪁 Find all these links & more at marleegrace.space/commonshapes

Want more support for getting your ideas and projects off the ground? Join me for class on Sunday May 28 Live on Zoom (recorded for those who can’t make it live)

  • [0:00] Hello and welcome to Common Shapes, a podcast about practices, systems, and rituals for a creative life.

    This is episode three, the art of the newsletter.

    I'm your host, Marlee Grace, and if there's one thing you should know about me, it is that I am devoted to email newsletters. I'm devoted to physical newsletters. I'm devoted to emails that tell you about art that exists in the world. I am devoted to marketing as a creative practice. That's what Common Shapes is all about. I'm glad that you are here today.

    So if you haven't already, there is the Creative Ideation Portal, which is the three-day guide that I made that you can download for free at marleegrace.space slash common shapes.

    [1:02] It's free. It takes you through different exercises and visioning practices to dream up all of the projects that you want to make and then put them into the world.

    And so on episode one and two, I talked about the first two parts of the Creative Ideation Portal.

    And today in an episode four, we're gonna talk about art as service.

    And so the best way that I know to be of service is to have an email newsletter.

    It is a list. An email list is something that I own.

    Unlike my social media followers. It is a list that I can move between platforms So whatever you pick today or whatever you picked after listening to episode 2 or whatever You've been using for the last decade. You can switch that at any time, So if you're already stressed and you're like more I can't do it. I don't know where my newsletter should live It's okay. You can always change it. A core value of common shapes is pivoting. We can always pivot.

    [2:14] So I welcome you to this episode. I hope you bring an open mind to the art of the email newsletter. This is for you if you've never had an email newsletter, if you've had one for many years and you want some inspiration on how it could be better or grow or be different.

    And it's also for you if you're like a really famous person and think maybe you don't need a newsletter, right?

    Maybe you are a famous comedian with a podcast or you are a Grammy nominated musician and sell out stadiums or you are an actor with a television show.

    I'm a believer that you should have a channel from your fingertips to your audience that you are in control of.

    Not your agent, not your booking manager, not your editor, not your producer, you.

    You own your email list. So I want you to be open to the idea of email marketing.

    Idea of email marketing, you go, huh.

    [3:26] Did I say marketing? Doop-a-ba! It's true. I said marketing.

    I'm even going to get more comfortable saying the word here.

    Marketing as a creative practice.

    Something I promised you we would do here. So we're going to talk about both the marketing side of a newsletter and the creative side of a newsletter and how they intersect with each other.

    Welcome to Common Shapes.

    [3:57] My own journey with the newsletter started on December 21st of 2012.

    And I'm like, it was a dark day.

    No, I'm just kidding.

    Well, probably. It was winter in Michigan and I had just opened a shop called Half Company.

    I had opened it in a vintage camper and there was a neighborhood shop hop.

    And I wanted to tell the people. So I made a free MailChimp account that is a common platform that people use for their email newsletter.

    It is free to start an account with MailChimp, although it does cost money as your subscribers grow, as your subscribers grow.

    So we'll talk a little bit about who's taking a cut, where's money going, et cetera.

    But at the time MailChimp was free to start an email newsletter.

    I opened up my Gmail and I sent the link to subscribe to approximately 100 something people.

    And I said, subscribe to this newsletter if you want to get emails and updates about Have Company, my new project.

    I sent that out and I think 40 people opened it.

    [5:09] I wanna start by saying there is an importance in the consent of adding emails, right?

    We need people's consent to add their emails to our email list.

    So if you are totally starting from scratch, ethically, I would suggest that you send an email with the link to subscribe to your newsletter.

    We want people to opt in on their own accord. So feel free to open up your Gmail and email everybody that you know and are connected to and say, hey, I'm really excited.

    I'm launching this newsletter. I'd love it if you subscribed, right?

    And we can talk more later about really fleshing out how we tell people about what we're working on.

    So over the first couple of years that I was using MailChimp and had a newsletter, it was mostly for marketing.

    It was mostly to say, hey, these are new tinctures that are in the shop.

    We just got this cool tarot deck in the shop were having a quilting workshop in the shop.

    This is the resident that's here. And I would always send out the new podcast episodes, right?

    So when I would interview a resident at Hough Company, I would upload that podcast episode and send it out with the newsletter.

    So the newsletter was my way to reach people.

    Now, at the time, I was also using Instagram, which is a social networking service that I still use today. and.

    [6:37] I was finding even already then that I wasn't getting people to interact with.

    [6:44] What I was saying as much. And I was like, oh, I really want people to like take in this podcast interview. Right. And so I will also share that even if you have a big social media following or you're finding that you can find your people there, there may be dips in the algorithm or how people are interacting with your work that it might feel really good to have this more direct channel that's not designed or controlled by an algorithm, right?

    You send an email, it goes into people's inboxes.

    In 2017, I started to add an essay to my newsletter.

    [7:23] So instead of just sending marketing information about what was going on, I started to use it in a more creative way, right?

    So this is sort of when I think I started experimenting with marketing as a creative practice. I wasn't just sending emails, selling things to people, and announcing things. I wanted to practice my own skill of writing and thinking about the world through writing and sharing it with people who had opted in to read it.

    And so I've been sending out an email newsletter that is also a channel for marketing weekly since 2017. I have absolutely skipped a couple of weeks, but it has mostly come out every Monday for the last six years or so and it was on MailChimp up until 2021 and.

    [8:18] What happened was I had started a Patreon, the Planetarium portal, which I'm sure some of you listening were a part of, thank you for being there.

    And I had the Patreon and my free newsletter. And so this is where I want you to start thinking about your business ecosystem, because what I'm about to say about my own move to Substack very well might not be correct for you.

    And we're gonna talk about the different ways that the newsletters can exist. So I had a Patreon where I was interviewing artists and writing every other Monday and I was also writing my newsletter every Monday and then adding other things in the Patreon and it just felt to me like I was, I had a few too many pots on the stove of my business this ecosystem, right?

    So I usually like to think about, I have digital coworking, I have online classes, right?

    I have online classes about creative practice, I have online classes about quilting, I have my newsletter, I have writing books, right?

    I have sort of these different pieces of the puzzle.

    [9:31] And Patreon and my newsletter were just a little too similar for me to differentiate.

    And so I had seen, actually my friend Faria was the first writer I had seen using Substack.

    How to Cure a Ghost is her Substack. You should absolutely subscribe and become a reader.

    And I thought, wow, that is such a beautiful place to read writing and look for writers.

    I wonder if I could move over there. And so, what I did was I...

    [10:07] Exported all of my subscribers from MailChimp and all of my members on Patreon and imported them all onto Substack and then sent them a welcome email from there.

    So again, with your email list, you can move it at any time.

    So in episode two, I said, start an email list, pick something, right?

    Flodesk, MailChimp, MailerLite, Tiny Letter, Substack, whatever it is.

    There's also Beehive and Ghost.

    Those are two other email service providers that you can send monetized newsletters with.

    [10:45] There's also something called Moonclerk. Moonclerk is a checkout that you can embed into your website if you want to monetize your MailChimp newsletter, right?

    So there's a lot of different options in the sort of tech world, but what matters is that you own your email list.

    So you can move platforms whenever you want, right? Unlike social media, you don't own those people's contact information.

    And this is why, again, we want good consent when people are opting in for our list, right?

    We're not just adding people's emails that we have, we're really giving them the subscribe form and letting them come to us, right?

    Or we are giving them something, whether it's like a PDF or a guide, right?

    The Creative Ideation Portal is technically part of my creative marketing system.

    When you download that guide, I receive your email, which is automatically added to my email list.

    We will talk about that in another episode.

    I'm gonna keep going though. So I made the decision to move to Substack, and sort of combine the art of the email marketing system that I had created in MailChimp and the art of the paid subscription model over on Patreon.

    [12:07] So when you subscribe to my sub stack, you can either just be a free reader and read every Monday.

    It was important to me, like it was one of my values to keep the Monday email free.

    That's what I had done for so long. My email newsletter had been free for almost a decade at that point.

    And it was just really important to me to keep it that way, and so.

    My newsletter is free every Monday. And then the first thing I offered was the yes, yes advice column podcast.

    And so Substack does let you host your podcast there.

    You can embed audio, photos and video. So there's a lot of different ways that you can be creative with your newsletter in Substack.

    Now, Substack does take 10% of all the money that comes in.

    If you only want to use it with free subscribers, it is actually free to use.

    So if you're bringing in $0, you will give them $0, right?

    [13:12] Flodesk, which if you're listening and you're like, I don't want to do sub stack, I don't want to have a newsletter that isn't offering that makes money, that's great.

    You absolutely don't have to.

    I suggest Flodesk. That is what I use when I want to do a sequence of emails to introduce someone to one of my offerings.

    So for instance, when you download the Creative Ideation Portal, you get an email that says, here's day one of the Creative Ideation Portal.

    And then it might also say, hey, I'm teaching this class in a couple of weeks, you should also come to that, right?

    So I'm inviting people in to my ecosystem and I then have their email to continue communicating with them.

    Are we following?

    Yes, so that is something that is much easier to do on Flodesk.

    So if you're feeling like, I wanna keep my business as is, I wanna teach classes, play concerts, have art shows, whatever it is, be a service provider, a therapist, a chiropractor, whatever your job or work is, or your creative passion or hobby that you just wanna share about, and you're like, I absolutely don't want that to have anything to do with getting paid.

    [14:32] I would suggest using Flodesk to send unlimited emails with unlimited subscribers on Flodesk.

    It is thirty five dollars a month. And if you want 50 percent off, you can find the link for that in the show notes or at Marlee Grace dot space slash common shapes. Now, I will say again, I mentioned there's there are free options. Mailer Lite is a free option. I don't have have experience using that, but it is a free option, as well as using MailChimp at the beginning.

    So if you're like, I have zero subscribers, I don't wanna spend any money on this right now, there are absolutely ways to do this.

    For me, Flodesk makes sense because I have over 6,000 subscribers on just that marketing email list, which includes people who have downloaded the Creative Ideation Portal, my past students, members of Flexible Office.

    So that price makes sense to me because MailChimp would have already been more expensive.

    But again, this is sort of up to you in knowing where are you at in your email newsletter journey.

    [15:43] Also, Flodesk just sends really beautiful emails. It's really intuitive and really easy to use.

    I found that MailChimp was really unintuitive to me and really hard to use, and tech, it doesn't always make sense to me. It's also part of why I love using Substack and didn't love using Patreon.

    The back end of Patreon just didn't make me feel like I was creating beautiful aesthetic things.

    Whereas with Substack, I feel like the blank canvas really lets me speak the way I want to speak with my writing and my images and the other media that I want to include.

    So those are some of the ways that I've made choices around which email newsletter platforms I am using personally.

    So let's talk a little about what the hell you even put in a newsletter.

    And then let's talk a little bit about paid versus not paid. So what you put in a newsletter.

    [16:48] I'm laughing, what you put in a newsletter is literally anything you want. So I want to give a couple examples. So of newsletters and the amazing things people do with them. So I think about my friend Liz Migliarelli, whose business is called Sister Spinster. She's an amazing herbalist and teacher. And Liz's newsletter is truly so beautiful to me. So let's say Liz is teaching like a nettle magic class, right? Liz loves nettle. I love nettle. I actually just found some nettle in my yard yesterday. So let's say Liz wants to teach about nettle. So in her newsletter, she might include a poem about nettle, a folk tale about nettle tea, right? It's like she's she's gonna weave in all these different things.

    So Liz teaches a lot about apple magic.

    And so, you know, sort of leading up to the class or in promotion with the class, she might share her favorite things about apples, as well as her own stories about growing up amongst apple orchards, tending to apple orchards, things like that.

    So I share that as an example of someone who isn't monetizing their newsletter and isn't necessarily using the newsletter itself.

    [18:07] As only a place of creative writing, but is really combining those two practices together of like sharing the parts of her creative practice.

    [18:19] That integrate perfectly with teaching herbalism, practicing herbalism.

    So I'll link Liz's newsletter in the show notes so that you can take a look.

    But to me, that's just a really good example of someone who uses a newsletter to promote their classes and their offerings, as well as uses the container as a creative space to share about what they love and what they're excited about.

    [18:46] Another beautiful example of you can literally make a newsletter about anything is my friend and New York Times best-selling author, Samantha Irby, writes the newsletter, Bitches Gotta Eat, with an exclamation point, and every post is called, Who's on Judge Mathis today? And then it's numbered. So we're at number 265, and the subtitle is, An Idiotic Recap of the Greatest Syndicated Courtroom Show of All Time.

    So Sam writes these amazingly funny and hilarious books that are essays, and then this newsletter has only one theme to it for the most part, which is recapping these episodes of Judge Mathis, and they are fucking hilarious.

    And then when you click on it and open it, which I'm literally doing right now, and you scroll to the bottom, she'll have like a couple hyperlinks of, this is my next event of my book tour and here's my book.

    You can pre-order it, right? She has a new book coming out right now.

    So the newsletter itself is this sort of wild art practice of summarizing this show.

    [20:01] And then at the bottom, she still takes the opportunity to promote her books and reach out to her readers, right?

    And so it's fitting in because of how comedic and funny and amazing her books are, But it's not like every newsletter is a different topic or a different vision she's having.

    It's like, it's literally yet another recap of Judge Mathis, right?

    So I share sort of those two to just show you like this is just another place for you to literally let your freak flag fly.

    [20:38] My friend Kevin Warby, who's a musician, he used Substack in a really beautiful way. When he put his last album out, paid subscribers of his Substack got to hear the demos of the album.

    So that's, to me, another great example of, you know, it's not a huge part of his income necessarily to have the Substack, right? He's playing shows and selling albums and, you know, has a has a huge career outside of his newsletter. But by doing that newsletter, he gets to reach his listeners in a different way and give them something really special that not everyone else would have access to. Right. So just a few different sort of moving examples of what.

    [21:21] To put in a newsletter and who to send it out to. So if you've ever read my newsletter, it's called Monday Monday, it comes out every Monday on Substack. And I use the pretty much the same format every Monday, right? So it starts with a photo, usually one that someone has taken of me or one that I have taken of the world that I see. And then there's an essay that is a creative writing reflection of my week. And then I have a section called paying attention to, which is 10 links of things that I'm consuming, paying attention to literally, and excited about and want to share with my readers.

    [22:03] And so that's something that I've been doing for many years before Substack was having this sort of section that's like, look, I really want you to look at these things.

    And especially as a queer person and as a white person, both the ways that my identities intersect as the oppressor and the oppressed is I really want to use both my power and marginalized identity to draw people's attention to what my values are, which are dismantling systems of oppression, redistributing wealth and resources, and celebrating all things art that people that I love make. So people that write other newsletters are making podcasts, articles that I read, books that I'm reading.

    [22:52] Mutual aid funds to redistribute to, right?

    [22:55] And that's the other thing, with my Substack, a portion of all paid subscriptions every month get redistributed to a different organization.

    And that's something I started doing when I moved over to Substack, and to me, is just a way to sort of redirect some of my privilege, as well as draw, you know, thousands of readers' attention each month to places that I believe are important and making great change in the world.

    So those are just other things that you can think about to start to plug in what do I put in my newsletter.

    [23:32] And when we're thinking about going paid or not going paid, I think this is just something that you can sit with.

    I think if you want to monetize your writing, going on Substack makes a little more sense.

    I don't mean to be the biggest off-the-grid podcast fanboy that ever existed, but Amelia just recorded a new episode that came out that's literally called To Substack or Not to Substack.

    And I really think it was a really helpful listen to me to just always be questioning what am I monetizing, why am I monetizing it, and does it make sense, right? So definitely, I think, just sit with, is this an offering that I want to be my job.

    [24:17] Right? Even if it's your job only a little bit, it might feel like your job a lot, and you might not be bringing in enough cash for that to feel like a reciprocal relationship. So having a free email newsletter that you don't make any money on is awesome. I did it for many years. Sometimes I still miss that, right? I am committed to clocking in every Monday. I don't necessarily have some of that flexibility around it. Of course, I'm allowed to pivot. I'm allowed to pivot to this comes out every other Monday or I need to take a break for two weeks, right? Whatever it is.

    But I do think that an email marketing newsletter that is a little bit less about the offering itself.

    [25:06] Does provide a little more freedom, especially if you feel really comfortable where the rest of your income streams are coming from.

    So like I mentioned, if you are teaching classes or have a profitable podcast or are getting generous book advances or you are booked and busy with one-on-one clients, or you're playing sold-out concerts, or selling all your paintings at an art show, right?

    Maybe you are feeling abundant in your cashflow in other areas of that business ecosystem.

    And if you aren't, then maybe you do wanna think about monetizing part of your newsletter, right?

    You could make a video once a month.

    Now that Substack has video, that's really cool.

    I also wanna just pause that like, if morally or.

    [25:55] Values-wise, you don't like any of the platforms I'm talking about, whether I ever mention Instagram or Substack or Patreon or MailChimp or whatever it is, Flodesk, insert whatever container you want it to be, right? That's sort of why I say newsletter, email marketing, you know, these terms that sort of like Kleenex is a tissue, but not all tissue is a Kleenex, right? We're We're talking brand names a little bit, but if you have, maybe you have like a Mighty Networks or a membership site and you wanna be thinking about like the monetization of that or the tiers of that, like I hope that this can, you can sort of take what you like and leave the rest and translate some of this into that.

    [26:39] So with Substack, or like I said, if you, maybe you wanna do this on Patreon or somewhere else that has a subscription service where people are paying you every month, You can embed videos, or you could do like a little talk.

    Like you could literally give your own mini TED Talk that nobody asked you for, that I'm telling you you should do once a month. You can embed audio, right?

    It's important to me in terms of accessibility to always be providing transcriptions for those.

    But there's all of these different things that you can do that you can choose to put behind the paywall.

    So you could have these sort of free emails still, but then have certain parts of your work be behind a paywall.

    And one thing that you can do in Substack is you can email all of your subscribers without having it publish to the homepage of your Substack.

    So there are options to kind of give a quick announcement, this thing is happening, or things that don't have to necessarily be like the most polished thing ever that goes out to your readers.

    [27:50] So, before we end, now that we've talked a little bit about where to start, what to put in it, I want to give you a little bit of a pep talk for sending your first email newsletter.

    Or maybe you are someone who already makes a newsletter and you're feeling kind of stuck, or maybe you sure aren't, or maybe you still aren't totally sure if it's right for you, is to trust God and hit send.

    And so I say that a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but also I mean it, right?

    And if you ever hear me say God, talk about God, write about God, insert good orderly direction or spirit of the universe, clouds, rain, water, whatever it is that you like to think about, something, anything that is greater than you, trust that, even trust yourself, trust the higher power that lives inside of you, and hit send, right?

    If I would have waited to hit send in December of 2012 until I felt like I was ready, I probably wouldn't have ever hit send on that newsletter, right?

    So as listeners of Common Shapes, we are committed to not waiting to feel ready to hit send.

    Whether you are a novice newsletter creator or you have been making newsletters for years and years and years and years. You are also not too late to make a newsletter, right?

    [29:18] I really ran up against this storyline when I was making this podcast was like, everybody has a podcast. Why would I have a podcast when everybody has a podcast, right?

    The more and more people who do move to Substack, it could be easy to be like, well, everybody has a Substack or everybody has a Patreon or everybody has an email newsletter.

    [29:40] We don't talk like that to ourselves here. We hit send anyways. We want more art in the in the world, that is what we want. We want more behind the scenes moments, right?

    It's like behind the music on VH1.

    That was so cool to watch.

    And people want that. People want more from you as an artist.

    And in terms of the frequency, you can hit send once a month, you can hit send once every other month.

    I hit send once a week, plus one to three more times a month for my paid subscribers, but you don't have to go all in, right?

    I had some faith that I could move the numbers of my former Patreon members and my Instagram followers over to Substack and convert that into paid subscribers, and that has grown really steadily.

    You can do that. You can chip away at getting those subscribers to be paid subscribers and be really interested in what you're doing, or if the subscription that's paid is not the goal and the goal is to get people into your class, into the seats of your dance shows or your theater performances, send the newsletter.

    Just hit send. It doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, I imagine people might see your imperfections and think, oh, me too.

    [31:04] Me too, I feel that too. I have typos. I misspell things.

    I put words backwards sometimes. You know, whatever it is, Let your anti-perfectionism be an invitation to your readers that it's okay to be clumsy and start anyways.

    [31:23] It's okay to be mediocre and still hit send. That's what I want for you. So, in order for all the projects that you dreamed up and started writing about in episode one, you invited your spiritual comedian in episode two. You invited your spiritual comedian in episode two. And now we are preparing for our art to be an act of service, by making it public or by sharing it privately, but we're gonna be thinking about sharing it publicly.

    And so to do that, I encourage you as a listener of this podcast to have an email list.

    [32:11] Start your list today if you haven't already. And we'll keep digging into this space as the weeks go on of season one. This will not be the last time you will hear me talk about the email newsletter.

    When we're talking about art as service in episode four, we'll even dig in a little bit deeper to some of the ways the newsletter itself is of service and it's of service to you, right?

    It's serving me every week to dig in to that mirror of the self of like, what's happening in my inner and outer world?

    How can I write about and synthesize this for the people? So there's so much, there's so much.

    The art of the newsletter is juicy, it is fun, it is exciting, it's a cool place to go.

    It's a place that if you think that it's cheesy or whack or just not cool enough, you're wrong.

    [33:09] And if you're still feeling like, who am I to make a newsletter? You are the only you there will ever be. And I really hope that you experiment in this space, right? It can be an experiment to try out having a newsletter. If you hate it, you never have to do it again.

    But I promise you that it will become a channel to reach the people who will take your classes and show up for your offerings, right?

    Whatever shape your offerings make, this, I have found, is the most direct way to bring those people deeper in to your ecosystem. So, many blessings.

    I hope that you have so much fun either reworking your newsletter or taking it a little less seriously or inviting people to subscribe.

    Whatever it is, I hope that you have many newsletter your email list blessings rain down upon you.

    [34:10] Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Common Shapes.

    If you haven't already, you can download the Creative Ideation Portal at marleegrace.space slash common shapes.

    That's my free three-day email guide where I walk you through visioning your projects and focusing on your art as service. I want to thank everyone who makes this podcast possible.

    Thank you to Softer Sounds Studio for editing.

    Thank you to Salt Breaker for our music.

    And thank you to Lukeza Branfman-Varissimo for our podcast art.

    And thank you so much for being a listener. I'd love if you subscribed and shared it with a friend.

    Thank you for listening to Common Shapes.

Follow along on Instagram

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter Monday Monday

Creating Creative Containers

Today’s episode of Common Shapes is about creating creative containers for our work and convening the spiritual committees that help us make and share our art.

“Artists need each other. We need to be in community with other artists and other writers to feel less alone and like we can put our work into the world and trust that it’ll be received.”

Tune in to hear me share

🧷 The many shapes my work has taken

🧷 How I select and gather my spiritual committee for each creative project

🧷 Why you need an email list

🧷 All kinds of containers your work can take

🧷 The importance of being in community with other artists

Then grab my free Creative Ideation Portal and start gathering your committee and outlining your first project today.

Links

🔼 Get the Creative Ideation Portal

🔼 Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday

🔼 Join Flexible Office, my digital co-working space

🔼 Take my Newsletter class

🔼 Teachers I shared: Bear Hebert of Marketing for Weirdos & Amelia Hruby of Off the Grid

Find all these links & more at marleegrace.space/commonshapes

Want more support for getting your ideas and projects off the ground? Join me for class on Sunday May 28 Live on Zoom (recorded for those who can’t make it live)

  • Description text go[0:00] Hello, and welcome to Common Shapes, a podcast about practices, rituals, and systems for a creative life. You are listening to episode two. I'm Marlee Grace, and I'm so happy to be with you. 

    [0:10] Music. 

    [0:28] Again. On episode one, we talked about our projects and our visions for the world, and we let ourselves dream into being what those things could be. So I'm going to remind you to grab the Creative Ideation Portal if you haven't yet, and you can go to marleegrace.space slash common shapes. That's where the episode archive is, the show notes, and the guide that is free to download. So that will help you as you're listening to these first few episodes and you're and you're like, I need a little more structure, a little more guidance, that guide is there for you, that portal. 

    [1:02] So today I wanna talk about containers and I wanna talk about the spiritual committees that help us to make things and put things into the world. 

    So something I think a lot about, talk a lot about, and teach a lot about is our containers and the shapes that we make, right? So I named this podcast Common Shapes because I love thinking about the ordinary things, the ordinary magic in the world, the mundane, as mysterious, and the shapes that we make. And as a dancer and a quilter, as someone tattooed with lots of drawings, I think a lot about shapes and shape making and shape shifting and all of the many things that we do. So if you're listening to this podcast, I imagine, you might make many shapes as well. You too might identify as a shape shifter of sorts. 

    And so I welcome you into this next step of visioning that's about the containers that hold everything that we do, as well as the spiritual committee that helps us along the way, right? So. 

    [2:18] When you're listening to Common Shapes, you might hear me talk about God or the universe or spirit, and I want you to just insert whatever feels correct to you. If you're like, I'm a complete atheist, I don't believe in any God, spirit, universe, etc., that's great. 

    You can plug in whatever feels good to you. I love to use clouds and earth and the lake and waves and the cosmic mysterious fourth dimension of existence. So I wanna start with thinking about our containers and I wanna start by saying something that you might bristle at a little bit, which is I want you, dear listener of the Common Shapes podcast, to have a email. 

    [3:06] I'm not even going to say the word newsletter yet. I just want you to be collecting emails of your readers, your fans, your students, your future collectors of your art. I want you to have their emails somewhere. 

    The first email list I ever had was on a clipboard at the checkout counter at Have Company. 

    And it said, add your email if you want to get email updates. 

    And that is slowly how I built an email list, which now, for me, has over 22,000 people on it. For many, many years, I built it up, it only had 8,000 people, just a year and a half, almost two years ago. 

    And then with my consistent writing practice, it got even bigger. 

    But this is an example of you can have an email list with 10 people on it, and you are going to have a direct channel to reach those people, those people that are going to read Read your writing, take your class, take your medicine, whatever it is, right? 

    They're going to show up and be available to you for you to share your beautiful, beautiful work with them. 

    So that is container number one. So we're going to talk about the different containers today, and I'm going to just go through a little bit about what my containers are. So I write books. 

    [4:26] I teach classes. I send out a weekly newsletter. I have a weekly podcast, right? 

    This podcast comes out every Wednesday while we're in season. 

    And I host a digital co-working space that meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays. 

    It's called Flexible Office. 

    If you're listening and wanna join us, I would love to have you. 

    [4:48] I post things on social media. I market things in my newsletter. 

    I teach in my classrooms, right? It's like little things happen in this sort of business ecosystem. 

    So you visioned your projects, you have all these beautiful things, and we're gonna start sort of tying together, like what does your business, creative art practice ecosystem look like? 

    And how do you tell people that it exists? 

    That's sort of the starting framework for the Common Shapes podcast. 

    It's sort of the starting framework for my own work. 

    And it, I think, will help you to sort of make a beginning, right, and craft a beginning. 

    We're gonna really look at, like, what is the art of starting? 

    What is the art of beginning again, right? 

    I imagine many of you listening have made beginnings. You're like, I made a beginning already, and then I stopped. 

    [5:46] And I love this idea that it's not if we stop, it's when we stop. 

    I think for those of us who are tornado people, I love that the people at Holisticism, Michelle uses squiggly brained, neurodivergent, however you identify, right? 

    It's like we're piecing things together and we're floating a little bit. 

    And so we wanna have these containers where we come back to ourselves and our work. 

    And we don't have to do that by ourselves. So I want to share about containers. 

    I want to share about how we don't have to do any of this by ourselves. 

    And we're just gonna dig in, dig in. So welcome to Common Shapes. 

    Welcome to episode two. Thank you for listening to episode one. 

    I love to have you here. And I love to think about all of the shapes that we make together and apart. 

    I want to say that you can invite your ancestors into this process with you. 

    And so in the Creative Ideation Portal, you'll have this writing exercise where you get to look at like, who are my chosen ancestors? 

    Who are my blood ancestors? Who do I want to invite into this process? 

    Can I bring us through this part first a little bit? 

    [7:10] It can be magical to start an email list. It can be magical to start a newsletter, right? It can be a magical experience to log into Flowdesk and be like, yes, I'm going to send emails to people. We'll talk about Flowdesk later on in this episode. 

    But I want to share that because it can feel really lonely to be an artist and someone who makes things in this world, a writer, a painter, a knitter, a quilter, whatever it is that you are, a lawyer, a nurse, maybe a therapist. 

    Maybe you don't have a job that you necessarily name as creative. 

    Maybe you have a nine to five and you're trying to figure out how to just share more about something that you're passionate about, like gardening or painting houses or making a watercolor sunset painting of your yard every morning. 

    I don't know what it is that you are necessarily doing, but you're looking for a way to share that, and it can be lonely, but you don't have to do it alone. You can do it by yourself, right? 

    That's something I think a lot about is like, oh, my little house projects, I do them by myself, but I don't do them alone. 

    I do them with the help and the visioning of other people who are better at it than me. 

    [8:28] Who have done it before me, right? 

    Who can guide me in that way. And so I invite you to bring in your well ancestors, chosen ancestors. 

    I love talking about like Marty Mann is a big one. For me, she was the first woman to get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. She was a lesbian and lived sober for many years and did a lot of activism around. 

    The public's understanding of addiction and alcoholism. So I often invite her into my process, right? I didn't know her. We're not actually related, right? But you can sort of pick these. 

    [9:05] Chosen ancestors in this way. Others of mine are Octavia Butler, Joan Didion, Zona Gale, James Baldwin, and Attel Adnan, right? So those are other writers and artists and thinkers that inspire me, that I wanna invite them into my process of making and living and living out my values and weaving my values into my work. 

    I don't do that alone. I do that with the guidance of ancestors such as those. 

    So when I'm working on my next book, which I'm sure I will talk about the process as it happens. 

    [9:43] I've written two books that have come out with a major publisher and two that I've self-published. 

    Those two first books are How to Not Always Be Working and Getting to Center. 

    And then I self-published a catalog about my dance project, Personal Practice, that's called A Sacred Shift. 

    And then I made another book that is all of the advice transcribed from my radio show, Friendship Village, which is named after a book from the small town that my dad is from in Wisconsin called Friendship Village by the writer Zona Gale. 

    So you heard she was on my ancestral committee of guidance. So this next book I'm working on, which is really about reclaiming our attention in our artistic practices, I invited my four grandparents, one of which I never met, one of which was only alive until I was three, one of which was only alive until I was nine, and the other of which died about six years ago. 

    And so I share. 

    All of these modes of sort of connecting with the dead to give you an opportunity to call in sort of their bright spots. And so I thought a lot about each of my grandparents and sort of like, what would they have me write about in this book, right? Like, what were they. 

    [11:03] Practicing and thinking about? I was thinking about one of my grandparents, Eldon, who who was amazing with money, something I did not inherit. 

    So I think about like channeling that. I also have on my mom's side, my uncle Don, who is married to my Annie artist, did my parents' taxes for years. 

    And he did them all on like yellow legal pads. Like he had this office that was just like stacks and stacks of legal pads. 

    And his office, I thought, was like the coolest spot in his house. 

    The Virgo rising in me was just like, Oh, this man's office is so cool. 

    And so I can think about that when I'm doing my own taxes or when I'm thinking about writing money is to think about my uncle Don and like all of the magic that was around him. 

    And these people weren't like people I was necessarily really that connected with when they were on earth or if I was, I was such a young child that we didn't necessarily have a connection in adulthood, I get to choose to be connected to them now and invite them into my creative practice. 

    And you can also have an archetypal committee. So maybe there's living people or writers or artists. 

    [12:18] Who you wanna embody their energy, right? 

    You wanna embody something about them or something that they bring to the world. 

    Like I remember after watching the Lady Gaga documentary, like wanting to bring the work ethic of Lady Gaga into some of what I do. 

    Yeah, so maybe there's someone who you've watched a documentary about them recently or you read their memoir. 

    Definitely relate to Pamela Anderson's documentary that recently came out. 

    I know she wrote a memoir, I haven't read that, but I've also like really attached myself to a few Pamela Anderson quotes about when she left social media for a while. 

    I believe she's returned probably to promote her documentary and her memoir. 

    And that's something I wanna bring into my book writing, right, is like what Pamela Anderson says about social media. 

    And so they might be these sort of like random offshoots where you're sort of like, Mar, what? 

    Like, what are these people? Why are these the people that you're thinking about inviting in? 

    But it's just anyone who's bringing sort of like a spark of what you wanna be bringing in to your work. 

    So we have our spiritual committee, ancestors, archetypes. 

    [13:35] Spiritual chosen ancestors, queer ancestors, whatever they are, artist ancestors, and we're writing about them and inviting them into our committee of makers. 

    And this is gonna help us put our projects into the world. We don't have to do this all by ourselves, right? 

    We might do it alone, but not by ourselves. 

    The next thing we're going to do is start outlining our projects. And so I want to pause here because I want to talk about outlining our projects and I want to talk about moving the projects forward. But I'm going to pause to bring us back to our containers. 

    There's so many containers, right? You could be wanting to have a newsletter. You could be thinking about writing a book. Maybe you're writing a play. Maybe you're making a television show. Maybe you're making a series of one-off works, like a series of paintings or. 

    [14:33] Textile installation work. You might be teaching an online class. Maybe you're working on a class syllabus for a university. Maybe you're self-publishing a zine or a book. Maybe you are, let's see what else, making a bumper sticker, or making, sewing pillows, or making clothes. 

    I mean, maybe you're starting a dog walking business. There's, I could go on and on and on. 

    Maybe you're making your own membership site using Mighty Networks or Patreon. 

    I imagine if you are listening to this podcast, you might be trying to shape the offering. 

    You are making the common shape of your work and you are figuring out what it is. 

    And it is my hope that I can share some of my containers so that you can figure out like, what are all my pots on the stove? How do I want all of these things to exist? 

    And I wanted to start with get an email. 

    [15:30] List because especially if you're familiar with any of my writing, something I think a lot about is social media and how painful it can be to use it, but how so many of us do keep using it. And the thing about email marketing, and yes, I will continue to use the word marketing and we will bristle, but we will accept it and celebrate it as a place to be creative and have fun, right? 

    It's like we weirdly at some point stopped thinking of like using Instagram, Twitter, TikTok as quote marketing, but it is, we're sharing ourselves. 

    And so I wanna get comfortable both myself as the host and you as the listener with using the word marketing and not hating it every time, right? 

    I really believe in marketing as a creative practice. I wanna name, you know, one of my teachers, I took the class Marketing for Weirdos with Bear A. Bear, a class I definitely recommend. 

    I think they'll be teaching it again this fall. 

    And just many, many other people who have reminded me that marketing doesn't have to be a bad thing. 

    [16:43] Okay, the email newsletter. So I mentioned this on episode one. 

    I've been sending an email newsletter for 10 years. In many ways, it has been a marketing tool. 

    And then at some point it shifted into a writing tool. 

    So I don't want you to get too far ahead of yourself. In episode three, we will talk about, the bones of the newsletter, like which one to pick and how should I do it and what should I do it with? 

    But for right now, pick anything, right? 

    So there's Tiny Letter, there's MailChimp, there's MailerLite, there's Flodesk. 

    Flodesk and Substack are the two things that I use. 

    I'll say that and I'll get into them more next episode, but just pick something to start collecting people's emails and then get ready to maybe share some of your writing or use that list to share what you're making. 

    So it's not too late. 

    You don't have to have a fancy newsletter that you put out every week. 

    That's not what this is about. It's about collecting emails so that you have a list that you can share with when you birth these projects into the world, okay? 

    So pick something and you can always migrate that list, right? 

    So for years, my list was hosted on MailChimp and then it switched to Substack and now I use a mix of Substack and Flowdesk to collect those emails and send my thoughts out into the world, right? 

    [18:12] So pick something, collect the emails, and have that so that you can get ready to sort of share the work into the world. So container number one is going to be a newsletter or an email list, right? I'm going to sort of put those into one container right now. That is both part of the ecosystem that is part marketing and part the offering, right? It's sort of similar to this this podcast, I might share my work that I want you to be a part of. 

    I might say, hey, this class is coming up. I'd love to see you there. 

    Or hey, read my newsletter, right? But it's also the podcast itself is an offering. 

    It's a teaching space. It's a space that I'm sharing with you. 

    I definitely wanna shout out the editor of this podcast and a podcast that I love so much, Off The Grid with Amelia Hruby. 

    And that is a podcast that I feel like I have learned so much about marketing and sort of the channels and the offerings and the things that I am thinking about around how I share my work and where I share my work and how I do that. 

    So again, it's important to me to name teachers and name where I'm getting information and how I'm thinking about things. So container number one, the newsletter slash the email list. 

    [19:30] Other containers would be a podcast or a place to share your voice. 

    I could also see this being like a YouTube channel or on somewhere like Substack or different newsletters. 

    You can embed video or embed audio. So there's places for you to talk and teach in that way. 

    Maybe one of the projects that you visioned was like, I want to talk about swimming and teaching people how to swim. 

    So we have the project, we have like, I wanna teach people to swim, that's my big idea. 

    And then that could exist in so many ways. 

    You could write a book about swimming, you could make a weekly podcast about swimming, you could make an interview series in your newsletter where you interview people about their swimming practice. 

    There's so many different containers that these things and the shapes that they can start to make. 

    [20:22] Books are a long form container, something that we deeply do by ourselves, but that we don't have to. 

    Although people write books with other people. So that's to be determined. 

    Maybe we don't have to write things alone. Maybe we don't have to write books by ourselves. 

    But a book is another container that your work can be in. I shared a little about the different books I've made, and I hope those give you some examples of making a catalog of another project in book form is a beautiful way to sort of like cross the containers, right? 

    So I had a radio show for a year when I lived in Madrid, New Mexico called Friendship Village. 

    And I would take those episodes and the amazing Isabel Osgood Roach of Feeling Space would transcribe those episodes and then helped me edit and take those transcriptions and put them into a book that Rose Zinnia then laid out and made into a beautiful book. 

    [21:23] That I self-published and printed using Lulu. 

    [21:27] And then I did a pre-order, people ordered them, I had enough money to put them out into the world, voila. That is an example of a project that I lost money on. I don't even know if I ever made money. Like the radio show was a community radio show. It was free. I paid Isabel to transcribe. 

    I paid Rose to lay out the book. By the time I made sales, I maybe broke even. But it was a passionate project that I had. And I really wanted there to be a physical piece of this beautiful thing that I had done for a year. So that's just an example of a container. 

    And I also just want to be so abundantly transparent on this podcast about where my own money comes from and where it goes and how I use it and spend it, my debt, my income, et cetera. So I don't come from money. I don't have any generational wealth and I don't have a partner with wealth. 

    I don't have sort of any ties to wealth personally. 

    And I have created all of these different containers that have allowed me to have an income that I was able to buy a house, I'm able to support myself, raise my dog in the North, things like that. 

    So I just like to be really clear and transparent about all of those things. 

    Other containers, obviously art objects, right? So a big part of my ecosystem. 

    [22:55] An example is I don't sell quilts, but I do make money teaching other people how to quilt, right? 

    So that could be a part of your ecosystem is maybe you're feeling really burnt out on making the thing and you wanna try teaching. 

    You don't have to wait to feel like you're this perfect expert to teach the thing, right? 

    So that brings me to teaching, the object, kind of all these different containers, right? 

    Maybe you're a little bit tired of teaching and you want to actually start making more work. 

    I know I felt that I've had a goal of like, maybe I'll have a quilt show. 

    Maybe that would feel good. And then I'm like, will I sell them? 

    [23:35] More to be revealed. These are sort of the different ways that we can be pivoting kind of within the shapes. 

    Bumper stickers, right? that's a classic, like stickers, T-shirts, different wearable, usable objects. 

    Of course, if you're making ceramics or have a shop of other crafts, maybe you wanna make a PDF ebook that goes with it or something like that, right? 

    So I could go on and on forever about all the different containers that these projects can go into, but I really wanna just put into your head, have an email list, think about having a newsletter, and in the next episode, we'll really talk about it. 

    [24:17] The next step of making this beginning, creating these containers, bringing our project into the world is making a project outline. 

    So when you're making a project outline, it's an opportunity to really look at the beginning, middle and end of what you want your project to be. 

    So in the Creative Ideation Portal are two things. There is a project database. 

    So it's a notion page. So for any of you who are new to Notion, it is an online digital website system. 

    I'm not perfect at explaining these things, but it is a place where you can start to organize your ideas and your projects, and the Creative Ideation Portal is hosted in Notion. 

    So you can make your own Notion account and duplicate the Creative Ideation Portal into it, and then you'll have this project database. 

    And it's the exact way that I organize my own projects. So you can sort of put your projects in there. 

    [25:17] And then open them and there's a little template for how to outline your own project. 

    So I love thinking about, let's say this podcast is a project that I was outlining, right? 

    So I might use the outline to think about my why, to think about the timeline, to think about the name, the subtitle, who's it going to be for, right? 

    So the outline is both a place for me to really dream up, Like, who is this project for? 

    It goes deeper into the why that we talked about in episode one. 

    [25:49] Who is this project for? Where do I want it to be in the world? 

    What's it gonna feel like, right? 

    I love thinking about that. When I was thinking about making this podcast, thinking about like, what will it feel like to like drive and listen to the podcast or to like be cooking and listen to the podcast, right? 

    And so this is an invitation to really start outlining this project that you want to put out into the world. 

    And then the last step in this sort of part of visioning the project and the containers we've invited in our Ancestral Spiritual Committee is... 

    [26:31] Taking another step forward. So what's one thing that you can do in the next 24 hours to move the project forward? 

    Maybe that's emailing a collaborator. 

    Maybe that's even just texting one friend to say, hey, I'm gonna do this thing. 

    I would love, as always, to invite you to join Flexible Office, which is open at any time. 

    Your first two weeks are always free. That is my experimental digital coworking group, and we meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 a.m. PST, which is 11 a.m. EST for two hours of uninterrupted co-working. 

    So you'll be in a room with other queers, weirdos, freaks, artists, writers who are doing amazing things and putting amazing work into the world. 

    And it's a beautiful place to find accountability and community. 

    It's hosted on Mighty Network, so you have an opportunity to chat with each other outside of co-working. 

    If not that room, find somewhere to find community and accountability. 

    I love something that Beth Pickens always talks about and writes about that I love so much is artists need each other. 

    We need to be in community with other artists and other writers to feel less alone and like we can put our work into the world and trust that it will be received. 

    And here's the thing. 

    [27:56] I always love to say, not everyone will like your work and in fact, some people will hate it. 

    Something I love to do is share my Goodreads reviews that are really, really bad about my books because they make me laugh. 

    They make me feel joyful that someone was so honest with what they didn't like or something. 

    It's an opportunity for me to like, you know, Jesus take the wheel a little bit and be like, yeah, people are not gonna like what you make and we still show up to make the work. 

    [28:30] So keep moving, keep moving that needle forward on all of these projects. 

    In episode one, I talked about breaking all of your projects down to three and then maybe picking one to three to really focus on while you're doing the creative ideation portal or while you're listening to this podcast. 

    I want you to just think about like, OK, cool. So this is the project that I'm working on right now, and I'm moving this through these different steps. 

    And I'm gonna think about how to talk about it and put it into the world. 

    So on episode three, we're gonna talk about the art of the newsletter and in episode four, we're gonna talk about our art as service in the world. 

    And I'm just so grateful that so many of you have tuned in to Common Shapes. 

    I'm so grateful to share this podcast with the world. 

    Thank you for all your support. I'd love it if you subscribed and wrote a review or rated it in wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you so much to the team who makes this podcast possible. 

    [29:32] Music. es here

Follow along on Instagram

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter Monday Monday

Making A Beginning

Welcome to Common Shapes! This week’s episode is about the art of beginning AKA the moment just before the sunrise of our projects when anything and everything is possible.

SPOTIFY + APPLE PODCASTS + AUDIBLE

“The first step of beginning is to dream up all of the things that you want to begin. And it is my hope that once you start to see clearly all of the beautiful things that you want to bring into the world that you will feel a sense of desire and hope around their existence.”

Tune in to hear me share

🪜 Stories of my many creative beginnings

🪜 My favorite visioning process

🪜 Reflections on imposter syndrome

🪜The magic of starting small

Then grab my free Creative Ideation Portal and start dreaming up your own beginnings today.

Links

🔑 Get the Creative Ideation Portal

🔑 Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday

🔑 Join Flexible Office, my digital co-working space

🔑 Sign up for my next class, The Art of Beginning

🔑 Take my Newsletter class

Find all these links & more at marleegrace.space/commonshapes

Want more support for getting your ideas and projects off the ground? Join me for class on Sunday May 28 Live on Zoom (recorded for those who can’t make it live)

  • 00:00

    Hello, and welcome to common shapes, a podcast about practices, systems and rituals for creative life. This is also a podcast about building business ecosystems that align with our core values. It's about marketing, as a creative practice, rather than something that we dread, and never want to do. This is a podcast about friendship, and collaboration and figuring out how to make money from our art and the things that we do and the things that we love. It's about hobbies and passions, and how we pay attention to our neighbors in both the digital sphere and in real life. I'm Marlee grace, most people call me Mar, I am a writer, I am a dancer, I am a quilter. And I am a teacher of many things, mostly the art of improvisational quiltmaking. I teach about writing books about being devoted to our creative practice, how we navigate devotion and discipline. And many of you have taken my newsletter class. I've been sending a digital newsletter for the past over 10 years now weekly for the last six. And I love talking about emails, and marketing and sharing our work and having an offering that is an email newsletter. So you'll definitely hear me talk about that on this podcast. If you're interested in becoming a reader, you can find my newsletter at Marlee grace.substack.com. It's called Monday, Monday, it comes out every Monday, it is free. Every Monday has over 22,000 weekly readers at the time of this recording, it's been a featured substack publication. It's one of the top art in illustration, sub stacks. I'm extremely proud of it. I love to write it. And I love to talk about newsletters. So a lot of what we'll talk about in this podcast is really about how I bring my work into the world. So much of what I love to teach about is not waiting to not feel afraid to share things. But to do it anyways. Right? I didn't necessarily sit down to record this podcast today and think I am completely ready now to record this podcast and put it into the world, right? Acting my way into right thinking a little bit borrowed from the 12 step world. But I really love that idea of you know, I sit down to do the thing. And that's what brings me into the self esteem that I'm looking for so often before I do the thing. But I really find that is the action that helps us get to the thing. So I am so delighted that you're listening to this very first episode of common shapes. We're at the beginning, and what better way to be at the beginning than to talk about the beginning. I've created many things in my own life. I have made books and dances and quilts and online classes and newsletters, and other podcasts and all sorts of things. Many of you have been listening to me podcast for almost a decade. I started in 2014 when I had the half company podcast and have company was a space that I ran from 2012 to 2016. It started in a camper and transitioned into a storefront that was a shop and an art gallery and an artist's residency and the podcast was me interviewing each of the resident artists. And I did that using the Voice Memo app of my iPhone. And I share that to say don't wait to have the tools that you think you need to do the thing, right? You don't need an art studio to be an artist. You don't need a microphone to make a podcast. I think we so often think

    oh, I just if I just had x, y and z, then I could do the thing. And I know this because I've experienced this myself with so many different things. I think I thought for so long that because I didn't feel like a professional quilter or because I didn't have training in how to sew a straight line. I couldn't teach other people to quilt, but that is not true. In fact, many people who are excellent expert quilters love to come to my quilt class because they want to learn to break free I have technique and construction, and learn to make a quilt without rulers and without rules and no patterns. So, on today's episode, I just want to look at the art of beginning, the beginning of the beginning, the dawn before the beginning, right, this moment just before the sunrise of our projects and everything that we're doing. And I'll share a little bit about my own process of beginning. And, you know, for me, this podcast is really an expression and an extension of my teaching. And I want it to be a place that I can share everything I've learned in the past 10 plus years of being self employed, what has gone well, and what is exciting to me, and what's exciting to me today, and I will be more than happy to share the mistakes, or the failures or the hurdles that have led me to where I am today is sort of in hopes that you can learn from them, and maybe find yourself in a more easeful way

    06:19

    I want to share about a guide that I made that is available for you, for free. It's called the creative ideation portal, you can go to Marlee Grace dot space, slash common shapes and find it there. That is also where everything lives for this podcast. So if you're wanting to find show notes, and things that I mentioned, and future episodes, and past episodes, those will all live at Marly Grace dot space slash common shapes. So the creative ideation portal is something I created to organize and vision, your projects. And so everything I talked about in this episode, you can grab that guide, and it's sort of going to help you maybe organize some of your thoughts. So the next time you're at a computer, check it out, download it, and it brings you through three days of sort of looking at your project. So these first few episodes of the common shapes podcast, I'll sort of walk us through the creative ideation portal, and hopefully help you to birth your beautiful projects into the world. Alright, so as a listener of common shapes, I invite you to act as if you believe that your work is worthy of being put into the world. So in flexible office, the digital co working space that I host, we have a rule number one, which is that we act as if we feel ready to put our work into the world. So I mentioned this earlier, right, this feeling of like, I need to feel ready to put my work in the world, I need it to feel like shiny and perfect and ready to go. And so a big value of all things Marlee grace, and a big value of this podcast is anti perfectionism. Another thing I'll say about this episode, and every episode of this podcast is take what you like and leave the rest. I love to quote my friend Amelia, who hosts pony sweat, the fiercely non competitive aerobics class, and she says, fuck the moves, right. So she gives you this choreography for you to do and it's like, if you don't like doing it, or you need to like mold, something for your body to be able to do the moves, like fuck the moves, do whatever you need to do. So take what you like and leave the rest. Fuck the moves. I really want you to just shape whatever I'm saying, for your own work and your own life, acting as if we feel ready to just put our work into the world. And so the first step of beginning is to dream up all of the things that you want to begin. And it is my hope that once you start to see clearly off the beautiful things that you want to bring into the world that you will feel a sense of desire and hope around their existence. I usually suggest people set a timer for seven minutes. This is something I do when I teach. It's something that's in the creative ideation portal. If you're driving or you're doing something you want to keep listening, you don't necessarily need to stop this podcast and set this timer for seven minutes although if you want to great, but I always say just take a pen and paper out or open a blank Google Doc or a document in notion and just write everything down that you want to do hobbies per projects, passions, business

    ideas, anything that you want to do. So when I make my list, I'm usually, you know, right now my list has to do with like, getting clear on my debt, right? I talk a lot about how I filed seven years of taxes at once. And that'll be a story for another episode, I'm sure. But taking the time to look at like, what are my some of my money goals, I have goals around gardening and things around my home. And I have goals around this podcast, or my newsletter, or my next book that I'm writing, right. And so I just write everything out just lists and lists and lists, I love making lists, you will find, if you don't know already about me, I love the art of list making. It's really important to me, it's how I vision, it's how I dream. And it's how I get really clear on what projects I want to focus on and think about. And so after I make my list of like, all of the projects I want to do, I usually pick three, and then I sort of focus on those three for about a week or so. And, you know, you might want to pick one that the most exciting to you, one that maybe has to do with earning on this podcast, we're not going to shy away from like talking about money and thinking about where money comes from and where we want it to come from. Right. And so thinking about which of these projects might move the needle forward on my earning. And why do I want to earn I think is another great question that we'll be asking ourselves as me as host you as listener, and then one that's maybe tied to a hobby or separate from your job. And in 2018, I want to share you know, I wrote a book called How to not always be working. And it is often a joke given to me or that I make towards myself that I should read that book. Because it's so easy for me to sort of weave everything I do into my job or into my work. And so I want to just say, I am looking at things through, you know, an anti capitalist lens and being critical of systems of oppression and work addiction and the things that can get in the way of rest and ease. So throughout thinking about your projects, and what you want to bring into the world. Keep an eye on that keep an eye on am I trying to turn too many things into money making ideas, am I not willing to earn enough on some of my ideas, you know, take an easy approach to looking at it. But that's just something that's on the forefront of my mind right now and something I'm thinking a lot about. So I invite you into the space where we're dreaming, and we're visioning. I want to start by sharing this quote from Bell Hooks, which says, To be truly visionary, we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality, while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality. And so I share that, when we're making these lists, we are going past our current reality. And we're also staying rooted in where we are today. Once you start to get clear on everything you want to bring into the world, it can feel really overwhelming. We can really feel like oh my god, do I even like any of this stuff. Am I good at any of this stuff, right? We're going to start really being in like the imposter syndrome of it all. And I also just want to offer to us some of my own thoughts about imposter syndrome, because I think there's usually two things that are coming up. One of them is more research is needed. And I want to share the story of another sort of beginning of mine. It's actually really beautiful that the day I'm recording this episode, I got a letter that is from the University of Nebraska and Lincoln that says that I was accepted into their quilt studies graduate certificate program that starts this fall. It's remote, I'm not moving. But it's really exciting to me because a quilt is something human which is my class I've been teaching for the last two and a half years, I decided to take a break from it. And I didn't know why. But I just knew I needed a second and I knew that something else needed to come through me. And part of it was that I knew I had more to learn to be a teacher. And I saw this program and I applied to it and I got in and today I'm like, Oh, I can't wait to teach quote class. Again, I can't wait to go back to teaching about quilting and about the craft of quilting and the art of quilting. And so that's to say, my imposter syndrome sometimes. You know, it's mean, first of all, the voice of like you are an imposter is the inner asshole. That is just so mean. And so we can talk back to that voice and say, Hey, what are you trying to say? Because it might just be saying, Hey, you might need to do a little more research on this thing before you put it into the world. Or,

    15:35

    I definitely noticed a voice of imposter syndrome around making a podcast, like my microphone wasn't fancy enough, or I'm going to stumble over my words, and this isn't going to make any sense. And in some ways I have to accept like, this podcast will make sense to the people who it is for. And may I pray that it is to be found by the people who need it the most, I don't need to overly think about it making too much sense. I mean, I want it to make sense. You know, it's like it that's the dance of imposter syndrome, right is like, how do we greet? Whatever it's asking us, which is usually like, I want to put work into the world that is worthy and is deep and that has been taking good care of. But I also know that my perfectionism will stop me from putting things into the world. So I, I invite you as we're in this dance, right? We're acting as if, but we're also looking at what are the voices in my head telling me, but really, like, what are the voices really asking of us. And sometimes it is to go deeper. And sometimes it's to be like, Oh, imposter syndrome voice thank you so much for stopping by. But I actually am going to record this podcast and put it into the world. And trust that in whatever form it takes, it will be good enough for the people. I want to say that as your host, my beginnings are as a dancer. So in 2010, I graduated with a BFA in dance from the University of Michigan, and I love dance, I love to teach dance, I love to think about dance. But dance is also a very small part of my income. If anything, I think we're talking less less than 5% every year. If that. However, improvisation, as a tool for composition, is something I learned first in the dance classroom, in the dance studio. And it's something I bring in to my quilting class, into newsletter class into how I write my newsletter, how I do everything is this spontaneous, improvisational making? My beginning is as a dancer. But I have little beginnings as a writer as a quilter, that are all sort of sprinkled throughout. But it really all comes back to shape making of the body and how I translate that into my writing. And so when you're making these projects, and you're thinking about things, the other thing to really think about is, you know, I'm a big believer in calling ourselves what we are right. I am an artist, I am a dancer, I am a writer. And it's so interesting, because dance can often be the thing I get the most like caught up in like, Am I really a dancer, and it's the thing I have the most maybe things on paper that would prove I end the thing, right? For some reason, it's easy for me to call myself a quilter. It's like I've made quilts. I teach quilt class, I'm a quilter with no credentials in quiltmaking, right? But with dance, it's really easy for me to question it because I'm not actively in a dance practice as much as I am in a writing practice or a quilting practice. I'm not I've never been in a dance company. Right? I have these ideas, especially I think going to school for dance. I have these ideas of like what a dancer really is. And so I can question that, even though I have a college degree in dance. I had a dance project called personal practice where I posted dance videos on Instagram self published a book around it that was written about in the New York Times dance magazine, Vanity Fair. And yet still, I think, am I a dancer. And so this is where it ties into impostor syndrome, and thinking about how we question ourselves, and we question what we call ourselves but I encourage you to call yourself what it is You are moving towards. So if you are moving towards artistry, call yourself an artist. If you are writing a newsletter, even if you're an herbalist who writes a newsletter, once a month, I invite you to consider calling yourself a writer. Right? These are the things we're going to be playing with here in the common shapes podcast. So once I'm am clear on my big list of projects, all the things that I want to bring into the world, I've picked three, I want to spend some time thinking about the why of each of those things, right? This is what keeps me on track. As someone with ADHD, who is also bipolar, as someone with five planets in Gemini, there's a lot going on up here, right? As I'm recording, this Mercury is retrograde. I was famously born during Mercury Retrograde, I'm also Virgo rising. So I often feel like during a retrograde I'm really sort of in it don't quote me on some of these astrology things. But I do know that there's a lot going on up here. And so I think of all the things I want to bring into the world, I pick three, and then I go to the why. And I named some of those like

    identity markers. I'm also a recovering alcoholic. I've been sober for 12 years. I'm queer, I'm non binary. There's a lot of things right that sometimes pull me from my attention. Right? A lot of this podcast is going to be me thinking about researching about talking about how do we reclaim our attention? How do we begin? And how do we finish? That's what I'm thinking about. That's what I'm really here to sort of look at with you. And knowing the why behind my projects is what keeps me really in them. It's what keeps me devoted, right. That's where I talk about that, from discipline to devotion is one of my online classes. And I named it that because sometimes being disciplined is not enough, right? I do my morning pages every morning. But then sometimes suddenly, a week goes by and I haven't done them. And I can so quickly be so mean to myself and just be like, Oh, I can't believe I didn't do my morning pages. I need to be disciplined. And instead what helps me resume that practice or that ritual is thinking about why am I devoted to my morning pages, because they bring me closer to myself, because they give me insights into my projects and ideas because it grounds me, it routes me in daily ritual. It clears my brain, right? Those are the whys of why I do my morning pages. And so the three projects I've been focusing on are my house projects, writing my next book and making a kitchen garden, write a garden with little herbs for the kitchen. And then I have these much, much bigger projects. But those are just that's a good example of like three small things. So I might take my next book, for example, and write out the whys like why am I writing this book? And I'll get into more and more about what the next book is. Maybe I'm right now in this day, I'm a little bit like what's the next book right? So you might even pick one that you're like, what exactly is the thing? You know, when I was thinking about the why of this podcast, so much of it was, I want other artists to feel less alone in sharing their work and talking about their work and thinking about their work. I want artists to feel at ease when they're taking time off. I want artists to feel connected to each other. And I don't want artists to feel bad marketing their work or their projects or their ideas. And so when I get clear on the why it helps me to sit down and do the thing. Right with my house projects, I often think about hosting people, and how sweet it's going to feel for people to be in my purple bathroom or my yellow kitchen. And it's also allowed to do those things because I feel good in my purple bathroom and I feel good in my yellow kitchen. You know, a lot of what I teach about and talk about is about being of service, and how our art is naturally of service to other people. And I also will pause to say it doesn't all have to always be so deep. You can have things on your list of projects that you want to bring into the world that are just for you and it can be both it's like I want to have a small kitchen garden to like have my hands in dirt and be connected to the earth and this lands that I'm stewarding and I want to eat dill because I love dill and I want to plant greens because I Want to make a salad. And I just want to because I want to. So play with that a little bit play with like, meaning making and removing so much of the depth from everything that we do. So once you have spent some time thinking about the why of each of these projects, I want you to start making little lists of things to move the needle forward. So

    25:35

    for writing my book, maybe I want to commit to writing for an hour, three days a week. So often for me, I know I can jump to like an I'm gonna write an hour every single day, when it's like I'm not writing at all. And then there's that middle of like, maybe I could pick one day a week to write for an hour. But it's like, no, I have to write every single day for an hour. You know, this is where Julia Cameron can get in our heads a little bit, right, she's so like, every day I write three pages of mourning pages, or like, every day, I write three pages of my novel. And I'm such a believer in doing things every day. And it's like, if I'm not doing them every day, jumping all the way to doing something every day doesn't always work for me. Sometimes it really, really does. And that's awesome. But sometimes it's like, I just need to start small. So you can start small

    with these. But it might be like, I'm going to research this project for one hour a week. My best advice is after you listen to this podcast episode, maybe carve out an hour or so to look at one of these projects in the face, to really pick one project and just think about it, just just take that creative ideation portal, that three day guide, and just move your projects through it and see what happens. See what comes up, see what kinds of to do lists you can make to move it forward. And we're gonna keep talking about how to share about it, how to talk about it what to do, right. But this is where we start, we start with the visioning, we start with the dreaming, and we let ourselves do that. We let ourselves believe that the world has room for your projects and your work. It's so easy to start to be like, everybody has a newsletter, and everybody has a podcast, and everybody has a book. And it's like, yeah, but do you yet? Maybe not. And maybe it's time. It's like, yes, the world is saturated with art, but what a gift. What a gift to add more art to the world that we live in. So as you continue thinking about how to put your projects in the world, I also want you to think about accountability, whether it's joining a co working group, or picking a friend that you touch base with before you write in the morning, or a book club or something that you're a part of, that you can talk to other people and be saying, Hey, listen, I'm struggling with this thing. And I want to pay more attention to it. Do you want to join me? Maybe you want to also start your own like 30 days of blank. I don't know, maybe you are a ceramicist. And you want to be like 30 days of hand, clay pots or something. Maybe you want

    to make a pot every day for 30 days, I do think that there's something to be said about these little accountability containers, right. The question I might ask is what is the common shape that I want to make? That has to do with my project? Right? It's like thinking about things in shapes, I think changes everything in these pots on the stove, right? We have all these different pots on the stove, all these different projects and all these containers that things are going to exist in. So on the next episode, we're going to look at what are the containers that can hold all of these projects? What are the shapes that our offerings are starting to make in the world?

    And how do we really make a beginning. So for today, just dream just dream all of this up, just start thinking about what does all of this look like? And in our next episode, we'll talk about building those containers and what that looks like. Thank you so much for listening to common shapes. Thank you for listening to the very first episode. I'm so grateful that you're here and that you're listening grab the creative ideation portal that Marlee Grace dot space slash common shapes. That's also where you can find the show notes. I want to thank the team that makes this podcast possible. Our music is by salt breaker Our graphics are by Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, and it's edited by softer sounds studio. Go forth. May you be abundant in your ideas. May you be prolific in your creations. May you be guided by spirit and your own goodwill and good ideas. I will talk to you on the next episode of common shapes

Follow along on Instagram

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter Monday Monday

Welcome to Common Shapes

Welcome to Common Shapes, a podcast about practices, systems and rituals for creative life.

It’s hosted by me, Marlee Grace.

And on this show, I talk about crafting business ecosystems that are in alignment with our values, marketing as a creative practice, and crossing the bridge between artist and small business owner.

Tune in to the first four episodes for my Creative Ideation Portal guide, and then stay tuned for conversations with artists, writers and thinkers I’m grateful to be in community with.

Whether you’re dreaming up a book, a newsletter, a thoughtful text to a friend, an online class, a podcast, a collection of beautiful paintings in an art gallery, a membership site, a dog walking service, or anything else — Common Shapes is here to support you on your path to creation and to service. Subscribe to join us.

Thank you so much to the team who makes this podcast possible :

🔹 Softer Sounds Studio for the guidance to dream this up and editing

🕸️ Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo for the beautiful art and friendship support

🎵 Saltbreaker for the music and being my collaborator in turning feelings into sounds for over a decade

Links

  • Description text goes hereHello, and welcome to common shapes, a podcast about practices, systems and rituals for creative life. I'm your host Marlee Grace, and I am delighted that you are listening. This podcast is about crafting business ecosystems that are in alignment with our values. This podcast is about marketing as a creative practice. This podcast is named common shapes because I am devoted to thinking about the ordinary, the ordinary that exists in the art and the magic that we make. I'm thinking a lot about this sort of bridge, artists are on one side of the bridge and the small business marketing strategy world is on the other side. And it is my hope that I can sort of walk us across that bridge, and have certain things not feel so confusing to us anymore, like sharing about our work publicly and using the digital realm to do so. So it is my hope that this podcast is for anyone who wants to create something, a book, a newsletter, a thoughtful text to a friend, a recipe book, a self published novel, an online class, a podcast, bumper stickers, a collection of beautiful paintings in an art gallery, a membership site, a dog walking service, whatever it is you want to bring into the world and tell the people about, I want common shapes to support you, on your path to creation and to service. Common shapes is a place to gather inspiration from artists and thinkers and writers who I am so grateful to be in community with, I cannot wait to share the guests for season one with you. It's going to be a really special season here on the podcast. The first few episodes serve as a teaching portal. So I have created a three day guide called the creative ideation portal, which you can download now. And it's a place for you to really vision and dream up the projects that you want to bring into the world. You can find that app Marley Grace dot space slash common shapes, that is also where all the shownotes will live, where you can find links and resources to people, places and things that I mentioned here on the podcast. It's a place where you to link and share it with your friends or with your own ecosystem. So the guide, and the first few episodes of this podcast sort of go together. And so I will sort of take you through those three days and help you to go deeper into the process that the creative ideation portal starts you at. And when you download it, you also get this free notion dashboard that has a database to organize your projects and all these great things. So again, you can find that in the Episode Notes of this trailer or at Marley Grace dot space slash common shapes. And then I hope you come to classes that I teach and that you want to be a part of the bigger community of listeners, whether it's coming to flexible office, my experimental digital co working space, or being a reader of Monday, Monday, which is my substack, my weekly newsletter, where you can read for free every Monday or participate as a paid subscriber in our Friday threads where we come together and gather resources of inspiration, share what podcasts were listening to what documentaries we're watching tools for sticking to our daily rituals and more.

    The first class I'm teaching this season is the art of beginning it's alive on zoom on Sunday, May 28. So you can read more about that, as well at murli Grace dot space, I'd love to have you there. And if you can't make it live, it will be recorded and has live captioning. I invite you to become a part of my ecosystem, and to be thinking about how to put thoughtful and interesting and exciting work in the world, even if it's just as a listener of this podcast. So thank you for tuning in. I would love if you wanted to subscribe and leave a review of this podcast share on social media or in your own newsletter or text it to a friend. I want to thank the team of people who make this podcast possible. Thank you to salt breaker for making the music and the sounds to Luke Kaysa Bronfman reshimo for the graphics and to softer sound studio for editing and podcast. itens thank you so much for being a listener of common shapes