Newsletter 🍂🗝☕

Happy September, my friends. I'm writing to you from my ikea sleeper sofa, at 12:47 PM with two autumn-scented candles lit and papers scattered around me. I have my an autumn playlist that I made playing softly in the background, layered with autumn porch tea time ASMR ambiance sounds (both linked so you may join me if you'd like). I have been thinking about this newsletter for three weeks now, ruminating and scheming and feeling giddy about it but not typing a word. Is it first-time jitters? Insecurity that what I have to say won't live up to your standards? Anxiety that you might say "I paid for this?"...?

Quite frankly, yes. It is all of those things. 

Despite the doubts, I have things I want to share with you. Whenever I think about being a snail on the windowsill of the room that you're in right now, watching you specifically open this newsletter and read it with your eyes, everything calms down. It is important to remind ourselves of the human on the other side of the screen, breathing and adjusting on their seat or bed or tree stump. Maybe you have a candle lit too. If you don't, I recommend it. Oh, and a hot drink of your choice. These newsletters will be best read in those conditions. 

First of all, welcome. I am so thankful that you have decided to become a part of this journey that I will call our space. In my About section you might have noticed my use of the words "create a space". Though I do not remember where I initially heard this statement, I know Andy J. Pizza speaks of it in his podcast Creative Peptalk, specifically in this episode called The Powerful Thing You Can Do When All Feels Lost. He talks about making space. Here's something that he said in regards to making space that stuck with me: 

"The further you understand and own yourself and put it into your art, the more safe and more of a celebration space this world becomes for people like you-- that's your job. You're here to tell us what a human could be that we didn't know a human could be."

Now, I don't know if I'm exactly showing you, or anybody, what a human could be that you didn't already know a human could be. I know what I can do however, is make a little world that we reside in together that feels safe, approachable and warm. My entire goal os this patreon is to build a world that feels like your favorite autumn day, when you bring out the halloween decorations from the musty box in the closet, or buy your first seasonal drink of the season. 

I wanted to talk a little bit about beginnings. Seeds to sow. This is the beginning of the world we're building together on patreon. It is the beginning of me trying to figure out this platform and how it all works. I have also recently had a few beginnings in my own personal life--moving to a new city and state after living in Florida for 21 years, starting my career post-graduation, and living completely on my own for the first time. Hell, for a while I thought the pandemic was the beginning of the end in a lot of ways. Yeah, lots of beginnings!

When you plant seeds, it is usually a gamble unless you are a hardcore pro-level gardener/farmer. I planted some cilantro seeds a couple years ago despite everyone saying "cilantro is the hardest herb to grow. I could never get it to grow" (this just enticed me further). And you know what, I did get that cilantro to grow. I even used it in my food. Against all odds, I got that shit to grow! In your face, Uncle Steve! And then I placed it too close to the air flow of the air conditioner for a week. I did not have cilantro anymore. 

But that's besides the point. Planting seeds are a gamble. However, you will never grow crops unless you plant the seeds. You cannot make progress if you do not have a beginning. Many beginnings are within our control, but there are certainly some that are not.

I had dreams about how my senior year would finish up. I lived with my three closest friends and we had all these plans for the end of thesis, and graduation. We wanted to really enjoy those final months of college before we had to go to our separate corners of the country. We would sit around the cluttered coffee table talking about how we wanted to decorate our graduation caps, our minecraft poster on the wall behind us with a hole in it that was patched with a photo of Patton Oswald's head. 

Do you see where this is going? We did not get to have graduation. We did not get to showcase our thesis work that we spent a year or more on. We did not get those last few months together that we had planned. We instead got a very sudden, very unwelcome beginning. 

I'm sure you also experienced some unwelcome and unexpected beginnings in your own life over the last few months. 

I really struggled with this lack of control. Personally, I struggle with any lack of control but this felt like the magnum opus of all control loss: the beginning of my adult life that I had dreamed of was completely lost. I was starting my illustration career two months earlier than I was prepared to, living in the tiny living room of a small apartment with my parents in a new city, and every in-house job I had considered was no longer a possibility. I kept composed the best I could on my social media because--going back to making space--I want my content and presence to make people feel safe, happy and calm. Behind the screen I was irritable, depressed and exhausted. I can't say the word hopeless, because I was working as often as I could to make money to move out. I think if I had not had any hope at all, it would have ended up a lot differently than it did. 

It was around this time that I feverishly wrote myself a manifesto.

Not to be dramatic but this manifesto saved me. It was the beginning of the The Beginning (capital T capital B). It funneled all of these confusing feelings I had regarding my impending life-altering decision to just start my damn career as an independent/freelance artist and move out. Did I know for a fact that I was going to be able to pay the bills and have money to life comfortably every month? No, not really. I think it took a little (big) leap of faith. I had someone tell me something along the lines of "you won't know if you can do it until you do it".

I want to address a couple things before I continue on and recognize the fact that I had some privileges that allowed me to have more confidence to make the decision to take the leap:

1. I did have the comfort of knowing that my parents would be living just a few blocks away, considering we all moved to Greenville together. And if things massively blew up in my face, I knew they were close by.

2. I had money saved. I pretend that money does not exist, but let's say I couldn't make rent that month or an emergency came up, I knew I had a financial safety net.

3. I had a pre-existing following/community. This one is huge. I do realize and want others to realize that I have spent nearly 10 years building this following (I started having an online following elsewhere--flipnote, deviantart, tumblr and then eventually instagram and twitter). But without the support of the community buying my work, commissioning me etc., I wouldn't have been able to make that final chunk of income I needed to get ready to move out and live comfortably.

I have been living on my own in a studio apartment in Downtown Greenville, SC for two months now. I work for most of the day, basically every day of the week, occasionally taking one full day off (I think we should talk about this topic in depth in another upcoming newsletter). I still struggle with anxiety over making a living, as well as other challenges that come with living alone, on top of being in a new city in a pandemic, but I am so happy I chose this beginning. Sitting here now I find it hard to imagine the despair I felt just a few months ago. 

Here's some other positive seeds / beginnings in my life from the last two months:

-Started (and finished) New Girl, which made me feel less alone

-Began journaling regularly, as well as tracking Life Things 

-Started the podcast Wonderful! with Griffin and Rachel McElroy

-Got into the habit of lifting rocks since I can't lift weights or rock climb...the perfect medium? I think so. 

-Started the process of moving on from someone special I was holding on to

-Became a regular tea drinker (around three+ cups a day, when I used to have tea maybe once a week previously!)

-Found out I actually adore poetry thanks to Hozier's poetry livestreams (also thanks to my desire to analyze the lyrics of Sufjan Stevens, Hozier and Andrew Bird as poetry rather than just lyrics) 

-Started talking to myself! I never really did that before.

-Decided to finally come out as nonbinary. Gender has always been a little wobbly for me, and now I finally comfortable enough to comprehend and express it publicly. 

-Found (and developed a crush on) youtuber and fitness inspiration Natacha Oceane, who changed my relationship with food and exercise for the better.

....& had my first pumpkin-flavored drink of the season. I'll count seasonal beginnings.

This section is where I'll be sharing a few things in the works with you. Promise you won't tell anybody? Actually, you can tell you best friend. 

As you might know (and might own) I made two of the four pin designs I had in mind into actual produced pins, the moth and the rabbit. 

I have decided to go ahead and produce the other two in the set (the mushroom and the owl). 

But I have decided to produce them in white and Bronze rather than the original Black and Gold! I thought it might be a nice contrast. 

In other news, I have a lot planned for this September. I have some things in the works with my agent which I cannot share until anything is published. That will keep me busy, so I'm hoping to make plenty of time for the other things I wanted to do this month such as:

-a fake "pressed taxidermy bat". I got a clear frame just for this. I want to paint a gouache bat, maybe some moths too, and "press" them in the frame for my wall. This is just a personal project for now, but I'd love to sell some in the future.

-more clay pins/pendants. I told myself I was going to do it in August but never got around to it. As soon as the air gets its first chill, I'll be whipping out the sculpey and resin to make some brand new baked clay designs--I promise! I'd like some of these to have dangling ability, so less flat-backs and more three dimensional shapes with a central point at the top to attach to a necklace, earring or otherwise. 

I think that does it for this newsletter! Thank you so much for joining me this go around, and for being a subscriber. I'm still figuring all this out, so I'd love your feedback. You might have already seen the other post with the Google Form, which I would love if you filled out. This will give me a clear idea of what you want out of this monthly newsletter. It means a lot that you're here. Genuinely, I am so excited for this adventure with you!

Have a magical, powerful, sexy September, and I'll see you soon!

-JG.