Practicing in public

celebrating my small wins

Photo by Alison Beshai

I want to thank every one of you who open these letters. For your sweet emails and affirmations. Your presence is enough. Some have pledged to support this newsletter financially and I appreciate your belief in this work so very much. It waters what is honestly a journey built on faith, trust, and persistence. I do intend to keep this newsletter free to read, but monetizing my writing via Substack is one of my long term goals. The practice right now is to show up once a week. I rarely celebrate milestones publicly or with immediacy, so I’m excited to share this is my 10th newsletter!

Small win #1

I am about 20% closer to my goal of 52 essays. My last newsletter went out imperfect, on a Friday morning, and I edited it in so many ways AFTER everyone received it via email. Ya girl is growing! Some things aren’t ready for public view, but this project isn’t about being ready — it’s about being honest.

Remind us that talent alone is never enough. Match our dreaming with persistence, with endurance, that we would know time as a necessary agony in order to create the kind of beauty that transcends. Help us to develop not for anyone else's affection, but for the art's sake. Nourish our sense of purpose as artists; that as we make, we would understand we have not only an aesthetic responsibility but a moral one. Make us truth-tellers as you allow us to see when those around us lack vision. And if we are to choose, let us always choose mediocrity that communicates something true over perfection that tells a lie. Keep us from demanding too much of our present work, that we would be able to want more for what we've created without degrading it. We are artists. In you, we claim this. May it be so. - Cole Arthur Riley from Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems and Meditations for Staying Human

Iteration has become such a healing balm.

I changed:

• The title from mood board your dream book: 3 ways to organize for spaciousness and ease to "mood board a dream book: chart the course." Chart the Course is module 3 of 9 in the self-publishing framework I built out in Seeda School.

• Replaced all the “you”, “your", and "if" with a first person or generalized perspective. "If you are a screenwriter, you can…" is now "Screenwriters can..." The ladder makes me feel like I can be a screenwriter! I see that :) or I imagine the life of the screenwriter who gets to visit those gorgeous, faraway islands to film one scene. Do they get to do that? The deliciousness of curiosity.

• The word marketing to distribution. This space is meant to hold space for community and mutual support. Distributing a physical object locally and international is the learning curve. I have been able to teach myself everything I've ever wanted to learn and just putting intention out into the universe seems to call in exactly what I need to get started.

These stones represent every idea, marketing strategy, product, sale, flop, business opportunity, and person who helped me get to this point of such clarity — one by one.

Small win #2

I am making videos. Many of us are visual learners. It's important my knitting books include video tutorials. The most commonly asked questions I receive are "is there a video for this technique?" For a while I was searching the internet for content to send people. It took months to get my own library uploaded. Earlier this year, I quietly pivoted away from making YouTube videos as a weekly offer to launch a newsletter on Substack. Filming and editing a teaching style video solo took 20-40 hours per week to create. I managed to make (8) 30+ minute long how-to videos in 10 weeks. I have a new found respect for what YouTubers do — it really is a whole ass job! So proud at how quickly I pivoted. The platform wasn't working for what I wanted — to connect more intimately, to be less dependent on algorithms, and to refine my editing style.

Small Win #3

Being in community with other creatives building worlds is actually a BIG WIN made of small, precious moments. I was going through a really tough time last year and felt like I was burdening people with these huge unfamiliar emotions. Jamila said, “but that’s why we have friends, so we don’t have to do difficult things alone.” The first time I sent an email to my mailing list was in 2022 via Squarespace to promote a book signing event with the encouragement of my magical friend Alison who sat with me as I drafted the copy. It was surprisingly difficult to hit send. I remember looking at her saying, “Okay. I’m going to hit send” and she nodded gently nudging me forward.

Photo by Alison Beshai

Writing these letters feels like being in the company of a sweet companion holding me accountable. It’s helping to bridge the gap between my desire and my disbelief, my relentless drive and procrastination, my ego and my love. In every essay there has been a seed, a few lines, a concept, a sprout to nourish in the printed work.

"It's a scary thing to dream aloud, putting your lips to the universe’s ears and confessing your desires." - Ravon Ruffin, “Notes on an Ecological Approach*”, New Terms and Conditions

This newsletter, a documentary archive and framework for my upcoming beginning knitting book and digital course is a living dream I'll speak out loud in public. Whispering to myself with every word written and every stitch knit, you already made it. The quiet tenor becoming loud enough to reach across the ocean into generations.

Each word a thread linking thousands together arm in arm bonded by a devotion to the possibility.