Here to share the things with words
On social media flops, feeling feelings, and still getting stuff done.
Greetings dear readers!
Welcome to my substack space!
If you have enjoyed my email newsletters where I hold back a bit from my effusive and wordy nature in order to get to the point on how to book a massage, this is where I plan to unabashedly let myself write *creatively* and click PUBLISH on a somewhat regular cadence. I’d love to have you. Subscribe for free and we can chit chat about things in the comment section or upgrade to paid and get exclusive deals on pots, massage, and herbs.
I really love what I do and for awhile it seemed like I really needed to become a professional content creator in order to make it (the selling pottery part at least) work. How can I keep making art and massaging the people and working for myself while getting away from the dooms and glooms of algorithmic hell? I’ve been repeatedly surprised that the posts where I bare my soul and name the collectively hard things alongside a boring or simple photo do better than my videographer attempts to hack the reels and TikTok trends in order to get my pottery purchased by an unknown follower in another state. It would appear I’ve gathered a little corner of the internet of folks who want to talk about hard stuff, have their true feelings affirmed, and not look away from the hardships happening in our times. And what a beautiful corner it is! Being self employed and operating on small business wavelength as a way to make ends meet, it can be hard to not be caught up in the capitalist mindset of growth. And its been a HARD COUPLE YEARS for us self employed weirdos. It also seems that even those of us with a smaller (therefore maybe more targeted) following, our posts and announcements don’t always reach the folks who actually want to see them! The flashy allure of going viral and cracking the algorithmic code kept me engaged with minor successes, frequent failures, and occasional dopamine pings.
With a sudden move and being constantly whipped up in waves of grief, my executive function dipping and lagging, I want to keep finding new ways to make it easy to find me for folks who want to. No more letting flopped reels guide my sense of worth and more staying focused on the engaged sweet souls who trust me with their troubles in a massage room or commission my playful style to make a special vessel to bring brightness to their routines. The clients and customers who have supported my work over the years have made it possible to do what I love and I’m eternally grateful.
Anyway, this isn’t a dramatic plea to delete instagram and come play on Substack; I’ll continue to use the tools at my disposal (including social media) to stay in touch with you, let myself engage in a creative practice and be witnessed while doing it, I’ll make a reel WHEN IT SUITS ME and only then. I want to keep us both inspired to creating in trying times. And I’ve been writing much more lately in order to alchemize and process the grief and joy ever current at this stage of a burning world. Yes for me mostly, but as is the lane of the artist, I plan to share. And so I’ll do that here.
First announcement is a cute, free offering!
~ADMIN HOUR ~
A virtual hand holding for taking on that life admin task that’s been looming over you.
“We take care of us” “it takes a village” “community care > isolationism” I hum to myself crying alone on the kitchen floor listening to the hold song with Louisiana DMV.
Navigating bureaucratic labyrinths and automated messages with endless loops of ‘your call is important to us’ for hours to be told we’re not in network or need to come in person. Most of our infrastructures are strained and dysfunctional but we’re forced to keep an exhausted grip on them in order to get daily necessities like healthcare and transportation. There’s a lot of waiting on hold. These past 12 months especially, I have really struggled supporting myself and figuring out how to ask for help around tackling an endless list of life admin tasks and bureaucratic battles. And often I just need a bud to sit next to me. Maybe you too?
And so, a parallel space except for the hard-to-do life tasks we keep putting off.
Maybe you need some accountability around calling your doctor to make an appointment, calling your booking site to work out a glitch, calling your bank to dispute a charge, or getting ahold of your insurance company.
Admin hour is a space to sit together, whine a little, and do the thing.
Maybe you aren’t in the midst of solving bureaucratic headaches but just want to set aside time for general tedious life things so those tasks don’t eat up your creative space.
We’ll meet over a zoom like space called jit.si on Mondays from 11am-12:30pm PST. I’ll do the littlest of facilitating for us to do small intros and share our goals for the hour and then we’ll silently make our calls or chisel away at our admin to do list. We can occasionally ask each other questions, complain about terrible hold music, and cheer each other on. At the end we’ll check out, share how it went, and go on about our days.
I love that there’s lots of co working and parallel play spaces online theses days and for me, this format was originally inspired by a sweet little writing club I’ve been a part of started by Bear Hebert years ago. It was there I often found myself doing admin tasks in what I had endeavored to be a creative space. So in an effort to delineate another space for that, here’s admin hour.
For the neurospicy, care providers, for the burned out, frazzled honeys. Whether you already have supports around these types of tasks or not, this can be a dedicated carved out time and space to send the email, book the thing, make that call to self advocate in order to access a little more ease.
No pressure, no commitment, low stakes, come for the whole time or only for as long as you need. Join us! Its free!
Mondays 11-12:30 PST
Go to https://meet.jit.si/adminhourmeetup
Excited to have you there!
Ways to support me:
🤲 Book a massage (currently in Oakland)
Hello! If you’re stumbling upon this or referring back for details on Admin Hour, apologies for my dropping the ball! Life lifed hard in March! Details above for joining on Mondays going forward are as is except there’s been a time change! We’ll convene from 12:30-1:45 PST!