🕰️ It's time for some honesty
Sorting s**t out means I need to be frank with you.
💫 Inspiration to draw on this week
Right, friends... it's time for some honesty. Showing up on Substack every week, sharing thoughts, creating images, and pushing myself to be good at this—it’s exhausting. And, if I’m honest, it feels a bit pointless.
I came across a quote by Zach Pogrob (who, by the way, has some great insights). One sentence hit me hard. “Obsession is showing up manically every day, while nothing changes,”
He reminded me that while I’ve been obsessing over showing up here every week, it’s actually at my drawing board where I show up for real, day in and day out.
Substack? Not so much.
Lately, I’ve felt this deep need to declutter shit not just from my life but mainly my mind - which has been a mess. To simplify everything.
You know what? That includes this space.
If you're reading this, whether you’ve been with me from the start or just stumbled across my ramblings—thank you. I mean that wholeheartedly. Or maybe you stumbled across this space as a casual observer. It’s nice to meet you, too.
But here’s the deal: I can’t spend my life waiting to feel ‘good enough’ or ‘right enough’. I need to show up for myself, my art, and the messy beauty that the creative muses bring into my life.
For me, showing up here is part of an ongoing process of finding my voice. And with that comes change - which admittedly is often in my case!
Sometimes, I’ll share wisdom or gratitude, but more often than not, it’ll be raw, unfiltered frustration and irritation because, let’s face it, I feel all the things - a LOT. And I know I’m not alone in that. That’s why I’ll keep trying to make a home here on Substack - though, truth be told, it’s more like an Airbnb. It's a place where I pop in, stay a while, and share some thoughts and art, but it will never feel like my forever home.
It’s a temporary stopover - and that’s okay. I’ll decorate it with my words and illustrations as long as I’m here. But the actual work, the messy, beautiful chaos of my creativity? That happens elsewhere - on my drawing board, in my studio, and in the day-to-day of life. Substack is a place to visit and connect, but it’s not where my creative roots are planted.
I’m a peri-menopausal, knackered, and yet ridiculously grateful woman - overflowing with love for my wonderful family. That’s what truly matters - not all the other noise.
Will I press ‘publish’ on this post? Absolutely. I’m writing like no one’s reading or cares - that’s the point. No algorithm, no doing things right, no making 6 figure sums or however many gazillion followers or subscribers. Just life between the lines of my drawings.
Forever grumpy, happy, anxious, delighted, and totally baffled by this life as an artist,
Stay creative, my friends
💬 A quote to live by
Obsession is showing up manically every day, while nothing changes, until one piece of work changes everything.
Overnight success is hidden under thousands of quiet nights.
You touch The Pinnacle a few times in your life, at most. And those moments are what make you.
~ Zach Pograb, inspirational dude for artists, atheletes, entrepreneurs and anyone who find themselves obsessed.
👩🏻🎨 Something I made
I’m playing with some new print design for the new website that will seemingly never be ready 😜
📷 And finally…the week in 3
Date night: my first Aperol Spritz. It wasn’t for me.
Smaller, quicker drawings - they take 2 hours instead of 2 weeks.
Brotherly love!
Which three photos from your camera roll best capture your week?
Share them here on the chat thread
I think you have to find how you personally want to use this space - which seems to be exactly what you're doing. I have been putting daily drawings *and* daily words on Substack this past week (not emailing them out) and I am 100% finding the daily drawings incredibly helpful in a tonne of ways and the daily words much less so, so I will probably drop those. On the other hand, I found myself picking up and writing in a physical journal, that I hadn't written in since last year, and that felt *good*. I think a lot of that is because in the physical journal that is only for me I can share things I want to get out of my head that I can't share publicly on the internet - e.g. things related to my kids who have specifically said they don't want their lives shared publicly any more (while both loving reading back over the stuff I wrote when they were kids!), or work-related moans that I can't share because it would not be professional and clients would obviously not appreciate it. But I also think the physicality of writing by hand helps, too.
Anyway, all that is to conclude what I said at the start - make this space what you need and want it to be. Unless you're specifically aiming for it to be a considerable chunk of income, there is literally nothing more you need to do. You can write something once a year, three times a day. You can read nothing else on Substack or gorge on Notes while you drink your morning tea/coffee/lemon water! For me, I think that's the beauty of it - that it can be what you want and need it to be, rather than what some algorithm tells you it has to be.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻