HAPPY BIRTHDAY (MONTH) TO THE CREATORS DISPATCH! THREE YEARS OF WRITING THREE YEARS OF SHARING. THANK YOU THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE!! 🎉
TLDR; NO MORE PAY WALL. THESE IS A 100% READER SUPPORTED SPACE. What used to be a paid subscriber only pod is now released into the world. 🪄🪄
I am having a sale on annual subscriptions. For 37 buckaroonies you can support this space + my writing through 2023. Receiving finical support allows me to turn this whackadoodle internet space into a thing that pays my rent, feeds my dog and being living proof independant writer can to humans and artists. MANY BLESSINGS FOR WEIRD ART IN ALL ITS FORMS
There is a tik tok trend of “stay at home girlfriends” that I find very stressful in a “what is feminism for if we’re all just staying home? does this make me a bad feminist for being judgemental? Feminism is about choice, yah? Are we all doomed?” kind of way. Until I realized I was one.
I work from home. My partner goes to work in an office. I have been some kind of self employed for years and years but the 9-5 “this is when you should work” is very hard for me to ditch. Despite my best efforts to rewrite this script.
I have built an entire career around “doing what I want” and “fucking around” but I feel guilty for not working at 3pm on Thursday’s (my fav time not to be working) and I feel guilty for working on Sundays at 1pm (my absolute fav time to work). Its hard to negotiate staring at my screen on days I want something prolific to pour from my fingers – and it just isn’t coming – when I could maybe instead wash a dish, walk the dog, grocery shop or some other thing that is “productive”. The inherant self trust and continued self trust required to leap leap leap over and over again when you have no idea where the net is or if it is going to appear at all.
Being self employed has gotten with weird reputation and conflation with being morally superior way to work in a way I don’t love. That it is so much work (and it is) that you’re a martyr for even attempting it. “Look at her go” I imagine people say. Something synonymous with “how does she do it all”. A clean house and an internet presence.
I wake up in the morning and I think of all the women that have come before me. My mother and my mothers mother and my mothers mother mother and 10000 of ancestors that didn’t have this choice. I walk my dog and think of the luxury of time for an existential spiral in a weekly essay. To have the choice to leap and not be pushed.
Their hand on my shoulders “don’t fuck this up now”. I vow to make their sacrifices worth it. I make coffee and I think I work well under pressure.
I sit down at the computer and I wonder about the women today that have this choice. I wonder about how we speak about their choice and if they have a choice at all. I wonder if being a women is always martyrdom or if that is just what newspapers and movies sell us. The fiction of “habing it all” and what even is “all” and do I want anything to do with it. I send an email and wonder if I am a good person for working or a bad person for working.
I sit down to write and I think of Britney spears and I think of Empress Elizabeth. I think of women that shape shift for mens profits. I think of Meghan Markle and Kim K. I wonder what labour is respected. Internalized misogyny is ok if you justify it over coffee with girlfriends.
I think of the women I see on the internet everyday and how I compare my life to theirs. For good for bad. What labour is right and righteous and what can be scarifice on the altar of having a clean house and an internet presence. I tell myself it isn’t a choice but a calling but I think I’d be lying if I said walking my dog in the middle of the day is nice but the guilt of walking my dog in the middle of the day is worse.
I think of becoming a stay at home girlfriend.
FINDINGS 🧭
screaming + jumping jacks in place when you feel the internal peacock of anxiety approaching 🤸♀️
🚨FREE WORKSHOP ALERT 🚨 Jan 19th @ 7pm est 🗓️
MAKE YOUR (BAD) ART a workshop to slay the perfectionism demon that stops your big ideas from coming to life 🪄🧌🗡️🐉🧙♂️
Put a finger down if ✋...
✨You're furiously writing a newsletter to send out to the world and then hover over the "send" button for 20 minutes before you decided to hit "draft" and walk away from your desk
✨You talk yourself out of creating before you even started
✨You're creating work and still feeling life you’ve “got nothing done” ✨There is a pile of “too read” books that will *surely* give you the answers for your creative "block"
Join us on Jan 19th @ 7pm est to join a circle of humans wanting to create out loud together 🤸♀️
my friend Heidis highly specific playlists are 💆🏻♀️
RUN to watch Corsage in theatres so you can cry in your duster coat and leave with popcorn tucked in your pockets 🌊
big love and many blessings ✌️