🖌️ FIELD GUIDE 57: All the other things

Remember that time Jordan walked into a bar? Not only is that when Jordan walked into my life, but that’s also the whole reason I was even able to find Katie.

Katie doesn’t just work with the Jacks, she’s also the author of an amazing Substack, and you can subscribe here. Following Katie’s artistic journey has been more than fun and became even more fun when I discovered she was only separated from me by 1 degree instead of the standard 6 degrees people are (so they say) separated by.

Thus, a circle of support and excitement for each other’s accomplishments and a budding friendship was born!

Katie joins us this week, and I couldn’t be more excited to share a small bit of her with you.

This week I hope Katie will inspire you to dip your toes back in the water of your art, music, hobby, passion…whatever held your interest. I hope you find that it brings you the same (if not more) amount of joy as it used to. Take the time.

Name

Katie R.

Occupation

Graphic Designer

Habitat

Wisconsin

Soundtrack

It’s an early October morning and we’re supposed to road trip up to North Dakota. I tap open the weather app again and wince. Predictions are more threatening than the day before: 7-11 inches of snow, lows in the single digits. I imagine us in our van. It’s 1:00 am, and we’re wedged into a snowbank on some county road, freezing our asses off with spotty cell service. Nope, this just doesn’t look promising.

My husband and I decide to cancel. The adventure will have to wait until the November full moon.

After the initial disappointment crumbles away, the warm gooey center of relief bubbles to the surface. We’re…not…going to North Dakota for six days.

I am free to do All The Other Things.

For over a decade, I’ve sliced my creative life into three distinct pie segments.

First, I work full-time as a graphic designer for a tiny-but-mighty group of badass ladies called Streamline Jacks. I’m the Creative Lead and hop from marketing concepts to digital asset production to logos to copywriting. Oh and PowerPoint. So… much… PowerPoint.

Second, I quite literally moonlight as a night photographer and light painter with my husband, Chris. We call ourselves The Flash Nites. By the light of the full moon, we venture to abandoned places all over the U.S.—farmhouses, old cars and trucks, theaters, schools, UFO-shaped homes—and illuminate them with color flashes while taking a long exposure photograph so the structures glow inside. (And this is why we might find ourselves wedged in a snowbank in a remote corner of North Dakota at one in the morning.) By the light of day, from May to September, we also set up our own little white tent in cities and towns across the Midwest to sell our work in art festivals.

Finally—after the other household, social, and civic duties tap me out—I fill up any remaining crevices with my own artistic endeavors. See, it’s not enough that I’m creative, or even successful in my day job or my night gig. That production is shared with others—my husband, coworkers and clients.

I crave something that’s all mine and mine alone.

I’ve dabbled in a slew of solo side projects over the years. Like a typical Creative, I need a project goal to have meaning and purpose. And I won’t stop climbing to the top of that mountain until it’s perfect. Well, nothing is ever perfect, so sadly, like a typical Creative, I’ve also spent more than my fair share of time putting myself down for my mistakes, failures, DNFs, blocks, dead-ends, and lack of audience engagement. That last one is particularly brutal. If a creative idea drops into the woods and no one knows about it, is it worth anything? 

In this democratized age of the internet, the good news is that everyone can publish their creations. The bad news is that everyone can publish their creations. With an audience of 5.3 billion internet users, we’re bound to be a raging success, right? … right? Unfortunately, we often release our precious work to this throng of humanity and it can feel like shouting into the void. And even if we have our core group of superfans, we will always and forever expect more. We wait for our audience of heroes to swoop in and save us with their clicks, comments, and paid subscriptions. But no amount of eyeballs and hearts and dollars will quench our endless thirst for more. Our creativity suffocates under the pressure, the black hole of self-defeat chomps and chomps, and we’re left with nothing. 

I’m so over it. I’m ready to break the vicious cycle.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been developing a Novella-meets-Comic-meets-Tarot hybrid called Bonesick — a multi-layered, easter-egg filled, pop culture feast for the senses. It’s about a sad man, who was once a sad boy, stumbling along the rockier path he thinks is his punishment for past transgressions. He ends up undergoing a “Skin Free” procedure (which is exactly what it sounds like) in an attempt to shed his past and start over.

So far, this project has proved to be quite the undertaking. I have no idea if something this niche could ever find a real audience. But this time, I refuse to let the hungry black hole gobble up my momentum. How is it different this time? What’s changed?

Spoiler: it’s not you, it’s me.

This past week, I finished up a mini side project to my side project: Bonesick x Inktober. For the uninitiated, Inktober is drawing every day through the month of October. Between planning and drawing, the project took me around 150 hours—one third of the free time I didn’t spend day-jobbing or sleeping—unpaid of course. In this digital hyper-hustle culture that demands we get paid for our published creative or intellectual labor, maybe this number sounds outrageous. Why would I spend all my freetime doing something for nothing? The “Old Me” would’ve looked at this number with disgust.

This time, however, I shifted my proof of self-worth. Instead of turning outward toward superfan saviors for that sweet, sweet dope hit of validation, I asked myself: can I turn inward to marvel at my progress and the sheer wonder that I can do something like this at all? Can I be my own hero?

So I relished in the quality time I got to spend doing the thing. To just sit on the couch, lost in my imagination, and draw for hours? A person could be so lucky! It can be an absolute thrill to feel inspired by the magic you pull out of thin air and put out onto a blank page, brick wall, garden bed, shop table, bike trail, dance floor, center stage, basketball court, whatever your platform of choice. It can feel like falling in love.

And that’s how I saved me from myself. It’s the only way my neuro-atypical synapses can handle creative output without misfiring me into that depressing abyss of failure. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a red-blooded Capitalist American Capricorn—success and superfans are the capital G Goal when you choose capital C Creativity to fund your living expenses (support your local artists!!). But if you’re like me and have a dysfunctional relationship with that process, you have to fall in love with the climb, not the mountain. The gift is the process, the results are often just dumb luck!

Thanksgiving weekend, my husband and I will head up to the Dakotas. It’s going to be incredibly cold, dark, and desolate. We’ll spend upwards of 50 hours creating new work that may or may not be a success next art festival season. But we get to spend our nights under the moon and stars to make magic. What a friggin’ honor.

So it’s your turn! Do you have an old project that imploded like a dying star? Is there a task, hobby, or vocation you’d love to dabble in just for fun? What would you consider dedicating 150 hours to even if—especially if—success wasn’t guaranteed? Drop me a comment!