Seeing Shapes Through the Fog
Revisiting Fear
I just got back from the beach. I walked barefoot on the wam sand (yes, warm). I sat down and watched the waves…listened to them….felt the sun on my face… watched shadows of pelicans and seagulls on the sand and looked up to see them glide through the air. Nearly fell asleep right there. You know that feeling when your head bobs and catch yourself almost snoozing?
This week I made some big decisions. I decided to sign with an agent again after a lot of back and forth and trepidation. I hope it’s the right choice…but as my friend pointed out, the contract is for a year and year goes by quickly. I have a bit of a residual feeling about my last experience…and something I know about myself is that I work better with a team to help me get to where I want to go.
I’ve been trying to form sort of a vision for my life, but it still looks pretty foggy so I’m just trying stuff out. I read that you should look at your life like an anthropologist- step back and observe yourself. In that case I think I need to up my game a bit based on what I’m seeing.
Still, I have been making progress…. What I have noticed though is that I have these points of resistance that I get stuck in. For me these tend to be technical things or things that I don’t understand yet. I alleviated one such thing a while ago by hiring a website designer to get me over some hurdles and get me past some things I couldn’t seem to figure out how to do. At the moment I’m having that sort of stuckness with connecting Pinterest to my Etsy shop. I’m looking for someone to help with that.
Another thing I get stuck in is my mind-set. As I go along move in and out of having a productive one and get caught in fear. Fear about making the wrong decision, fear about not doing enough of this or that…you name it. I tend to freeze up when I am in that state. Freeze up and spin on the same tired thoughts over and over. One antidote to fear is curiosity. So, how to cultivate curiosity?
One thing I have been playing with is a.i.. It’s been pretty incredible actually. I’m having all of these great conversations and learning a ton. My favorite a.i. go to right now is Claude. I’ve been asking Claude a whole range of questions and brainstorming with it…I’ve also been using it for a host of things like coming up with a diet plan (high protein and high fiber on a budget, for example) and it’s given me a detailed plan, recipes and shopping list…I’ve been using it as a life coach and sounding board , to research things and analyze contracts…I’ve been using it to help me ask new questions…It’s been super useful. Have any of you played around with different a.i. models out there? Any favorites? Any interesting uses?
There are some things to be cautious about. There was a writer who used a.i. in the process of writing a book and then when it was to be published, it was rejected because she had used a.i. and somehow the publisher had used some kind of a.i. to detect this. I don’t use a.i. in my art except in the case of figuring something out like when I did this piece (which is available on StephanitelysSHOP) :
In this case I used it to help me figure out how the light and shadows might look. I asked Adobe Firefly to create an image of people around a camp fire and used that as a reference. none of my art is a.i. generated.
This is an interesting time in history, isn’t it? Everything seems to be in flux and moving fast…I found this mini-documentary about a guy using Substack to share the things he is curious about and I suppose that’s kind of what I’ve been doing in addition to tell you about my journey.
Isn’t this great? I love that he calls himself a journalist. That’s a great way to frame this endeavor. Ninety years of life and all of the changes he has seen…what a journey.
This time last year I was finishing up the illustrations for ORSON and the World’s Loudest Library. I was planning this trip…the one I’m still on... I suppose we are all still on a trip- a journey without a clear destination…well, only one that we can count on, but I hope that’s a long ways off still.
I’ll leave you with this this week: progress, not perfection…pay attention and be curious. Onward!
xo,
Steph
The weather here cannot seem to make up its mind.
I grew up in a four season climate. There was no mistaking what season we were in, except in May, when you get so excited to see Spring and then there is a snowstorm. I liked it all except for Winter (which always seemed the longest and plus your face would hurt from the cold)….
There are signs in different places of where you are and of what time of year it is...
Some of the things that signaled a change of season on the little island were the flying foxes. When the mango trees were getting ripe, they would appear in larger numbers as the sun went down looking for mango trees. Let me share with you this little clip. It was from one of the many evenings I waited for my then husband to come home. Dinner was waiting, it was late and I would sit outside listening, watching…writing…
Can you hear the flying foxes bickering? …I made a rough short comic about it:
Funny…isn’t it that the way it is sometimes? I think this could apply to politics, people and, of course, flying foxes.
Anyhow…what I began with in this post was being in an in between place.
I’m having to assess and make some decisions right now. .. about what to do next…I wonder if I’m thinking about this all in good way? …wonder if I’m asking the right questions? … I wonder if I’m getting too hung up on this idea of finding home here…maybe I’m just finding “now”. I’ve been clinging to this place and the idea of “home”, but last time I lived here it was home, there was family…and before that there was an experiment. Maybe this is back to being an experiment…? It is all an experiment really…Maybe it is always an experiment.
The things that we think are important shift with what is happening in our lives and what stage of life we are in…when you’re in your 20’s and 30’s healthcare doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but you hit you’re 50’s and all of a sudden it is a priority. You don’t have to stick to the things that were a priority before. And probably, you shouldn’t. You are allowed to change. But I think the key is to remain curious and find out what the new season you’re in has to offer…
On the career side…
I’m noodling is whether to sign with a literary agent or not… I had a literary agent for many years, then I went off on my own. I’ve been sending out queries to agents and have gotten more attention than I thought I would… But now I’m not really sure I want one…isn’t that how it goes though!
I’m super sensitive to feeling “boxed in” …but I also know that I benefit from having a team. I have a pretty great team taking shape.
When my now ex-husband was being held against his will on the little island, I had a lot of difficulty keeping my center. I was so depleted by the fake years on the island etc. I dove into every self help guru I could find. One of them is Gabor Mate. I listened to hours of that guy being interviewed…at the core of everything was trauma. Well, dang..I had had some serious trauma on the little island, so I bought in. And it felt like it was a reasonable answer to how I was feeling… but now, I’m feeling like the “trauma” thing is an excuse in many cases….I mentioned before that I had read Victor Frankel’s Man’s Search for Meaning and that it had shifted my perspective…
So,
No one is coming…
Home is where we hang our hat, but it never means we have to wear the same hat or the hat can’t be moved. One can feel home at the moment, but we change and maybe another place will be better in the next stage… like the shells in ‘gift from the sea’ We all have to remember to be happy in the moment or we miss the moment ☺️