This newsletter, I warn you, might be, as the kids say, cringe. Largely because I’m going to interrogate my own internal wiring, and how it’s subconsciously engineered to veer around anything that could be perceived as ‘cringe’. Or to put it in a more psychobabbly way, embarrassed by being actively vulnerable. I’ve become comfortable with presenting my artwork on the Internet in various states of completion - something that even ten years ago, would - hell, it did - fill me with horror. Struck me dumb. Nowadays, through sheer tenacious practice in the art of ignoring-my-bullshit-and-doing-it-anyway, it doesn’t even really register. See my painting looking awkwardly unfinished? Fine. It doesn’t touch the sides. Go me! Let’s applaud my excruciatingly slow personal development.
Where I still fall down, at the tender-yet-tough age of 38, is speaking. Having a voice on the internet - and to a lesser degree, having a face on the internet. I haven’t practiced these. In fact, I’ve avoided them. I recently read a paragraph on Substack, that I’ve sadly mislaid, which resonated: about how as Millenial on the internet, you can often feel as though you’ve walked into the wrong room. It’s crowded, you’re flustered and embarrassed, and you’re not sure why you’re there.
I came of age as the Internet become a ‘thing’, and — if you remember this Jurassic period of chat rooms and hotmail — girls of my generation were urged not to share their personal details, for safety - to use pseudonyms (yes, mine were all rainbowfairy123-adjacent, and yes, that could be construed as embarrassing, but that’s on theme, mais non?), to avoid using photographs (what was the point, when you had to scan the 35mm photographs in, and then they took 3 days to upload!) and to never share your personal details. Cut to today, and this advice - burned into our adolescent brains - is laughable. Flabbergasting. Impossible. And still - had a lasting impact on the way I view my Self on the internet. It took me years to be able to share under my own name. Even longer to be comfortable using my image. And to be totally candid, I’ve been sitting on a podcast I’ve wanted to make for actual years, because that would mean using my voice. My personhood. To conduct a conversation that would (I hope) form part of the archive of my curiosity, and my output.
Not to lay the pressure on too thick or anything.
And I think I’m almost ready to leap. One thing this strange and hard year has done for me is radically accelerate my comfort with exposure and vulnerability, and my robustness when it comes to rebounding back from a cycle of trying-and-failing. And it’s significantly massaged my attitudinal laissez-faire towards the cringe lifestyle. Especially when cringe is really just earnestness and presence.
So in addition to my monthly semi-poetic “what the hell is this Life Business anyway” essays/diatribes; I’m going to use this Substack space as a kind of testing ground. An umbrella for a bunch of ideas that regularly bounce around in my head: working title the “Studio Atlas Project”. Offering conversations - probably precursors to said podcast - beta workbooks and maybe even workshops, and more personal accounts of what I’m doing and where I’m at. You could argue my Substack is already pretty bloody personal. But I’m talking including practical details as well as the more general and lyrical vibes I bring to the table. It could be, to return to the beginning, pretty bloody cringe, especially at first. I might have to paywall these experimental efforts behind the $5/month paid Substack tier, to create a safe-r container for vulnerability, voice and hopefully-useful tool creation. A bit of psychological safety never hurt anyone - did it??
If you’re up for that, please by god let me know. This feels, overall, like a critical time for expansion, and I would love you to come along, and if it emboldens you to embark on your own expansion-journey, then a resounding fuck yeah and loud cheering from the muck and the mire from me. Let’s form a Flat On our Faces Fellowship together.
She says, sounding brave, but truly shit-scared.
