barriers to sharing stuff

be creative!!! lol

i watched this video by a youtuber i like called Tris:

it’s not really new concepts to me but always nice and sometimes necessary to hear someone be like ‘hey don’t be a perfectionist! keep doing stuff! share it with the world and don’t agonise about it!’

there is a nice quote from Martha Graham in there:

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

it gave me a little kick to follow through on a repeated intention to reopen this newsletter format as a channel for expression for me. specifically to change my expectations for myself around what is publishable to be lower stakes and include things like “here is a cool thing i found and wanted to share without heaps of original and fascinating thoughts of my own to go with it”!

side note: when i first started writing newsletters my idea was to have a personal newsletter to try to replace/get off instagram. i don’t have that goal anymore so found it a bit confusing to post on here again. now my vibe is more like… not wanting to die on that hill and more wanting to think about the feedback systems that make any given platform make sense, with an open mind towards new ideas for what a technical intervention into that could look like. be an early adopter, experimenter, not a reactionary anti-tech martyr if that makes sense.

anyway i also get self conscious about people being burdened by seeing my content lol but someone recently was posting on their insta story about their cool eastern european holiday and messaged me saying the same thing, that they worry its too much, and from the outside i was like what? if people don’t want to see it they can manage that themselves? in the attention economy people are really practiced at ignoring things they don’t care about! just funny how easy it was to see from that outside perspective how silly and redundant this kind of self-censoring internal voice that so many of us have can be.

anyway hope you’re well and would love to see your unfiltered creative expressions too x