Treasures of Autumn

This week I bought a tin of pumpkin tea and a cider scented candle, both of which I thought would make Autumn proud. She's at our doorstep, hiding red bouquets in the trees like easter eggs, blowing cold air into dewy mornings, and filling the hills with dense fog. Year after year around this time, a youthful, almost annoying glee sparks deep within me. It's this time of year that my innermost 'me' comes to life, crawling out from the proverbial summer grave. This year feels a little different though. For the first time in my life, I am quite bitter about her arrival. Autumn - October in particular - my favorite month, means one whole year without our daughter Sohvi.

I haven’t shared our loss in depth, but if you've been a reader for some time, you'll know that we lost our daughter shortly after birth on October 16th of last year. Everything up until that moment was perfect - every ultrasound and heartbeat test. I saw her full round cheeks squished up on the screen mere days before she was born. I had little Halloween outfits for her, autumnal quilts, plans for her future October birthdays…the list is long. But life is wild and it doesn't always do what it we want it to, as hard as the heart tries to make it so.

Since last Autumn, it hasn't been easy to fold this grief - this life alteration, into my public work. But I am an artist and writer. I filter my experiences into tangible things to share and connect (and how lucky I am to do this.) I’m truthfully still digesting everything before I can fully share our story. In my studio, work has been a respite. I have poured my heart into my book series and taught a retreat that I knew would bring me joy.

Now that Autumn is nearing however, it’s testing my creative resolve. A time which usually carries so much inspiration now feels heavy with loss and mocking. What helps of course is to accept the sadness, which in all truthfulness, I'm happy to wear. It makes me feel close to my daughter, myself, to my husband, and to everything that unfolded. I'm not afraid of grief, nor was I at any point comforted by the sentiment that grief would ease up. Every emotion does. What has surprised me though about leaning into Fall is how much resistance I feel towards it. But tragedy knows no season and I can love the little treasures of this time of year, bittersweet as they might be.

If you make art, you know you must sometimes seek inspiration, for it does not always chase you down. I was determined to find a spark of creative joy towards this season, for my own sake, for art’s sake, for Sohvi’s - and after a few false starts, I did just that in the form of little painted treasures. What makes Autumn so particularly lovely is how short it is, how a flash of red is here and then gone before the long winter settles in. Witnessing the end of a life too, gives us this lightness - a reminder that it is all over, especially for some, too quickly. Nick Cave speaks of this so poetically after losing not one, but two sons.

"This feeling… of alertness to the inner-spirit of things — this humming — comes from a hard-earned understanding of the impermanence of things and, indeed, our own impermanence. This lesson ultimately animates and illuminates our lives. We become witnesses to the thrilling emergency of the present — a series of exquisite and burning moments, each extinguished as the next arises. These magical moments are the bright jewels of loss to which we cling". - Nick Cave

Bright jewels of loss. It's so bittersweet, I can hardly let it sink in without feeling everything. But also I’m ok feeling everything. The crushing weight of longing, the jealousy and unfairness of it all, the gratitude for everything I did get to experience, the acceptance and brilliance of each passing day.

Cheers to this new season - to the end of Summer - to the magic of Autumn. It will be gone before we know it, so I’m here and ready to nestle in, get close up with the golden leaves, feel the crisp air against my skin and who knows, I might just find loads of inspiration once again.

xo,
Becca

Settling In

In my 38 years, I’ve moved twenty-one times. Twenty-one new window views, twenty one new floors to pad across, and twenty-one new front doors.

What then, is twenty-two?
This month, we’re selling our house, potentially buying a new one, (but an old one - you know me!) packing up our things, putting Mori in the car and heading to Syracuse, NY. A new adventure awaits. I’ve scooped up an adorable studio in a warehouse full of artists (thanks to my pal Ginnie Hsu) and I’m eager to explore the hiking trails and eat all the food! Also it sort of blows my mind that I’ll be able to shop for art supplies at an actual store where I can feel the paper and see the colors in person. Dreams do come true!

To all the restaurants in Central New York…I’m coming for you.

Throughout all my past moves, I haven’t pushed pause on my work and I’d doubt if my clients even noticed a change. I’ve finished picture book work in the middle of an empty room, a cardboard box for a studio table. A Little Princess was painted in a car garage, Loujain Dreams of Sunflowers at a dining room table. Really, where ever there was a flat surface and adequate light, I made it work. But now I’m getting old and wise (and tired!) and I’d rather let this move be a little more chill.

My mom’s favorite photo of me. Very flattering.

I’m going to be taking things slow, at least as much as I can. While I’m still working on my book series, sharing regularly on Patreon, and leading an Art Retreat in Spain this Summer, I’m going to ease up on writing a monthly long form post here on the blog. For the last four years, I’ve been writing posts on everything from the creative cycle, to building a portfolio, to my love of line. It’s strengthened my writing skills and helped me articulate ideas on the creative process. Mostly though, it’s been an incredible way to share and connect with you. Moving forward, I’ll be sharing quarterly blog posts, in line with the seasons. I’ll still be sending monthly newsletter bulletins with thoughts, updates, and inspirations.

If you’re in The Dessert Club Patreon, you’ll still find the same amount of videos, posts, audio chats, and the like. If you aren’t part of The Dessert Club but would like to support my work and get regular posts, you can do so here. It costs less than a latte. :)

One more thing before I go…
From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you for being here, for reading the newsletters and blog posts each month, for commenting and sharing your inspirations and thoughts and wisdom. Thanks to everyone who has reached out to tell me they wait for the first of every month so they can read the blog. To everyone who so caringly wrote to me - some of you even sending packages and postcards to my postal box - kind words for the loss of our Sohvi. This community means so much to me. Even though I shared my online social struggles in the last post, the connections made here and on IG (and everywhere online) are real and valuable and treasured.

Thanks for giving me the time to show up in your inbox, share my world, and also to breathe a bit when things get hectic. I’ll be back here in the Fall with updates and such, and in the meantime, you can find new work and the new haunts in my monthly bulletin newsletter and on Patreon.

Much to love to you for a brilliant and joyous and wild Summer. I’ll see you on the other side.
xo,
Becca

Instagram, I love you but I hate you so.

It’s called Instagram…have you heard of it?”

Early in December 2011, a group of friends were visiting my shared warehouse studio in Grand Rapids. I’d just graduated college a year prior and was busy trying to make it as an illustrator. In the hallway of the warehouse, we doodled dust drawings on the interior windows and someone wrote the word ‘PANCAKES.’ Amanda, a friend of mine, took a photo of the window and said she was posting it to Instagram, had we all heard of it? It was this new app where you put retro filters on photos and shared them with friends. I didn’t even know what an app was…I was still making phone calls on this. While the picture of the dusty window was cute, it all seemed like a waste of time…and besides I wasn’t a photographer.

Fast forward 12 years later and I’m now reminded daily that only 10% of my ‘followers’ actually see my posts because I’m not active enough. Just last week Instagram gave me a fake clipart trophy for having reached some arbitrary threshold. And obviously, we are no longer sharing retro filtered photos - we’re shopping and selling and DMing and comparing and performing and reeling (literally). Even though Instagram has been monumental for my career, I’ve always thought that when I reached a certain age I’d be ok letting it go, and part of me feels I’ve reached this age. Problem is, it’s really hard to let it go, as much as I detest it.
I’m not sure if it’s a personal shift - grief has a way of providing clarity. It’s partly that but I also think it’s a larger societal shift. Recently Brené Brown has been tackling large issues like Social Media on her podcasts, in regards to the fact that it is beyond ‘human scale.’ She writes, “I know social media can feel like addiction. Even when it's hurting us, we don't stop.” In a recent interview, her guest Esther Perel shares ideas of the new AI - Artificial Intimacy. “We have 1000 friends on social but we don’t have a single person who can feed our cats for us.”
I’m also reading Jonathon Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation, ‘How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.’ I want to underline and share every other sentence, especially when it highlights the detriments of social media. Because I’m not a social scientist though, I’ll leave the data to researchers and hope you’ll dig into those (which I’ll link below) The best I can do is share how Instagram has been woven into my career, tell you why I love it, why it feels soul crushing, and how I’m exploring moving forward.

INSTAGRAM I LOVE YOU

Despite my initial snub at Instagram, I made an account within a month of that December evening in 2011. I shared my life, sketches, and work which at that time consisted largely of gallery work. I’d been applying to agencies with no luck and commercial work was hard to find. Then, out of nowhere, I was contacted by FLOW Magazine, all the way from The Netherlands. All of my work to that point had been local to Michigan and Phoenix, where we’d moved. It blew my mind that my work could cross the ocean…
I was international! I know that that wouldn’t have happened without Instagram.
Social Media has been a catalyst for my career and for building communities afar and in real life. We’ve lived in Phoenix, Denver, Nashville, and Osaka, and every time we’ve moved I’ve found new friends through this little online world. Instagram has helped me connect to publishers, librarians, books buyers, and of course other illustrators - some of whom support me via Patreon or my newsletter. I’m eternally grateful and I love my career, and I know a huge part of that is also because of Instagram.
There are other obvious benefits of social media - mass waves of social justice have taken off partly because of it - we can share injustices widely, which activate real world change. We can also connect to others in similar life situations, easing the pain of suffering alone. It connects us as people - with all the good and bad that that brings. It has completely transformed our world in a little over a decade, which is really quite mind blowing.

INSTAGRAM I HATE YOU SO

While sharing my frustrations, I acknowledge that I’m coming from a place of privilege, in that I probably would be ok if I didn’t have social media now that my career is established. I can imagine how frustrating it is to be a new illustrator and to feel at a loss for how to gain traction on any of the platforms. I know though (thanks to my therapist) that I can have empathy for this situation without feeling ashamed for taking advantage of a tool that was presented to me at the right time. Also you’ll see I’m sharing struggles with social media but I only mention Instagram because I don’t have tiktok, X, or anything else.

“MESSAGE YOUR NIECE”
I once went to coffee with two writers in NY, one I knew and one I’d just met. The latter was extremely well known on IG with over a million followers. She shared a story about her mother telling her to ‘message your niece and wish her a happy birthday.’ This writer was completely stressed out. I CANNOT DM ONE MORE PERSON ON INSTAGRAM… to which her mother reminded her that her niece was not an instagram follower, she was family and there was a big difference.
Seven years later, this still sticks with me, especially when I’m feeling overwhelmed by the social connection of IG. One of the hardest things I’ve had to navigate over the last ten years is the irony of my loneliness despite the fact that I have more online connections than I could possibly ask for. This is partly my fault - we’ve moved five times in the last decade which makes deep and lasting friendships hard. This, paired with what is a super isolating job (no one ever tells ya that!) has made my reliance on social media that much more damaging.
I’m grateful for the community I’ve found on IG, it’s the reason I haven’t left. “It’s where the people are!” I have to remember though, that while there are amazing humans on the other side of most screens, I can’t realistically have meaningful or deep friendships through this app, nor can I feel guilty for all the loose threads I leave hanging. It keeps me up at night…racing thoughts of DMs I’ve never answered, kind comments I’ve left unliked. How am I lonely yet I can’t even bring myself to respond to a single DM? Again thanks to my invaluable therapist, who observed that when we operate from a place of lack, even if we’re lonely, it’s hard to give. And though social media feels like it should give us all the benefits of actual connection, it doesn’t.
In his book, Jonathon Haidt shares the writing of Freddie deBoer, “Digital substitutions for real world social engagement reduce the drive to be social but don’t satisfy social needs.” I almost feel like it’s the allusion of connection, along with dopamine of course that keep us coming back but we may still feel empty after scrolling because it’s not real embodied connection.

DISTRACTED
I pick up my phone to check the weather and 15 minutes later, I’m getting a timer alert on IG. Somehow I never made it to the weather app. And yes, I ignore that timer. One more minute. 15 more minutes. Ignore limit for the day. Social Media is such a time suck. Deep satisfying work takes direct and sustained attention and what social media does best is fragment our attention and steal our time. It’s bad enough to get lost scrolling but it’s even worse to post, because I can become all-consumed with the potential of response, feedback, dopamine, community, validation. Lately I’ve been avoiding IG, setting work timers, listening to instrumentals and just working. It’s wild how much I can accomplish. The temptation to share is strong in the midst of drawing or painting - I’ve always done work-in-progress posts - but lately one of the things I dread from posting is the follow up. If I have lots of commotion, I feel compelled to respond and keep checking. If there are crickets, I feel insecure, and may even delete a post to avoid the shame of having it sink. This is all of course by design - like a slot machine, I keep coming back with the potential of winning.

THE EGO
“Human beings are prone to become absorbed in themselves, unable to be interested in what they see and hear or in anything outside of their own skins. This is a great misfortune to themselves, since it entails at best boredom, and at worst, melancholia.” -Bertrand Russell

Some level of self-involvement is a given for artists, especially with the very real excavation it takes to explore our inmate visual sensitivities. In order to make authentic work, we have to know ourselves well, and also understand why we make art in the first place. I make art to celebrate my fleeting life and the lives of others, the small moments and ordinary treasures of this earth and our days. I paint to capture the textures, colors, and lines that expand my heart, and like many of you, I am communal in this expression. I share to connect. If I didn’t have a connection with others surrounding my work, I don’t think I’d be very prolific.
Social media, however, has a way of skewing this relation to ‘self’ and instead creates a very egocentric framework. Again, in The Anxious Generation, Haidt talks about spiritual transcendence and connection (can be godless, religious, or quasi-religious), and how traditional practices of human beings create reverent times, spaces, movements, and relations to others. Social Media instead happens all the time, everywhere, in a fixed position, with the focus on the self. “Self transcendence is among the central features of the spiritual experience and it turns out that the loss of self has a neural signature. There is a set of linked structures is the brain that are more active when we are processing from an egocentric point of view — thinking about what I want, what I need to do next, of what other people think of me.” This is the default mode network, or DMN. He continues, “When the DMN is quieter, we are better able to connect deeply to something beyond ourselves. What does social media do to the DMN? A social ‘platform’ is almost by definition, a place that is all about you. You stand on the platform and post content to to influence how others perceive you. It is almost perfectly designed to crank up the DMN to maximum and pin it there. That’s not healthy for any of us, and it’s even worse for adolescents.”

IDEAS ARE FRAGILE
Have you ever made something you felt profoundly moved by? Prodded by perhaps your ego, or the communal need to share, you post it and all that ensues are crickets. You keep checking back but no one really cares about the thing you’ve just shared and so you go on to scroll through other people’s profound offerings and suddenly the very thing that made you open up social media in the first place now seems grey and dingy. In mere minutes, it can go from being a spark of genius to something you’re embarrassed of. This happens to me and I’m sure to many of us. But ideas are fragile. Little bits of joyful creation - those are fragile. When everything we make is automatically up against the best of the best in our industry, it can kill fledgling ideas. I know really successful people who feel defeated by Instagram all the time, who constantly compare themselves.
Comparison isn’t just awful for ideas, it’s of course awful for our mental health. Envy takes us out of our own lives and pins our hearts on realities other than our own. I notice a marked difference in the satisfaction of my day to day when I’m off of social media. Suddenly I can be grateful, even for things that are challenging or need to be changed. I can better work towards the life I want vs resenting others for having it (and everything else.)

I’M TIRED
There are a couple of things that give me pause about continuing to use IG as a tool for my business. One is follower growth. It almost fills me with dread to see new followers. I’m the party host who is drunk, tired, missing a sock, and realizing that she alone has to clean up this mess. I don’t want people walking in, I want them all to go home! Not really, but sometimes I do feel that way. Last month a large creative magazine asked if I wanted to host a giveaway with them and almost immediately after replying with an enthusiastic yes! I messaged them back to tell them I couldn’t do it. The only payment was more followers and honestly the thought of that tightened my neck with stress. I feel I have nothing left to offer, especially to people who don’t already know me or my work. (If you’re new here, don’t worry, you can still come to the party, but just know the booze is gone and the host is tired.)

REELS…I JUST CAN’T
I’m going to be that old person who can’t keep up with the changing times but I really dislike reels. I dislike watching them I dislike making them. How many times have I read/seen/heard a fellow creative say, Well I just spent hours on this stupid reel, only to scrap it, only for it to get shown to no one, only to lose followers. Hours of work. HOURS. We only get so many of them folks. I’m afraid that if I invest hours to doing reels for people to chew up and spit out within seconds, not only will that drastically reduce my actual time to create, but furthermore, reels won’t be the end of it. Reels are but a rung on the ladder to who knows where. Next thing you know, there will be another layer to the video…a VR experience perhaps, where followers virtually sit beside you in your studio watching you paint. They steal your snacks and give you suggestions on your color palette and tell you about their aunt who is also an artist. (😂 Kidding - I actually find it super endearing when people share their artists relation stories and I also am not an alarmist about reels. Am I just lazy? Maybe.)

MOVING FORWARD

I have a four book series coming out next year, we’re moving again this Summer and I plan to really play up my wholesale/shop in the next couple of years. It’d be unwise for me to scrap the account I’ve built up over the years so I’m looking for ways to use it that won’t dampen my mental health. For starters, I understand how important it is to have an illustration/creative community in real life, or at least via zoom with a few select individuals. Peer to peer relations are so important and mine have all but faded. Second, I plan to continue my long stretches of work time without actively posting.
Some have suggested to me to post through a desktop instead of a phone and I think that’d be a great solution for many. At this time, they keep you on the phone by not allowing reels/stories to be posted through a computer (though someone could correct me). I’ve been considering going through a scheduling app - seeing IG like a media/marketing avenue, and without the social aspect. I can check in on accounts I love and perhaps interact but if I post from afar, I feel it’ll be out of sight and I’ll be less likely to be consumed by incessant checking.
Just this past Monday when I posted something on Instagram about this very blogpost, so many of you shared the same frustration. The new Meta AI search bar (I can’t even), struggles with the algorithm…we’re all feeling it but in a way some of us feel stuck. Strangely, having those little interactions reminded me of why I love it. Again…it’s where the people are!

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Do you use social media for work? Your personal life? How do you navigate it, and do you feel you have a healthy relationship to it? I’d be interested to read through your experience, and I’m sure others would too. In the meantime, I’m navigating a new way of approaching my work relationship with IG and will definitely keep you posted on the direction I find. Maybe there’s a way to realistically approach the whole thing and I want to be open to new avenues.

Further reading/listening…
The Anxious Generation by Jonathon Haidt
Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
Brené Brown with Dr. William Brady on Social Media, Moral Outrage and Polarization
Don’t Fall for It - Creative Peptalk Podcast 448
Why I don’t Post Anymore, Damon Dominique


Ok loves - thank you for being here - it means so much to connect with you each month, on topics big and small.
xo, Becca