Relief. Glad to be here.

I recently decided to move my podcast from Spotify to Substack, and only there for a short while, I found Tuhat. I presuppose to be surrounded by savvy folks who’ve long figured out their public and social media presences. I have not. Around 8 years ago I co-produced a documentary about myself and my experience with the autoimmune disease, alopecia. I was happily thrust into the habit of making a social media presence, all to support this costly film. I enjoyed it, participated in a crowd funding platform and tested my chops on more active social media attention. It went well enough, yet as soon as I found myself being pursued by strangers and my DMs became spooky unsafe corners to lurk, I felt myself turning down the volume.

I shifted to pictures and experiences of the natural world. There I am most comfortable, safe, and at home. I could still play with the canvas of my baldness, but nature held me safe. It’s so easy to shift one’s attention to a beautiful leaf or the way the light falls through branches.

Most recently, my posts on Instagram are seen by a handful of people. If I get 8 likes, that’s a lucky post. Only lucky if my equation for luck equals more traffic. I’ve known one person irl who had a viral experience of her posts. She’s another alopecian and became Instagram famous for posting her wedding pictures, where she kept her bald head featured as a point of pride and beauty. Some many millions of views, the driving force for so many who post, gave her little. A brief moment of celebrity, then gone, lots of new followers, but not any kind of huge life shift, at least from my perspective.

I have to wonder what I even want by sharing my life and my work in this way: Publicly and socially. I have to admit it feels important to me, compelling even. I wish it were a drive that I could turn off, or put into park. I can’t seem to. I will be making art and sharing art in one way or another for the rest of my life. Like it or not. Ready or not. Here I come. Ollie Ollie Oxen-free. This game of hide and seek is my way of being an artist in the world. It feels a particular kind of pain point to want so many modalities attached to my public identity. Am I a dancer, performer, sound healer, yoga instructor, visual artist, sculptor, podcaster, gardener, event planner, elder care practitioner, retreat host, cook, childhood mentor, ceramicist, pet psychic, choreographer, writer? How is it that people are so damn good at being one thing at a time?

Perhaps this sounds like a kind of midlife crisis. Perhaps it is.

I’ve created a thought experiment that I’m currently pulling into reality. Water Moon Studios is the home for all of my creative meanderings and a place to offer a way for others to join me there.

I’m so relieved to be here. To write without wondering how the post will fare. To be welcome to breathe and rest here.

My artistry is how I see the world and how I use future anchoring to inform the present moment with creative problem-solving. I honestly care so much less about the medium than about the energetics of thinking outside the box. And the f’ing box we’ve swallowed is a doozy. Unlearning the box. That’s what I’m about. Rethinking the basic equations of how things are done. Yes. Building communities based on care and good boundaries, YES. Seeing children as full respected individuals. YES. Supporting learning always. Yes. Resting. Playing. Eating. Respecting Nature. Supporting Elders. Building Soil. Actual soil plus the common ground which grows new ideas. Composting. Rethinking what is garbage and what can be reused. Healing space for those who need it. Care for all. Indigenous wisdom at the center of rebuilding networks of nationwide restructure. Universal Healthcare. Free Education. Limiting new clothing manufacture. Reuse. Recycle. Listen to the people who manage our garbage. Make changes. Build homespace. Renovate homes. Open homes to community care. Learn from folks who know how to make communal living work. Care for neighbors. Dark Skies. Stargazing. Water gazing. Sunbathing. Barefeet in non-toxic grass. No Herbicides on our food, or in our soil. Soft gazes. Laughter. Music. Normalized community music. Bring back wailing to the people who have lost it. Grief circles. Food circles. Women released from subordination. Old social contracts done. Public bathrooms. Unions. Free public transport. Libraries everywhere. Art supply libraries and tool libraries and elder wisdom real people libraries. Mental health support. Spiritual health support. Physical non western medicine health support in addition to easy to access western medical care. Young families supported to stay home with their kids or to have safe loving childcare. Life can be better than this. We can be less anxious, stressed and constantly worried.

I may become the grandmother who sits and rocks her way into believing this future is possible. I may see it for my own children and grandchildren. There’s one way to find out and it looks like this. Breathe in, breathe out. All we have is our own attention and our own breath. I do think it matters that we hold on as long as we can to being sovereign. It is just too easy for our attention to be occupied by something or someone else. Perhaps if we become strong at holding our own attention and being so curious about ourselves we have a better chance of getting through from this dystopian world to the one I see. I can see our future. It looks like it is already here, yet just needs the electric system of our full attention to run it. I wonder. I wonder if that's how it works. What if there really is the great unplug? I'm especially interested in recent larger interest in general strikes. What would it really take to shift into a new economy and a new way of being in the world?