Looking Back Looking Forward

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post. Before starting this post, I felt compelled to look over my posts form 2018. And one thing I noticed was last year found me struggling with finding better ways to work and better ways to balance life and work. I wrote about taking a 10-day staycation and explored my thoughts about the need for social media as a small business. Which naturally led to taking a social media fast for one month. I also shared with you my conflicted thoughts about where I live and my desire to settle somewhere else in the near future. It was a year full of challenges and growth - growth that could only come out of struggle. When I look back over these posts I know one thing that many of you don’t: most of last year I was working harder than I ever have and dancing with burnout in the process.

Last year could have only led me to where I am now. All of our choices are always taking us one step at a time to the next place we need to be. And last year was bound to throw something at me to slow me down:

Welcome in back problems like I’ve never had - sciatica pain, a herniated disc, tingling, numbness, pain so bad it takes an elephant’s worth of will power just to get out of bed in the morning.

I think one of the only reasons I can write about this in any way where I’m even remotely grateful for what I’m dealing with is because a few days ago it seems like I may have passed the worst of the pain. As I begin physical therapy I’m trying to reconfigure my life around a slower pace. Around a TRUE acceptance in my head that to be less busy is OKAY, that relaxation does not equal being lazy.

I always like to take some time at the beginning of a new year to write about what I hope to realize and bring into being in the new year AND what I would like to let go of. The things I wrote about this year are less things and more ways of thinking:

1. To be more accepting of what I am capable of doing in a given span of time (be that an hour, a day, a month, a year, heck, even a lifetime.)

2. To let go of guilt. Whether that’s guilt for taking time off or guilt because I actually do love my work and sometimes, when it feels right, I WANT to work all day (now, the caveat is, so long as I’m not overworking my body.) To realize that all of the pieces and parts are necessary and not anything to feel guilty about.

3. To run with the things that spark my excitement and imagination and let go of many of the things that drag me down.

4. To better embrace the “middle” and transitional times in life. Whether that’s when I’m in the middle of a work-related goal and don’t know when the dream will be realized, or just in the middle of a big closet clean out. I tend to be bad with “middle” energy. I’m all excited when I’m getting a project started and feel very proud once I’ve realized the goal/dream/clean closet, but overall I just end up trying to rush through the middle. The middle is where a lot of the good stuff is, and I know that when I’m rushing through it I’m missing a lot of life.

And so, I move forward, one foot in front of the other, seeing quite clearly that slowing down is the only REAL way to enact REAL change in my life.

This year is off to a bit of a muddled start. I had a tradeshow very early in the month, that I had to be prepared for. And so I put on my big girl pants and I got it done, even while dealing with an immense amount of pain. I will report: the show went well. And I can happily say there are some new stores that will be receiving Tangleweeds goods for their shop in the weeks to come. But as soon as that show was over I slowed the train down. I’ve mostly taken the last week off and it’s felt great. I even took some time to really clean up my workshop and it now feels like a space I am excited to (carefully) get back to work in. Maybe I’ll even offer up some more mini-tutorials on Instagram like I did last year.

Overall though, Tangleweeds isn’t going anywhere. There are some significant changes ahead, but given that I’m not quite sure how quickly things will happen around here for now, I’m not going to offer up any timelines.

What you can expect to see from Tangleweeds this year:

1. A remodel and pairing down of the online shop. Many designs will be discontinued and overall the shop will have a new, more shopper friendly look. (I will of course announce the re-model and design discontinuation with plenty of notice in case there’s something you’d like to get while you still can.)

2. A new series of limited edition pieces. These will be released on Instagram on a schedule that I have yet to set. I will announce all of this on IG as I refine this way of releasing designs.

3. A PODCAST!!!! I’m beyond excited about this idea. It’s my way of continuing to further the building of the handmade/maker/artisan community, especially as I consider moving out of the bay area this year.

4. More workshops. Definitely my Metalwork Made Easy class, along with some other ideas in the works.

5. A more paired down craft fair schedule. I most likely won’t do any events at all until April or May of this year. This is both to give my back time to heal and to focus on other areas of Tangleweeds.

6. A different focus on my newsletter - I want to grow the arm of Tangleweeds that is about finding the beauty in the everyday. And I want to share it with all of you!

That about wraps up my thoughts for 2019. I could write an equally long post reflecting on 2018, but I’ll just leave it at this: I realized a lot of my goals. Now the challenge: continuing that journey towards new goals while incorporating more mindfulness, more self-care, and heaps more “living in the moment” types of energy!!!

Tell me about your new year goals. Or conversely, how do you feel about the way 2018 went? I love the practice of looking back/looking forward.

Thoughts on Social Media and Running a Business

I’m back! And only one month since my last post on this blog. Feels not-too-shabby ;-). How has everyone been?!

Social media and social media tools are such funny things. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I use these tools in my business and the rest of my life a lot lately. Honestly, it can be difficult balancing it and not getting sucked into 101 different social media channels. And then, those channels come up with ingenious new ways to hook you! (I’m looking at you right now, Instagram.)

this is what my home life looks like most days when I sit down to write 

I’m going to stop for a moment, before this starts to sound like a totally anti-social media blog post, which it’s not. I’m grateful to social media and the many doors it’s opened for me: from meeting fellow creatives, to gaining new wholesale accounts, to finding out about new and exciting arts and crafts festivals to sell at. It’s a fantastic resource, one that I want in my life.

Here comes the BUT. But, after I took two unintentional breaks from social media this year (for four days while I went to the Women’s Herbal Symposium and for 6 whole days while I was vending at the Kate Wolf Music Festival), I could clearly see how the less I engage with social media the less anxious I feel and the less I find myself falling into the sticky and icky comparison trap game. 

a nearly full moon at the Women's Herbal Symposium

Sometimes it can feel to me like there’s no middle ground with social media. Like it’s either abandon ship and go back to snail mail (j/k) or I’m all in, losing vast swaths of time everyday to mindlessly perusing beautiful IG feeds and the like. In light of my two “digital detoxes” and the light it shed on my social media use, I had to get really honest with myself about how I use it and how I want to use it. . . 

For now that’s going to look like this: Getting back to blogging, but mostly in this very organic, very journal-y type way, and continuing to share my day in pictures and stories on Instagram. I want to be intentional with my FB engagement, but for now I don’t think I’ll be producing any original content for that platform. And regarding my ideas about starting a You-Tube channel, as I had announced via IG stories a while back, I’m putting that on hold for now while I consider what that would look like and how I would fold that into my life in a way that feels good to me. In the meantime I’ll continue to post the occasional tutorial or “how-to” mini-segment in my IG stories. . . and maybe give IGTV a try. . . 

Well! I honestly didn’t realize I could write that much about my social media use. I think it’s tricky for all of us, even those of us who don’t need to engage with it for work and can more or less choose to simply set all social media use aside without any work-related anxieties. ’Tis the times we’re living in. If any of you feel called to leave your own thoughts/comments about your social media use and how you manage it all I’d love to hear them. Leave them in the comments below =). 

some OOAk River Rock earrings I made for the Kate Wolf Music Festival - these sold at the event, but I plan to make some more similar ones in the future

In the meantime I’ve got a mostly no-work weekend coming up! Woo-hoo. I’ll be headed to the San Mateo Gem Show to buy stones (yes, work related, but I LOVE it so much I can’t even call it work, or maybe I’m just that lucky to call it work?!). I’ll be headed over to the 40th street block party in Oakland after that. And then, who knows? Maybe I’ll check Renegade out on Sunday, maybe I’ll just have a lazy day at home with the cats on Sunday. What are your weekend plans?

Everything is Connected

Good morning! I'm excited today to announce the publication of an article I wrote about my creative journey and the creation of Tangleweeds. It's called Everything is Connected and you can find it in the spring issue of Jewelry Affaire magazine, available on newsstands tomorrow (April 1st)! You can find Jewelry Affaire at most major book retailers. Read on for how I'd like to celebrate this moment with all of you.

April is full of so many celebratory things in my life - the first day of spring, my birthday on the 11th, and now this article being published. I want to share all of this great energy with you guys by offering 25% off all web orders through April 15th*. Simply use the coupon code connected and you'll receive your savings. This is a great chance to snag one of the newest designs at great prices! I'll also be offering a celebratory giveaway. . . 

(*all web orders placed March 31st through April 9th will ship the week of April 10th. I am out of town on a short trip with my family in early April, but still wanted to celebrate this moment with all of you!)

The Giveaway
Along with the Everything is Connected Sale* that I'm offering, I'll also be giving away one free copy of the Jewelry Affaire magazine along with a pair of Swoops earrings (one of the designs featured in the article, and pictured below) to one lucky person. To enter the contest simply leave a comment on this blog post. Say hi, or tell me a story about a time when the dots were connected in your own life. I leave the commenting up to you!

(*all web orders placed March 31st through April 9th will ship the week of April 10th. I am out of town on a short trip with my family in early April, but still wanted to celebrate this moment with all of you!)

Sitting down to write this article for the Jewelry Affaire magazine ended up being quite the gift to myself. So often I find that I don't take the time to slow down and reflect on the progress I've made with Tangleweeds. Writing this article allowed me that space and time. I think it's an article that you will enjoy even if you don't make jewelry yourself!

The winner of this giveaway will be announced April 16th, both here and on my Instagram account. Also, the magazine and earrings will ship by the beginning of May. Good luck!

Creative Tenacity: Doubt and Her Cousins

Excerpted from Rosanne Cash’s memoir, Composed:

T-Bone Burnet, an old friend, once told Joe Henry, “Don’t stop working, just stop worrying,” advice that Joe passed on to me [Rosanne Cash] that has since become my silent mantra. Now, even when I do worry, I keep working. Work, I remind myself, is redemption.

Let’s talk about doubt - about self-doubt for a moment. 

The truth. I can be terrible about following my own advice: the advice that it’s pretty much no good to anyone to compare yourself and your work and your accomplishments to the creatives around you. 

You see, I am continually inspired and pushed to do more by looking around and seeing the amazing things coming out of the amazing women in this creative world around me here in the SF bay area. And most of the time it gets me revved up and feeling super lucky to say “hey, I know that woman!!” 

But, sometimes it can make me feel like I’m not doing enough. Leaves me wondering when my big break is going to come. Or when it’s all just going to get easier.

The other day I was listening to this bio series about Oprah on KQED. And it was riveting. To hear her talk about her team’s strategy as they worked on maneuvering Oprah from being a sensationalist talk show to one that was about how to live your best life. “You have to keep your eye on what you’re doing. You have to wear blinders. Don’t look at other folks’ ratings. Don’t look at what others are doing and think “I need to do that.” You have to stay in your lane and keep looking ahead, because it’s when you start staring at the other folks, in their lanes that you start to slow down.” (that’s a rough quote of what Oprah said.)

I heard that and I was like “uh, huh! Yes!” So many good ways this can apply to creative entrepreneurs. 

I have my own take on this advice, of course, one that’s a little more inclusive and more involved with the people around me, but I definitely took that advice to heart.

Part of that stew is the fact that I am a woman, and in so many ways programmed to look towards others for advice and validation, to look towards others for the “okay, yes, keep doing what you’re doing” high sign. That way of making decisions can be self-sabotaging though. As you run your handmade business you’re going to need to develop the strength to make many decisions on your own. That will only be harder if you need your decisions validated by others. It may even keep you from making decisions that you need to make, and possibly that you need to make quickly.  

Doubt, self doubt, second guessing yourself, not feeling confident, low self-esteem about the way your business is going, these will all be things you’ll deal with if you decide to turn selling your handmade work into a business. You will not be without these things. And while too much of these feelings will drag you down and keep you form doing the work that needs to be done, an occasional dose of doubt and it’s cousins will help you to keep trying new things and pushing forward with your work. 

You can’t outrun the doubt. It will be there. Even if you manage to grow your business into something that is successful by anyone’s definition of success, the doubt will always come eventually.  

There’s a Rumi quote that I especially like, that I feel is relevant to many of the harder things in life. I think it’s relevant to dealing with your “doubt demons” too:

The wound is the place where the Light enters you.

Basically it’s the difficult stuff in life that’s in someways a gateway or a path to the more transcendent things we reach for and grow towards. I think when I was younger I thought that the point of living “successfully” (whatever the fuck that means!) was that eventually I would wake up everyday fully confident in everything I was doing, that there would be no second-guessing myself, there would be no DOUBTS. I also thought that eventually I would only create work I was 100% happy with and learn to always say exactly what was on my mind in a perfectly clear way that the person I was speaking to would understand. I had a lot of learning to do.

Doubt will be your bedfellow if you venture into this creative business world. She will tag team you at craft fairs, she will sit on your shoulder when you’re creating new designs, and she will sometimes keep you from doing some really stupid things. But if you let her take the reigns too much she will keep you from ever doing the work you truly want to do.

I think self-doubt and believing this story that doubt is telling us (Because it is a story, anyone who has become really good at telling themselves that their work rocks and they are awesome is also telling themselves a story. This is neither good nor bad, simply helpful to remember so we don’t put too much stock in these narratives.) goes hand-in-hand with the rabbit hole that many people fall down into. The wanting to wait until it’s all perfect rabbit hole. This also sometimes sounds like I just want to wait until I’m ready. Ready to launch a new product, or take a business course, or simply to try to start selling one’s work. 

The key to reaching for your dreams is to get comfortable with taking steps towards those dreams even when you don’t feel ready. 

Now, that is going to look different for everyone. Everyone is going to have a different threshold for the amount of uncertainty and unpredictability that they can handle. Some of us thrive on it, others need to parcel it out so as to not go into complete overwhelm. As a personal example: I was (relatively) comfortable with quitting my day job well before my business was making much money. It was profitable, but barely. I had reached a tipping point where I felt like working another job was taking too much time away from my biz. I accepted that money would be tight and that things would be a bit uncomfortable for a while. But I was more willing to accept that than say, continuing to work at the day job while working on my job into the wee hours and losing sleep. We all compromise where and when we can. And you will learn to too. 

I wrote this slightly rambling Creative Tenacity post about doubt because when I reached out to my fellow makers, creative business cohorts and my blog readers, this was resoundingly the topic most of your were interested in. I hope that it helps some of you through what may be a dark period or moment of questioning what you are doing. When you get to that place, just remember that it is not necessarily a sign that you are doing anything wrong and that even the most successful amongst us struggles with doubt regularly! I would say even daily. 

I’m going to leave you readers with these points, in summation of this slightly stream-of-consciousness post about doubt. 

Get used to feeling a bit uncomfortable, or outside of your comfort zone.

Develop a healthy habit of pursuing things and starting things before you feel 100% ready. Doing the thing or starting the thing will make you ready.

Learn to sit side by side with doubt and her cousins. Accept that doubt will never go away. You will simply learn to live with it. 

Lastly, I wanted to include a short list of resources that I find to be helpful when my doubt demons start to get too loud, or I’m in need of a personal pep-talk of sorts -

Stephanie St Claire

Marie Forleo

Tara Mohr

I also find that talking to a fellow creative when you’re feeling especially low or full of doubt can sometime be the best balm of all. 

Keep pushing and keep making your beautiful work everyone!

The Tangleweeds Cottage

Morning! Where to start with the story-telling? I'll start with the nuts and bolts: I moved over the holidays. Just within Oakland, from a three bedroom house that I rented with my boyfriend and his two kids (part time) to a tiny little studio cottage (pictured below.) It was probably the most stressful move of my life thus far. Moving during the holidays while running Tangleweeds was very challenging. The perfectionist in me that loves order and organization just had to be soothed and cajoled with promises of afternoons full of tidying up and decorating and organizing once the holidays fell away. 

I moved mainly because I am at a place in my life where I need my own place for a little while. My own little place to decorate as I please, to nest in as I please, to have a little space from the rest of the world. My boyfriend and I are still together, and the details of that I'll save for those closer to me. We are choosing to navigate our relationship in our own way and in our own time. I've never really done anything in the conventional way, and my relationships are included in that little statement. 

Moving within Oakland was challenging from an expense perspective. Rents have sky rocketed just in the last two years. What I could get for my money now is so much less than what I could get for my money five years ago when Jeff and I moved in together. It's sobering, and it's propelling me towards my decision to start looking at where I want to live with a more long-view. Basically I've decided to start making the plans and necessary preparations to move somewhere quieter and more affordable sometime in the next 2 to 6 years. The reason for the timeframe is tied up in a lot of business stuff, but also has a lot to do with my not quite being done with my time in Oakland just yet. 

(text continued below photos)

In the meantime I'm gonna love the heck out of this city that I've called home for the last 8 years (12 years off and on really.) There's this part of me that just wants to get on with my re-location plans. In a way, in many ways, this is a good lesson in enjoying where I am at this moment, even while knowing that everything is temporary. Because in the grand scheme of things, everything is, right? 

The pictures above are all taken at my new home (except for the table - that's at my sister's.) I really am adoring having my own space. I'll be posting more photos of home decor stuff this year as I make the time for those projects. The table above is a piece I picked up at an antique shop in Modesto with my sister. The thing had been re-painted in the ugliest shade of black-brown and then scuffed up to look "rustic." I'm sanding it down on top and then going to seal it and leave it with the natural wood finish. The legs and baseboard will be painted a matte turquoise. I promise to have some "after" shots once it's done. My sister's been a valuable resource on stuff like this. She's like a one-woman Martha Stewart encyclopedia. 

Well, that post got wordy fast! I'm not sure what my exact intention will be with the blog this year. I'm just going to let it unfold naturally and see what I'm compelled to post about. In the meantime I gotta wrap up and get ready for a little jaunt into the city to restock Wallflower on Valencia. I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Full Circle ~ It's Been a While

It's been a good while since I've dropped in on this blog! Quite frankly, the month of March proved, well, challenging to say the least. Many things do seem to come in threes, and that was sort of how March went. I was juggling too many things as the month blew in, then family came to visit and the juggling went from elegant to frantic. Then, amidst it all, my computer's hard-drive decides it's time to CRASH. Lastly, right as I'm trying to get back to work, new computer hard-drive installed (along with increased memory), I get sick. And not just "oh, I've got a little cold sick" but full on fever and all the yuckies that come along with it sick. 

I spent the last week and change chilling out at home. After an initial attempt at going back to work too early, I realized I was only going to get better if I gave myself over to rest and recuperation. I read a bunch, worked on my current weaving project (but only a bit as even this proved a bit exhausting) but mainly I rested, drank buckets of tea and cuddled with the kitties. 

And I had lots of time to reflect. Leading up to getting sick, during those weeks of juggling priorities and to-do lists, I just kept finding myself thinking "I really need a break." But I just kept on keeping on, kept on waking up early everyday even when all I wanted to do was sleep in, kept on with all of my goals and to-do lists when all I wanted to do was go take in a matinee at the theater down the street from my studio. When I look at it all, it starts to make sense that I got sick. It was the only way I was going to give myself the rest I so sorely needed. 

The only takeaway I have from all of this, is a reminder that I need to always put my health and well-being first. Even when it feels like I might not meet a self-imposed deadline, or blog enough, or list those new pieces on Etsy, or whatever it might be. I feel like this is a lesson I've had to learn time and time again, and that with each turn it sinks in a bit more thoroughly. 

I'm back on the horse, so to speak today, and it feels good. I'm 98% better, and taking it slow today with lots of breaks and moments to pause and rest. Being my own boss does make that a whole heck of a lot easier! 

(a small collection of nature-ephemera I found laid out at the Berkeley farmer's market last week ~ a little reminder to pause, breathe, and enjoy the everyday magic that's all around me)