Hi all,
I hope summer has been treating you as kindly as possible. It’s been feeling vaguely dystopian where I am between smoke filled skies and heat waves. I hope wherever you are, you’re getting space to breathe.
I’ve been mulling over the idea of starting a newsletter for several years now, and the brilliantly talented designer Jessica Oddi helped make it a reality. The sign up form went live a couple of months ago, and since then, I’ve procrastinated making my first post.
I couldn’t figure out exactly what I wanted this newsletter to be. Should it focus on my craft, sharing short stories and other snippets of my creative work? Should it be centred around more personal reflections, like the blog I wrote once upon a time, over a decade ago? Should it focus on professional updates? Community news? I tried to guess what people would be most interested in. I didn’t want to write the equivalent of an online recipe where the reader grimaces, skipping past descriptions of a laundry machine malfunction as they try to get to the recipe for chocolate zucchini oat muffins that’s at the bottom of the page.
The challenge of choosing which version of myself to put forward comes up frequently for me. In my professional life I wear many hats, each with their own shape. As a facilitator my role is to hold space for the other voices in the room, not to inject my own. But as a consultant, forming a specific opinion and recommendation is often part of the job. As a writer, honing in on my point of view is essential, but as a story editor and dramaturge it’s often about acknowledging and setting aside my own biases, to support another writer’s perspective. I enjoy moving back and forth between these roles, but it can get confusing when my position isn’t clearly defined.
And what about the boundaries between the personal and professional? How much should I, or how much do I want to blend the two?
I’m not sure.
Here’s what I do know:
- Boundaries between the personal and professional are important. They help us keep a part of ourselves separate from whatever expectations an organization or institution has of us.
- I’m a storyteller. I’m influenced by things that happen in all facets of my life and experience.
- Part of the beauty of the internet is that people can choose what to engage with, and what they scroll past.
- If I wait for the perfect answer, I’ll never have a newsletter.
So, this is the start of an experiment. I’m going to try to use my website to bring together those different parts of myself, of my practice. Reflections, stories, musings, updates, signal boosting and more. Rough drafts and polished writings. A living tangle of an archive.
Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Community shout-out:
Signal boosting this call for mutual aid on behalf of an artist who has contributed so much to QTBIPoC and Disability Arts communities over the past 10 years. Link to more information and the fundraising campaign here.