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I'm back!

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Ok, after 2 years over at Wix, I decided to move back to SquareSpace. One nice thing about moving back to my site here is that my old blog posts are back online as well. I just did not feel motivated to blog on Wix… partially because I couldn’t get the posts to look the way I wanted to over there. Things are just much more aesthetically pleasing to me here. I thought I hated editing sites on SquareSpace, but it turns out I got quite used to it and actually missed the ease of making my design choices coherent across pages.

I also have a new hobby that’s taken over all my free time since my last post before the pandemic. At the end of 2020 I was farting around online looking for other stuff to do with my Silhouette Cameo (an electronic cutting machine), stumbled upon Lia Griffith’s website, and started making a paper plant for my windowless bathroom out of cardstock paper. I had a Zoom birthday party to attend, and quickly whipped up my very first crepe paper flower (the red poppy below). Things just kind of took off from there.

If you check out my portfolio section on this website or look at my Instagram feed, you can see that I have spent the last 10 months creating these lovely botanical sculptures from paper. I don’t actually use the cutting machine much anymore, as I predominantly use crepe paper now (and that’s just easier to cut by hand). I have also expanded where I learn to make flowers. I am now working through Tiffanie Turner’s book, The Fine Art of Paper Flowers. I am also doing nearly a year of workshops with the hosts of the Paper Talk Podcast. I actually need to head down to my local bookstore today, because my order of Jessie Chui’s book arrived on Monday.

Be prepared to see a lot of flowers on this site moving forward. I have never really considered myself a flower person. I am actually kind of a tomboy with occasional goth tendencies, so this hobby really surprised me. It makes sense though, when you consider that I studied natural sciences in college and have always loved crafting. This is like a fine art combination of those loves, and I find it incredibly fulfilling. I have also found the online paper florist community to be one of the kindest spaces I’ve ever found on the internet.

Hiatus?

Hah, ok, so I never got back into the swing of things after my time off with family in June. I’m a very nice boss to myself, so I haven’t been yelled at yet. I did manage to pop out some temporary tattoos to make a friend’s inside joke a [temporary] reality. The joke was these 3 pals should get tattoos of each other as lions because they are all astrologically Leos. A Leo Trio, if you will.

So I am not, like, totally done with this Northwest Nina thing. I am just not forcing anything. To be quite honest, it was mostly a thing born out of boredom and a shit-ton of alone time that needed to be filled. I’ve been putting in an effort to get out into the world socially a bit more the last few months, so that is a huge factor in my diminishing online presence.

I’ll still be creating and fulfilling requests from friends; I am just not getting any deadlines or timelines from the boss lady any time soon.

Blog fog

OH HAI DO I HAVE A BLOG? Oh right, this thing I was sort of/kind of trying to do once a month has been a tad neglected for the last… 3 months. Let’s pretend I was just out living too much life to write things on a computer?

Alright, so my mom’s house almost got hit by a tornado back in March and my anxiety spiraled out for a bit and then I got real tired for some reason. Weird.

I also decided to take a break from trying to run a business and stopped taking orders for a bit before visiting family and seeing that tornado damage IRL. Commodifying my hobbies and being anti-capitalist confuses the fuck out of my brain and I just wanted to art for fun and fun only for a while.

BUT, I am a few weeks beyond the vacation date I had set for myself and I haven’t really been doing ANY hobbies since I got back from Georgia, aside from reading. Reading is good though, and the nice thing about being your own boss for a side hustle project is… nothing really matters, I reckon?

I’m about to make some custom temporary tattoos for another couple getting hitched, so I’m expecting that to motivate me back into the swing of things. I was looking into getting some vegetable based inks a few weeks back because I was not feeling super great about using regular smegular printer ink for tattoos applied to skin, so I think I am going to try it this time around. If I am satisfied, I’ll put my listing back up on Etsy.

I was having a laugh at myself earlier because I am not a huge fan of the whole concept of marriage, but this whole Northwest Nina thing started by making custom temporary tattoos for my friends as they got married. I am a walking contradiction and that is okay.

I am also a blog flake. I got the blog smog. Blog fog?

Embracing Hygge

While doing some research on my ancestral resiliency practices last month, I discovered that my paternal grandfather’s maternal grandparents were Danish. I’ve never been particularly interested in my cultural or genetic heritage and have always just joked that “I’m Heinz 57.”

I’ve always had a bit of a crush on Scandinavia and once had grand plans to apply to grad school in Sweden [then a few years later an actual person I had a crush on moved there and I let my Scandinavian dreams go, because I didn’t want to be perceived as a girl who followed a boy halfway around the world].

Anyway, once I realized that Denmark is a part of Scandinavia, I decided to dig in and really learn about Danish culture. The biggest thing to know about Danes is that they embrace something called “hygge” in all aspects of life… and I am VERY into it. It aligns well with the mindfulness stuff I practice from therapy, my love of creating cozy environments, and my tendency for introversion.

I’ve been in a bit of a slump lately, and I’ve been trying to make some changes to improve my mental health and general outlook on life. I lean heavily towards a more cynical view on humanity, and don’t spend enough time appreciating what good there is in my world, so this quote really punched me in the gut:

It is not about viewing life through rose-colored glasses or seeing the glass as half-full. Rather, it is experiencing the world via the soft glow of the candles, and seeing that the glass has water, and being grateful for things just being the way they are. — Astrid S. Nielsen, Hygge: Cozy Living The Danish Way 

When I started my journey with therapy, I often mentioned that I wanted less extremes in my life and more “happy mediums.” I’m hoping that trying to implement hygge into my every day life will bring more of this into my existence. I think it might actually be working? I have been putting more effort into making my house cozy & decluttered, trying to minimize how often I am multitasking, and putting my damn phone down to pay real, solid, attention to my dog.

I often get so caught up in the daily slam of terrible news and wanting to change society so bad that I forget to slow down and enjoy life. I’ve been learning the hard way that I have to create space to enjoy life if I want to have any modicum of resiliency to stay in this fight for the long haul. I won’t be much use in dismantling white supremacy, the patriarchy, or capitalism if I’m a burnt out curmudgeon!

“Enjoy life. There's plenty of time to be dead.” — Hans Christian Andersen

Tak for læsning!

New Year's Intentions

I don’t really try to do New Year’s resolutions, but I am accidentally sort of doing it anyway this year. It’s not so much about the date on the calendar, though; it’s just a natural progression of crawling out of a bit of seasonal depression and realizing I hardly accomplished the goals I set for myself last year.

I’m pulling back on setting numbers in my goals this year. I don’t know how many books I intended to read last year, but I can assure you I started several and finished exactly zero of them. I think I estimated I had enough yarn to knit 22 hats… I made 2.75. I had big ideas about making a bunch of original vinyl decal designs, but found myself scrolling through Facebook endlessly when I meant to be in a design program.

So this year, I am - as previously mentioned - trying to get off the internet a bit so I can get grounded in my real life, read more books, knit more things, develop a daily drawing practice, take my dog more places, and be a little less anxious about how everything in the world is about to boil over. I want to go camping alone with my pup at least once this year. I want to find more calm within myself so I can let go of some smoking habits that only temporarily help.

I just want to work on being more effective and calm at life in general. I keep convincing myself I’ve made it there and I’m ready for the world, but I just… am not. And that’s okay! Growing and learning and challenging myself is fun! If I didn’t want to do it, I wouldn’t.

This isn’t about shutting off what’s happening in the world - I plan on staying informed and continuing to do my work on dismantling & mitigating systems of harm. It’s about becoming more effective at what I do and honing my skills. I pulled myself in 800 directions over the last two years and I am feeling really ready to focus.

Rory wants more attention and adventure in 2019.

Over the weekend, I managed to get caught up on 90% of the cleaning in my house - including going through months (yes, MONTHS) of snail mail. Yesterday I deleted 3000 unread emails between two email accounts. So, I am feeling like I’m off to a good start in my intention to get a little focus back in my life. Let’s do this thing!

Get off the internet!

I’m long overdue for a social media break. I need to recharge and get out of my head. I mean, I’ll totally still be tra-la-la-la-ing in my daydreamy Piscean ways, but I’m hoping to get back to having a little more control over it. When I get in a rut of spending too much time on the internet, I inadvertently train my brain for consuming the internet constantly and I start becoming ineffective at my real life shit and my dog gets less attention than she deserves.

So, I am hoping to disconnect a little and practice some mindfulness. I want to get back into my daily walk routine with Rory, rain or shine. I want to draw daily, knit more often, and stop losing an hour to spacing out thinking about shit in ineffective ways. I need to stop letting the dishes pile up for a week and learn how to cook again.

The internet doesn’t really help with my depression. Sure, it connects me to folks I otherwise wouldn’t have any contact with, but it also fills me with anxiety and dread and pulls me in 800 directions that I don’t have energy for right now. I do better when I have a good balance between being grounded on the earth and floating with my head in the clouds.

I’ve always had a weird relationship with the internet. I used to get a lot of shit from my friends in my early teenage years because I would periodically delete all of my LiveJournal posts. I do the same with Twitter and Facebook now. I suspect, someday I’ll purge the posts from this blog as well.

The internet is really fucking cool, and some of my favorite people in my life came from the internet. But it’s also true that the internet really fucks with my head and sucks me out of real life sometimes. Maybe I’ll try to blog more instead of regulate my emotions by word vomiting on Facebook. Maybe I’ll just knit 25 hats and stay off the internet. Whatever the case, I am putting forth an effort to break ineffective habits, damnit!

So, I will leave you with my anthem while I recharge. See you in the streets (well, not really, because nobody who reads this is actually in my town, lol)!

Perfectionism is an asshole.

Perfectionism is an asshole. It gets in the way of almost everything creative I want to do. It turns out it’s deeply rooted in our white supremacist cultural values, and I’m trying desperately to disentangle myself from it. However, awareness is not enough to change my behavior. In case you are WTFing about the white supremacist cultural aspect, here’s a snippet from a document I often reference when discussing antiracism work:

perfectionism*

• little appreciation expressed among people for the work that others are doing; appreciation that is expressed usually directed to those who get most of the credit anyway

• more common is to point out either how the person or work is inadequate

• or even more common, to talk to others about the inadequacies of a person or their work without ever talking directly to them

• mistakes are seen as personal, i.e. they reflect badly on the person making them as opposed to being seen for what they are – mistakes

• making a mistake is confused with being a mistake, doing wrong with being wrong

• little time, energy, or money put into reflection or identifying lessons learned that can improve practice, in other words little or no learning from mistakes

• tendency to identify what’s wrong; little ability to identify, name, and appreciate what’s right

• often internally felt, in other words the perfectionist fails to appreciate her own good work, more often pointing out his faults or ‘failures,’ focusing on inadequacies and mistakes rather than learning from them; the person works with a harsh and constant inner critic

antidotes: develop a culture of appreciation, where the organization takes time to make sure that people’s work and efforts are appreciated; develop a learning organization, where it is expected that everyone will make mistakes and those mistakes offer opportunities for learning; create an environment where people can recognize that mistakes sometimes lead to positive results; separate the person from the mistake; when offering feedback, always speak to the things that went well before offering criticism; ask people to offer specific suggestions for how to do things differently when offering criticism; realize that being your own worst critic does not actually improve the work, often contributes to low morale among the group, and does not help you or the group to realize the benefit of learning from mistakes.

From “White supremacy culture” by Tema Okun . dRworks . www.dismantlingracism.org

Sound familiar? It certainly hit home for me. I used to paint a picture of my issues with my dad with this real life scenario: “you can go bowling with him, get a strike, and he’ll still tell you what you did wrong.” As a child, I thought this was unique to my dad being a dad who just didn’t get me… but now as a grown person I see that this was just my dad doing what he was conditioned to do by our own cultural norms. Unfortunately, no matter how much I hated it when he did it to me, I still do that to myself on the regular.

None of the art I create is “good enough” for me. I spend hours looking at other people’s work online trying to assure myself that “I can totally do that!” and “see, their work is no better or worse than yours and they make a living doing it!” but when it comes to execution, I am constantly fumbling with perfectionism. I never know when a digital painting is “done enough.” I dream up 800,000 projects but only stick to the 2 I know I can do to my own impossible standards. I’m afraid to share what I am working on and feel awkward about putting stuff on my online portfolio here… even though that’s what I need to do to realize my possible dreams of becoming a sort of freelance artist working for myself and hanging out with my dog all day.

So anyway, I am going to try to be nicer to myself, appreciate my skillset more, and relax on my standards for myself. It’s honestly getting in the way of even PRACTICING my art skills, because I can’t handle the period of growth and just want to do it exactly how I see it in my head and CAN’T just yet because drawing on the iPad is still new to me after 9 months and designing unique vinyl decals that don’t infringe on copyrights takes more work than I want.