My So-Called Digital Life

 

Planting Seeds in Digital Soil

I am 4 decades into the digital period of my life. I've written about this topic before here and it is something that is on my mind a lot in my professional life and in my personal life. I run a design business and I am an artist. I use the platforms separately and simultaneously for each of my key interests.

In an effort to remain accountable to my beliefs and approach I lay it all out here for you, what I use and don't use, why and why not. 

EMAIL

The mother of all digital tools. I use email to communicate with my clients and friends when. I maintain a client list that I can send emails to for marketing my services. What I appreciate about emails is how they create a record of my work process. I do try to keep the number of emails I send to a minimum but I am certain I spend at least an hour per day using email.

BLOGGER

I started my blog in late 2007 and although I have never approached the writing fervor of 2008 and 2009 I have tried to maintain it to some degree as a place I talk about the process of being a creative. I also began writing morning pages regularly at this time which changed what I was writing on the blog. These days I am focused on my relationship with fashion and clothes, and my garden. I am not sure how long I will maintain this blog, it is possible it might end up migrated over to my website.

FACEBOOK

My first social media love affair. I am still on Facebook and use Messenger to communicate with family and friends. I occasionally post a photo to my facebook story but rarely to my feed, I occasionally update the cover photo of my page. I look at marketplace but only when I need something, based on the fact I have never actually bought anything off marketplace, I would classify the looking as wasted time. 

I had a facebook business page for a time but again the time I put into populating it and caring about it was fruitless. I wasn't selling the right kind of service to make it useful. I returned to more in person business interactions.

In 2016 I backed away from the constant scrolling and really looked hard at that activity and what it created in me. I realized that being with people in real time was more important than the perceived invisible audience of social media.

LINKED'IN

I dutifully maintain my Linked'In profile like any good professional should. It's a business card in a giant bowl. I have around 350 contacts which is coincidentally about the same number of friends I have on Facebook and on Instagram. Linked'In having its particular protocol about sharing that is based more on the association than strictly an individuals achievements is positive but also a tad boring. Like many marketing efforts people will report feeling they don't do enough with the platform but there again, the time it takes to dive in, I come back to is it worth it to my own bottom line of how I use my time. I send mail directly to my Linked'In list which is where I find I get the most traction in my marketing efforts. 

INSTAGRAM

Instagram was so refreshing when it first appeared. The quality of photos was great and it was really possible to curate an amazing feed of the things you wanted to see. Posting daily I made a fast record of how I was spending my time, I quickly saw the repetition of it all and thought what is the time I spend here doing for me? Nowadays when I post I pay to boost the posts to try and broaden my reach. So far I have not found it super helpful and when I have had interest in my work that resulted in sales, the connection was generally much more rooted in longterm colleagues. I use it exclusively when I have something to share about my own personal artworks. When once I posted daily at least now I post about 4 times per year. 

GOOGLE

Let's not forget Google! I remind my clients to use their Google Business Listing as the top of their digital outreach pyramid. I could take my own advice there but in my business my best connections are more closely connected to my existing ecosphere of work.

YOUTUBE

I barely use Youtube for myself although lately I have been thinking about video more in terms of Reels, these short vertical videos that illuminate something. In my case I have in mind to share things from the development of my garden. Video scares me quite a lot because it is a time dense activity. I don't need too many of those in my life.

PINTEREST

I use Pinterest much in the way it was intended, I have created many collections of things in the way one makes a design board. I was able to share these with clients and the ability to keep them secret is nice. I use the boards for my own ideas and projects, specifically sewing patterns and plant information, some recipes and more. I don't spend much time there but it is a good resource, I'm careful not to fall down the rabbit hole of delicious things. I guess Pinterest is a little like catalogue shopping. I used to love going through catalogues and marking all the stuff I loved, never to return to purchase it. 

VIMEO

Home for Indy film and video. I have an account to see the work of others and might have something posted there. 

FLICKR

Photographs that I needed to be accessible by the public. I use this now as a repository for art photos concerning natural subjects, free storage I guess. While it lasts.

MAILCHIMP

I mention Mailchimp in this list because I use it to send emails to my audience and I also use it for clients. It is a complex and powerful tool and I have spent many hours creating journeys and sales funnels. It is more powerful than most individuals I work with have a stomach for. It too can become an all consuming activity. Monitoring and testing the audience. Persuading and counting.

MY WEBSITE

I built my first website around 1994 and I am building one right now again. Always having a website has been foundational to my authority as a designer to my client audience. There has always been a place online people could go to to see my work and read about what I was up to. A digital presence, a  virtual portfolio. My new website is set up as a blog with posts about my most successful projects. 

WHAT I MISSED

I missed Snapchat and Tiktok. I won't leave Meta for Bluesky. I signed up for Substack but after some consideration I chose not to give my activity to them and instead use it for myself on my own website.

For myself and my type of business I earn more when I spend my attention working and because my attention is often short I have to work at capturing it. Once you become aware of your attention as a commodity I think it's easier to reassess the balance of use. I rely heavily on digital tools to do my work and of course my work life is so much better than it was 40 years ago. It's been exciting seeing the rise of our device filled digital lives and being able to evolve alongside myriad advancements. I am grateful and also cautious. The best of the digital tools for me is the video call because it is the most human and direct, as I stated earlier there is nothing like the traction created by one-on-one person-to-person interactions. 

Garmentary

 

Photo by Mark Seifred

Coffee anyone? Here I am in Vancouver B.C., sporting a Christine Jonson Easy Coat I just finished, and wore for the first time on this fantasticly breezy fall day. I started on it some time ago, the first part goes fast, but the finishing can be slower and fraught. I started it on one sewing machine and finished it on another, my old Pfaff gave up last year. The new Janome is easy to sew with. I am always excited at the beginning of the process of making something. Challenges arise and are dealt with and this is the meat of the work and it's difficulty can be tiring because it requires great focus but once my brain gets onto solving something, even when there is no progress, it grinds away until the task is completed to my satisfaction. I think this aspect of the creative process is what stymies a lot of would be creatives. The work! And the uncertainty of the outcome.

The thing I love the most about sewing is how made things can be altered and remade, how fabric can be re-positioned, re-sewn, spliced, extended, shortened. There is so much potential in every garment and you never quite know how you'll feel about it until it is done. Making takes faith. I bought the graphic fabric for this coat cheaply at Fabricland in Abbotsford, B.C. I am not sure if it is apparel fabric but there you go, that's how I used it. I was drawn to the scale of the pattern. The fabric is very slick and hangs well but it's prone to unravelling so I will have to do some work on its interior to make it look tidy, the interfacing I used on the collar was too thick and so I have a lot of bulk around my shoulders to cut out, and as you can see in the picture the right lapel easily folds open so I need to secure it at the pocket level. I could easily line the coat but that would make it a heavier garment and I think the single layer works well for those mid temperature days in Spring and Fall. 

All in all it feels like a good garment and I enjoyed wearing it with my black jeans custom made in India at Makeyourownjeans.com and black linen shirt from the Gap a few seasons ago. My necklace is self made with stones that were a gift from South Africa. Shoes by Asics. I'm quite pleased with this general look for almost any season. I have written about it here Why I'm a Sewcialist. Both my husband and my father made comments on the coat which always feels good. Dad even gave me the feel the fabric treatment. 

Photo by Mark Seifred

From our recent trip to Bend, Or. We stayed at McMenamins Grand Lodge on the way home. This Liverpool Tunic by Amy Butler in one of her midwest modern designs from 2011 has worn well. A patterned shirt that never disappoints. I have a dress in the same fabric which I have worn often. I should learn to smile in pictures more, I really was having a very nice time there, enjoying my tea and writing my morning pages. Pants are me-made, shoes are very dusty.

After 30 Years I planted California Poppies

 

California Poppies in Washington

Hi friends! I hope this post finds you all very well and enjoying success in your lives.

It's been some time since my last post so I thought I'd start off easy. I bring you flowers. The iconic California Poppy, a botanic reminder of my time in the Golden State (1983-1994). I planted cal poppies this summer, and it's the first time I have ever had any success with them in 30 years here. I've tried seeds wild sewn, and also seeds in trays, started indoors. This year I bought two pots of starts from Sunseed Farm and despite making them hold in their pots for much longer than they might have liked, the plant took off once it was in the ground. It is literally in the hottest, driest, deadest soil in my yard. The poppies are thriving. 

The poppies have me thinking about my time in Los Angeles and the yards and gardens I had, and the gardens I visited during my decade there. Recently I decided I'm giving myself 10 years to turn this garden into something interesting. A garden is never finished I would say, it is always in need of care. The garden I am planning currently is developing and I am trying to approach it with intention and methodology, with sensitivity to native species and culture, while respecting and nurturing the land. And it must be a garden that can withstand climate change!

I just finished reading Rebecca Solnit's "Orwell's Roses" so I'm little inspired by flowers and what they mean. Earlier this year I read two books on history of art that focused solely on women. Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art by Lauren Elkin, and Katy Hessel's The Story of Art Without Men. This has been my research recently, to identify female artists to look up to, especially Canadian ones. I'm embarrassed by how few I know but I am equally pleased by who I am finding. Rebecca Belmore's work falls into that category. 

Garden Plan 2022

The biggest thing my yard, garden, property gives me, is a place of calm and meditation, the place I do my work. I am not interested in or can I even imagine a finished thing down to every plant. Like many things I am letting the whole thing evolve as it should. I'm establishing more interesting lines of sight from key spots on the property, the view from the place you first enter the clearing and the view from the living room west into the forest which currently contains too many obstacles for my liking. The years I spent living and working  here have informed what I want to look at, how the place might look and feel. I have different concerns now than I did 30 years ago when I first began.

The orange yellow poppy is warm and bold, with its impossibly delicate stem and flashy head, it survives at the roadside, and the seaside in wind that batters it, sun that feeds it. It is not a passive flower either, closing its petals to survive cooler nights. Succulent looking, its exquisite stem structure  suggests serpentine ironwork, as it stretches across the ground. 

Dad at home

My sister planted fantastic orange Marigolds along the strip of wall between dad's house and the next house. The Marigolds are huge and frothy growing in amongst strawberries, some decorative grass, Heather and this and that, that my sister pulled from here and there. It's part of the process of being at his house with him as his companions and caregivers. It's something I am incredibly proud to be able to be involved in. He is aging at home and doing very well with our gentle support. I just spent two days with him. We walk around his neighborhood, I point out plants and flowers as we go, we casually monitor progress of all that grows near our path.

Goodbye Dooce

My Drawing of Heather Brooke Hamilton, aka Heather B. Armstrong, aka dooce.com (original photo from the internet)

July 19, 1975 - May 9, 2023

I watched the video of Heather Armstrong's memorial today. Not all 3 hours but much of it. 

When I started this blog in 2007 it was because people like her existed. She was blazing a trail that we had not quite seen before, she turned her blogging into a social media business. She created her own celebrity. I have followed her over the years with interest and despair at times. I have watched others swoon over her as they try to make their own way as social media mavens. Even as I saw her succeed I wondered about the impact of the activity on her. She had grown thin, visibly drawn. I read the comments on her instagram, they were brutal. Really for no reason, but that friction seems to compel many things. Interestingly in the final montage of photos of her from the past 5 yrs or so she is never without her phone. In the end her partner Pete Ashdown confirmed that it took a terrible toll on her.

When I heard she had died of suicide I felt shocked but maybe not surprised. I wanted to acknowledge her here with a drawing and a tip of the cap to her. She lived well, worked hard, was unapologetic and was the absolute queen of the selfie. She struggled and suffered with depression, mental illness and the big one, alcoholism. I looked at a few of her last posts, she had been sharing her drawings, feeling good about sobriety. It's all laid out there.

We became sober about the same time it turns out. In October of this year it will be 3 years for me. I make no predictions or conclusions. Goodbye Dooce.

The digital and the real

 

This is what a digital conversation with my husband looks like these days. In adjacent countries we open up private portals in our living rooms and have something that resembles a conversation. While these calls can feel surreal I am grateful I have them. At this time last year I did not have internet stable enough to have a predictable video call. When COVID hit and everyone was working from home, suddenly the video call became a necessity. I would regularly drive a few miles from my house to a nearby cell tower to participate in online meetings with clients. I didn't make a big thing about the fact I was in my car I just carried on. Everyone expects you to have the internet if you are in business, hell if you are alive. My lack of internet was a point of shame at times, a badge of courage at others.

The promise of better internet has been hovering around us for a few years. Better cell service helped for a long time and the fact that I could not stream media was actually ok with me. I got a lot of work done instead of looking at inane videos online. I read more during that time and of course I used the internet but in a very deliberate way. I handled my phone much less. I was more focused.

But the internet caught up with me and so too has the anxiety about it. In March this year we got DSL service via the existing phone lines. This work is part of an initiative to provide internet access to everyone in remote areas of the US. I am literally at the farthest point on my road that the signal can reach. Neighbors to the north still rely on satellite service. Being presented with the entirety of the internet to stream in my home was amazing but now 8 months in I am beginning to feel the old malaise returning. Time vanishes into screens. The light of the screen replacing the sun for our attention and I know it's time to turn away.

My husband joked when we first met 20 years ago that our relationship was perfect in every way except for my home internet. Now of course, he'd like a bit more bandwidth. 

COVID-19 Report

Where I will be for the duration.

And then everything changed as the wave of virus swept over the land.

But you have to get up everyday. So I have been doing that and I have even been trying to work but I have also been watching my body respond to the stress of the unknowingness of this event. I have been cleaning, organizing, moving my things around. Thinking about getting things taken care of in the event I do become ill. The US/Canada border is closed so there goes my love life. The closure is presenting an interesting forced retreat on both my husband and me. I'm philosophical. We have been here before. Once for 6 months he was away, and we survived that. We're adults after all not hysterical children. The truth is I only go out about twice a week under normal conditions. When gas was up around 4 bucks a gallon I limited the 40 mile roundtrip to town to about once a week. I don't feel like I am missing much, hermitess that I am. The worst part is all the nervous energy and where to put it. The library is closed. My brain is splintered. I try to maintain a normal routine but I am noticing how little urgency I feel to work. I go back and forth from feeling inspired to just feeling as lazy as all get out. What has honestly changed for us? We are slightly more trapped than normal and now with fewer retail opportunities. I wish I had more food on hand but I also like the potential for pandemic weight loss. Occasionally the thought of escape comes to mind as if I had that ability and the reality hits that this thing is everywhere, there is no escape. Makes me think of a few dreams I've had where I am somewhere distant and unfamiliar and I can feel the pull to return to what is familiar even though the effort to get to this new location was difficult and time consuming. I am here. I am waiting for this thing to pass and I am trying to keep my mind in a happy free space where I can think about and do the things I want to. I'm lucky, so very lucky to have my home to shelter in place in. It's spring and I can't help but be outside to catch the show. Yesterday we had thunder, today there are violets. The news is complex and will likely get worse. In this moment I feel fine.

Here's something I worked on while we were locked down.

January 2020

I have been out of touch, and a bit off balance because of it. January is always a slow work month. The weather has been bad, my husband and dog both got sick. There was flooding eventually and a record number of consecutive days of precipitation. Rather than gnash my teeth or worse, I have been flirting with moderation, reading a lot, dreaming, and I launched a new website for my design business. Here’s what I have been reading and reacting to in the world. My lovely sister gave me the book, “Year of the Monkey” by Patti Smith, for Christmas. I have never been a Patti Smith devotee, I am not a detractor either, I had never really thought very much about her before 2016. I knew about Maplethorpe, I knew about her music a bit. I think the role she played for many young female American artists was for me filled by Canadian Joni Mitchell. I know a few of Patti’s songs and I was very interested in her performance of a song by Bob Dylan during his Nobel Prize ceremony. She was overcome and stumbled a bit, and had to stop singing. She writes about it later and I think it was that writing that I first connected with her as an artist. I mean who wouldn’t be overwhelmed singing a song by a legend, in front of an audience filled with cultural dignitaries and such. Who wouldn’t become hyper aware and lost. I read a bit about her then, she seemed very down to earth which maybe surprised me. So I was pleased to receive the book. It’s light reading, small format, some photos, a rambling travelogue look at an artist making sense of her life. Familiar territory to me. I then immediately read from the “Why I Write” series from Yale University, an essay called “Devotion”. This is a great reminder that the muse cannot be sanctioned into work. So she generated some spark as she does reading and visiting the graves of artists. A strange story arrives inside her in place of the essay she thinks she’s trying to imagine, and she writes it all down, and continues on with her life of visiting the sites of some really interesting humans, and recording her thoughts about her surroundings and feelings. “Devotion” ends with her having a sleepover with Camus’ daughter! What a great gig! So I applaud her for that. She is active in her practice. She does drop a ton of literary names which was annoying at first, and what her writing lacks in interest she more than makes up for with her openness about sharing her experiences with us. The travelogue is an interesting book form and in this case, art form. Books have been important to her and she reminds us of that again and again.  My next books are by my recent favorite Scottish author Ali Smith. I discovered her quite by accident a few years ago in my local library, a fact that I think would please her. As I am writing this I have now read "Autumn" and "Winter" of the seasonal series. Spring is up next, Summer not yet published. She must be flying, working on number four. The subject matter Brexit is current and so its character is developing further. Now Trump has been acquitted! 

I first came across a small edition of hers called “Artful” and devoured it. It was one of those books that contains an answer to a question you’ve been trying to formulate. Completely impossible to describe, informative. Which is an apt word because her play with the novel form is unique and she has tremendous curiosity about language which is inspiring. Her subjects often involve art and thought. Her writing also contains elements of the surreal which coexist easily with the real. Hallucinations, dreams, all play a roll and time shifts all around it like a serpent.

A college friend shared this online recently. 'The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.'
—W.B. Yeats I haven't read much Yeats but I seek that sharpness. I try to thin myself out when I am out in the world, in order to mesh more with those magic things. Ali Smith and Patti Smith both access those magic things in their writing. 

Also read a terrific article in Geist magazine about Yoko Ono, written by Connie Kuhns. Talk about your feminist artist maverick role model. She's been to hell and back but she has kept on, and her vision and voice are so clear. She arrived on the scene early and was quite misunderstood as an artist. She was no pop music singer but she became a pop culture icon. An early multimedia artist, using film and installations, happenings, art as live event. She was a boundary pusher. She also got a ton of push back but she has prevailed with a message of peace and curiosity. She may be my new feminist crush.

Come to be with Me

It was less of a plague, more like mild nausea
the frogs started appearing after the rain
One came in and hid itself from me
I kept the lemon tree wet for it
this visitor from another world
Come to be with me
Every evening it sang its song, slowly drawing me
closer and closer to it until finally it revealed itself to me
I cupped my hands around its body barely holding it
Its wet skin anointing the palms of my hands
Did it worry it would never leave my kitchen, did I
or did it give it no thought at all
and instead got to work wowing me
with it's impressively loud creaking tenor
Singing me toward freedom

R. Moore




Thanks to writer Maria McLeod for encouragement.