Social media is considered “the” place to share your work on the internet, right? This is partly because nearly everyone uses social media (making it, quite literally, the biggest and farthest-reaching “social network”) and partly because it’s “free” …as long as you’re willing to sacrifice your time to the algorithm and some personal information for big-spending advertisers.

But marketing my work on social media has never worked for me. Not for my money-making work and not for my mind/body/soul.

And here’s why.

an artist residency in motherhood - “a self-directed, open-source artist residency to empower and inspire artists [writers] who are also mothers,” created by Lenka Clayton

the (original) purpose -

My reasons for adopting the Artist Residency in Motherhood framework are these: to embrace working and creating within my everyday life; to redefine the “limitations” of motherhood, work, and creating by earning a sustainable income for my family - and enjoying the process; to explore my relationship with schooling, education, learning, and teaching by unschooling my kids at home and deschooling myself within our shared life.

Following my hard “break-up” with graduate school, I want to create my own education at home and inside motherhood - while also sharing the process and the results publicly.

There's this "marketing rule" that says the key to business success is -

My commitment to CONSISTENCY.

Which makes sense, kind of: the more consistently I show up in your social media feed, the more consistently you'll think about my work. The more consistently I send valuable content to your inbox, the more consistently you'll have the opportunity to purchase.

(Which is also to say, I’ve failed on all counts - and will likely continue to fail.)

Since the first quarantine in March, I’ve been recalibrating how I spend my days - often.

Most recently I’ve switched my working hours from afternoon naptime to before-the-kids-wake-up mornings.

Because the way we feel inside daily life is what informs everything else: how we interact with our kids, how productive we can be with work, whether or not we show up to our practice.

Which is to say, it’s important. Most important, maybe.

Your creative energy ebbs and flows, right? But it's (likely) not random.

There's a pattern, a rhythm.

And it starts with the body, and her natural creative cycle: menstruation is like WINTER; ovulation is like SUMMER.

Our abundance conversation should forever consider what's necessary for the collective. ⁣
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By which I mean, the global breakdown of wealth is, at the very least UNFAIR - but also deeply + intentionally OPPRESSIVE.⁣

We've created this "value" system that says the more money you have, the more valuable you are to society - but also you have zero rights to a basic standard of living, whether or not you work (and I haven't even touched the conversation of whether or not people *can* work, or what's considered "work" worth pay to our current world). ⁣

Some of the greatest teachers of our time (Danielle LaPorte’s Desire Map, all of Glennon Doyle’s words) - they say, “Desire is what leads us deeper into ourselves!”

And that’s my experience, too.

LEAD WITH DESIRE is one of the key parts of my work: first, because women often don't (and why not experiment!); second, because that's what's divinely gifted as guidance in the right direction.

The basic rule is this: Ritualize what supports you (i.e. do more of what you desire). And limit what doesn't (i.e. do less of what you don't).

I’ve felt it. You’ve likely felt it.

“There’s not enough time for me.”

Because there really isn’t - not inside a system that devalues a woman’s time.

We might have the same number of HOURS in the day, but not everyone is deemed the same amount of VALUABLE by society (and not everyone has the same number of OPPORTUNITIES to use time freely).