Retrospective, Part 1
Over the next two weeks, we’ll pause from posting artist interview features and take a look back at what we’ve learned so far. Today, we’ll look at personal observations from the process of building the first 11 issues of Outer Voice.
Next week, we’ll share pillars for artistic growth that come from our interviews. Within more than 300 pages of interview transcripts, there are some exciting and encouraging common threads.
This week, I’ll slip out of the organizational persona of “we,” since these observations are more personal (and you already know this is a one-man band). The process of launching an arts website and newsletter in the summer of 2020, has been invigorating, exasperating, terrifying and filled with moments of utter joy. Since May 1, I have interviewed 12 artists and written 36 articles, learning video editing, editorial strategy and small business practices along the way. Some of it has been highly successful. Some has fallen flat.
Here’s a bit of what I’ve learned so far.
It’s Not About the Money
As frequent readers know, I’ve been unemployed since March, and been getting by on freelance work, unemployment and pandemic incentives, including a pause on mortgage payments. As many of you know, unemployment carries with it a state of constant, low-grade panic. You are constantly preoccupied with concern about how you’ll pay for this, where your insurance will come from, whether you’re completely unemployable. And, as freelancers know, slow periods are terrifying.
While it would be wonderful if Outer Voice were eventually my sole source of income, the reality is that it isn’t right now, and it wasn’t really built to be. I don’t charge for subscriptions to the newsletter, I don’t run ads and I don’t sell a product.
The operating costs of Outer Voice are supported by my patrons in the Outer Voice Not-So-Secret Society, who pay $5 per month to support the site and in return receive an additional weekly news and jobs digest, plus exclusive content.
I do have plans to begin selling merchandise, including pieces based on Greg Chinn’s art for The Beat. And I will probably begin running ads in some non-invasive format in the future.
But I mention this today for a very specific reason. I have learned to contend with a quiet, insistent voice that whispers 24 hours a day that I have to make money, and that Outer Voice can’t possibly be a serious endeavor because it doesn’t provide that.
It’s very easy for us to push financial expectations on our work, especially if we’ve achieved financial success as artists. I’ve confessed before to my tendency to place too much expectation upon one thing, as if it would save me if I only wanted it to badly enough.
But the reality is that we as creators and as humans have needs and worth that run deeper than money and deeper than societal ideas of value. Creating in any way is an act of courage. It requires a strange blend of humility and ego to believe you could make something that could change someone else’s life. But, if you do it, it’s a treasure of its own devising.
If Outer Voice makes a difference for even one reader, it’s worth the time put into it. Jobs are a dime-a-dozen (even now). Real connection is a precious thing.
You’re Not Alone
Sure, this is a one-man-band. But we know there really is no lone artist.
My wife, Erica, provides editorial services (she has a PhD, people), insight, financial support and immense emotional support. Brad Jones, Greg Chinn and Ryan Blackburn helped me create the Outer Voice visual brand. David Lavender introduced me to the video editing software I use. K. Clare Johnson provided social media consulting in exchange for editing (Clare, have I done that yet?). My patrons support my operating costs. Subscribers share the word. Artists graciously offer time not only for interviews but to recommend other artists.
Even on as small a scale as Outer Voice, it’s very clear that all work is based in some kind of community.
In the future, I want to spread that community, first locally and then nationally. I want to work with artists across disciplines in Nashville to create an inclusive, equitable, fierce art collective. I want to create events, training and space (both physical and emotional). And then I want to spread that to other cities. Let’s build a bigger boat.
Make Time For Your Own Work
Do you know this pattern? You create fulfilling work. You get busy doing other things — necessary things like earning money and being on Zoom calls and getting groceries and folding laundry. You neglect your fulfilling creative work. You get irritable. You get restless. Some kind soul forces you to take a break and make something. You can breathe again. You get busy doing other things…
It’s easy to put your own creative work aside. Especially if you’re passionate about the other things that keep you busy — like arts websites.
We’re all operating under an extra load of stress from the pandemic, unemployment, social unrest and civil injustice. Everything we feel is just under the surface of our skin. It’s vitally important right now that we make time to create.
The time is there. Claim it.
You Don’t Have to Fix It All at Once
Everyone I know has reached a burnout point in the past weeks. America is a dumpster fire, everybody’s yelling at everybody, nobody can find a job and there’s at least one libertarian on everybody’s friend list spouting some anti-mask rhetoric. Things that are supposed to be frozen are melting and things that are supposed to melt are freezing.
We’re grumpy. We’re tired. We’re feeling hopeless.
Is my article, my poem, my song going to fix it? Oh hell no. Will it maybe lighten other person’s load? Break their isolation? Give them a bit of extra courage? If so, then I’m doing the good work.
None of us can fix it on our own, and even all together we couldn’t fix it all right now. It doesn’t make you less of an artist or less of a citizen to be happy in the moment, even if the moment sucks. Do the small work, and do it diligently.
Refill the Well
Novelist and voice actor James Sie used this phrase in our interview (coming to Outer Voice soon). He, Callie Kimball and other artists have discussed their need to retreat at times, to bring in new stimulus and inspiration and to rest.
Self-care isn’t just a trend and it’s not all about bath salts and massages. It’s about choosing to step out of the capitalist machine and the self-built accomplishment machine, and to care for your jangled nerves and your overworked body.
Wednesday of this past week was the height of my own stress and burnout. I’d become paralyzed with anxiety, unable to edit videos or write. Time ticked away, deadlines loomed, and nothing happened.
I had to make a conscious effort to disengage. I took my coffee, a bottle of water and some mosquito repellant, went onto my back patio, and vowed to sit there until I got up and did something different. No objective. No phone. Just trees and me.
Two hours later, I came inside, fired up the laptop and started What I Learned From Trees.
We have to pause. We have to rest. We have to nurture our curiosity. We have to love ourselves.
Thank you for being here, and for taking this Outer Voice journey with me.
