I quit my job at Apple to be a full-time artist
2.5 years later: what I learned, and my shifting relationship to work and showing up online
a collaged thumbnail I made for a new YouTube video featuring a watercolor painting of snow-capped mountain peaks and the words “I QUIT! How its Going, 2.5 years later”
I have been trying to write this dispatch for months, and here it is in two forms:
the first, a video where I clean my flat file, show you my art, and talk through the past 2.5 years. If you choose to watch it, please create something or tenderly care for yourself (meal prep, laundry, etc) while you do. It’s long, casual, and feels more like a podcast.
In it I cover what has changed about my relationship to social media
What embracing being an artist and educator has meant for my work
How I adapted to change and disability along the way
the second, this newsletter is where I wanna get into more of the details I left out in the video.
deep breath in with me. As you read this, imagine we’re on a hike in a Coast Redwood forest and I am pointing out various lichen and moss species to you as I tell you this story.
imagine yourself here, surrounded by trees as tall as buildings, with red bark and dappled light. Covered by a green canopy and surrounded by human-sized ferns and understory plants.
I want to start by telling you my dream and intention.
I wanted to become a Full-Time Artist within 2 years — using social media as a vehicle to get my work and message out there.
To set myself apart and alleviate some pressure, I wanted to balance selling my work with teaching analog craft. I planned to do this through in person classes and someday, starting a retreat center.
Then I built a plan for how to make money in a Notion database. my capricorn-rising personality was activated. Most of the data was populated by watching artists on Instagram, YouTube, and Tiktok doing the thing. They were sharing how they did it with income breakdowns. So I was taking notes and thinking I could do something similar. If they could do it, I could too, right?
Unlike a lot of folks I’ve seen embark on this endeavor, I wasn’t new to making art, writing, or to teaching. Far from it! I have been working in the arts since 2012, writing creative nonfiction since 2011, (I ran Informality, an online art and culture publication for Kansas City from 2013-2020) and honing my creative craft since 1994 (or whenever it was that I could hold a crayon and drag it across paper.) I had also been teaching since 2012, and spent half a decade learning everything there was to know about the tech I used.
I was ready for this moment and genuinely had a plan, strategy, and skills to make it happen.
Despite preparations and my skillset, I greatly underestimated both the economics of this dream, and the changing landscape of social media algorithms. What supported this type of work structure for artists in 2020 and 2021 had fundamentally changed by the time I started in 2023. The algorithms and platforms that were once fun places to be and make things enshittified or are in the process of doing so. What worked last year or the year before, no longer works in the same way.
This concept of platform enshittification summed up brilliantly by Cory Doctorow, the guy who wrote a great book with the same title. Reading his writing finally helped me stop feeling completely horrible about stats on social media
“But what if there is no underlying logic? Or, more to the point, what if the logic shifts based on the platform’s priorities? If you go down to the midway at your county fair, you’ll spot some poor sucker walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that they won by throwing three balls in a peach basket.
The peach-basket is a rigged game. The carny can use a hidden switch to force the balls to bounce out of the basket. No one wins a giant teddy bear unless the carny wants them to win it. Why did the carny let the sucker win the giant teddy bear? So that he’d carry it around all day, convincing other suckers to put down five bucks for their chance to win one:
The carny allocated a giant teddy bear to that poor sucker the way that platforms allocate surpluses to key performers – as a convincer in a “Big Store” con, a way to rope in other suckers who’ll make content for the platform, anchoring themselves and their audiences to it.” https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
The goal posts are always moving
This is why being able to talk to and reach those of you here, on my email list, is incredible, we could leave Substack for another platform at anytime.
The last two and a half years were characterized by change and pivots. Some directly because of a disability, and others just due to the reality that running a small business with the current US in this economy is pretty brutal. It’s a recession! The stock market is fake money!
Being a visual artist, writer, and educator in the age of AI hype feels like an absolutely feral rebellion. A giant middle finger to corporate consolidation of craft and skill, renting the means of production at an ever higher monthly subscription fee.
But here I am, doing it anyway.
I understand not everyone can afford to contribute monthly to their favorite human artists and writers online. If you enjoy my work, consider buying me a coffee as a way to share one time support.
Now, lets dig into some of the things I didn’t talk about in the YouTube video.
this year I started a practice of drawing in my planner almost daily. I’m letting myself use text, quote books I’m reading, and play with what my art wants to be.
My work is evolving and expanding in a weird way right now
The biggest thing that I’ve learned is that I need to let my work change in public, which is vulnerable as hell, while I keep teaching/retreats as my core service to the world. My art is getting really weird! But going through my own Pod-Class, The Hiker’s Way, last fall made me look at all of my creative practices in a different way. That process of reclamation was transformative to all the ways I make in the world.
Nature time revealed that I had to figure out how I wanted to move through the world as an artist who embraces failure, mistakes, and is willing to make them in public. No more perfectionist leading the way, process is the point. I want to embrace text in my work and make wiggly lichen-filled oil paintings. I want to encourage people to paint over old things and keep learning even when they’ve found a “style.”
a painting of a lichen altar I pulled off the easel to look at in the morning light. I’m loving letting go of control and letting the painting emerge more with each session.
This way of making feels so much more human, chaotic, and real. I don’t want to be a brand. (I’m working on a longer essay about this and how it relates to the deep distrust I feel in regards to many companies political about-face on their supposed values.) I need to focus where I can show up and be understood for my humanness. Art sales need to happen in person where I can tell my stories and build depth with another human about the work. IRL people are more willing to trust and support artists. Trust comes from presentation and conversation. From the effort that goes into showing up and sharing your art.
Complete strangers have walked up and bought several original paintings at makers markets I’ve done. That isn’t something that happens online.
On the internet trust takes so much more time
That is a good thing in this era of deception, deepfakes, ai slop, and a questioning of big tech wholesale. Trust means a lot. It’s why I am focusing on “small is all” this year because going viral has a steep cost I’m no longer willing to pay.
This community already feels absolutely massive to me, (there are 900 of you here now when I hit send, thank you!) and I want to continue to nurture what is here and feel comfortable in the ways I show up for y’all.
Now, I have a duty to steward this community. On my Notion dashboard where I plan these dispatches, I have this reminder of who I write for:
Folks trying to reclaim their creativity, who see it as a lost part of themselves
Folks wanting to find meaning in life through art, craft, and community.
Folks who were or are now skeptical of big tech and its theft on our sacred headspace.
Folks with craft wisdom they long to share and hope to feel witnessed.
Folks considering quality and craft, hoping to refine their work.
Folks who are curious about the outdoors, using nature to connect with the earth and to our intuition.
Folks who appreciate slow, intentional movement and thought
Folks who want to live a more analog and intentional life.
If you don’t see yourself in those bullet points, I’d like to know. Tell me what I’m missing and why you subscribed. What else do I need to write about, to teach about? How can I support you?
Now, I want to talk about why I left Apple and how I did it with y’all.
I recognized that my job, as a Creative Pro, was going extinct. Instead of layoffs, the job just changed. I rarely taught anymore and instead sold phones, filled online orders, and rang people out for accessories. I had so much to offer and give, but no opportunity to do that work. The job was fine, but I felt like a shell of myself.
Given this, I had two options: stay and accept the way things were changing, or go out on my own and try something different.
