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Supplemental Video

Uploading this time-lapse video here because somehow it didn’t show up correctly on a recent Patreon post about small gifts from invested parties and how much they keep me motivated to work on the book.

Still thinking a lot about how Patreon and my site (and my newsletter!) all relate to one another. My online ecosystem is smaller than it once was, and certainly a lot more under my own control, but that also means I’m operating without the feedback mechanism of social media. When there are no likes, replies, or reposts, it can feel liberating, but also a bit like everything is just waving in the wind. The quality of contact I get now is much higher (a longer conversation over Zoom with a Patron, or a postcard in the PO box from a reader), but it doesn’t always help me understand where to focus my attention.

Quite likely this is good. We’ve seen what happens when people chase those kinds of metrics—how platforms shape our behavior and encourage a certain flavor of posting. But that brain circuitry is also pretty hard to escape. We all want to be patted on the head. We all want to know we are part of the tribe.

On a more practical level, Patreon is the cornerstone of my livelihood. Its growth enables my creative exploration and financial stability, but I always feel best when I’m not focused on growing it from a place of need. Pulling back from Twitter and Instagram (and not replacing them with any of the other platforms cropping up like mushrooms after rain) has absolutely impacted the number of new people finding and joining Patreon. Those avenues functioned as advertising for The Thing I Was Trying to Do. There was a pipeline. But it’s the sour tang of advertising (both as a creator and a consumer) that has led so many people to get off these platforms in the first place.

I had to write my first CV for an application this past week, having previously relied on a résumé for most professional opportunities. It’s a funny thing being both too artistic for an academic CV and too Adventure Cartoonist-y for an artistic CV. You gotta mash a lot of stuff together. When I was Googling around trying to find links to past interviews or news articles or other items that might be a good fit for sections of the document, I kept getting stymied by my own SEO. Page after page of results from my own blog. The sort of thing that I companies are probably training specialists in as we speak. I’ve never taken a class on SEO optimization or made it a deliberate part of my “strategy” (there is no strategy on the site, I love that about it), but I do love tags and I do love linking to things betwixt and between my own thoughts and it turns out that behavior is a cornerstone of taking over your own search rankings.

So where is that thing for Patreon? Where is the behavior I already enjoy that will help me build a stable financial future?

What’s That Sound

Showing a friend around town always gives me a chance to survey the current bulletin board ecosystem. The Land Conservancy is back to hosting volunteer restoration days on Wednesdays and Saturdays! Kids can go practice reading aloud to a dog named Radiant at the library! But the one that really caught my eye on this circuit announced the start of Ojai’s very own radio station.

Ojai Community Radio Logo 99.3 FM

Ojai Community Radio held their first fundraising event last weekend and are currently looking for donations of equipment, nonprofit expertise, and construction. I’ve got their web stream playing over the speakers right now. Someone named Gabe is queuing up a series of songs about railroads. There are no ads.

I’ve never been so happy to have cancelled my Spotify subscription.

❧ Prompt Update: Haunting

I’ve just pushed a new prompt out to The Right Number, the confessional voicemail box I’ve been running through my phone since 2020. People are still calling and leaving lovely responses to my last prompt update from June of 2024, but it felt time for a change. This month I’m reflecting on a variation of the following:

What might happen if we remember this house has two doors, and that if we throw wide the front one, the thoughts that come will very often exit through the back of their own accord?

Dial 1-503-673-6267 to hear the prompt and leave an answer. Messages don’t go anywhere aside from into my ears. Think of it as a very personal social media post with an audience of one.

If you’d like to be notified reliably when new prompts appear, you can subscribe to the newsletter or RSS feed.

Clean Sweep

I’m watching in awe as this tool (a Chrome-based browser add-on) downloads all tagged photos of me ever posted to Facebook so I can archive them on my own external hard drives. Been putting this off for years because a huge chunk of my life documentation from 2007-2013ish only existed in photos taken by other people and it felt daunting to get them all in one place that I could own and access, but NO MORE. If you’re also in the process of trying to get your digital shit in order, give it a whirl.

(n.b. the plugin will download all tagged images without date information attached, due to how Facebook handles image exports. Tom Cleveland, who built it, offers a one-time paid service that connects the correct metadata to your photos for seven bucks, which will then work for all future image downloads as well. I’m a fan of paying creators for tools I find useful, so I’m opting into that, but it also feels like a good thing to be aware of on the way in so you can make an informed choice.)

Anyway here I am at the dog Bellwood park eleven years ago.

Lucy panting like a dog beside a sign that reads “Trinity-Bellwoods Park. Designated area for unleashed Bellwoods.”
(Thanks for taking this photo and also fixing tag displays on the website, Dave.)

Ramble #35

We got owls! We got frogs! We got THE MOON.

Yes, it’s another Ramble, coming to you live from the Meadows Preserve in Ojai, California.

For those of you new to the practice: I record these walk-and-talks every so often as a way to keep track of where my head’s at. If you’d rather read the dispatch, there’s a transcript attached to the end of this Patreon post, but Ramble #35 has particularly nice ambient noises, so I recommend popping on your headphones and maybe taking a walk of your own while you tune in.

Discussed in this Ramble:

Visual addenda:

Two tote bags full of sketchbooks

My sketchbook hoard! Twenty-two years of drawing!

A pencil sketch of a woman with dragon wings and a vaguely medieval tunic

The girl with dragon wings that Sadie requested. (Lord it has been too long since I thought about how to draw dragon wings.)

Two creatures sitting across the table from each other. One is saying "We can" and the other is saying "go."

I asked Sadie’s younger sister if she’d draw me a tiny book about two squirrels named Nutty and Chewy, who were the frequent subject of improvised stories between me and my mum on long drives. I LOVE this drawing because Zina and I play a game where one person starts by saying “What if” and the other says “we” and the first person says another word and you keep going back and forth until you’ve devised a plan. GITA DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THIS, but these squirrels are absolutely us.

A single line running down a sketchbook page with a tiny figure drawn below it

My other favorite thing was this page from Sadie’s sketchbook, which baffled me until I realized that this is AN ACTUAL HAIR from her friend Abby, which she GLUED INTO HER SKETCHBOOK and then embellished with a portrait. Absolute genius. 10/10. Love it.

Many sincere thanks to my Patrons who keep me honest with this practice. A lot of this walk was about building momentum, a head of steam, a runway. I can feel it in my bones today. I sat down and wrote a twenty-page letter to an old shipmate who reached out from the mists of time to say hello!! To be clear: I have mail on my desk from 2022. This letter arrived Monday. No idea what’s gotten into me.

But we surf the wave when it comes around.

The Principle of the Thing

Really digging this illustrated list of values on the Worx Printing website, inspired by Spain’s Mondragon Co-ops. Gotta make this stuff sexy!

Inter-Cooperation
Just as workers benefit from working cooperatively in a business, so too can co-ops benefit from working cooperatively with other co-ops. Such an interdependent system of co-ops allows each co-op to create and share common resources such as financing, research and development, and training, to support each other through cross-training, job placement, and capital infusions during down-turns and up-turns in local and global markets.

(And while I’m here, may I recommend Brick City Stickers if you’re looking for a Union shop to replace the wretched Sticker Mule? I also use—and love—Sticker Giant for my various boat-y designs.)

D: / :D (or, Motivation Two Ways)

Somewhere around 2004 I joined a teen writers’ group in Ojai run by my now-friend Deb Norton. The rules of the group were simple: those who arrived on time got a bowl of sugary cereal of their choosing, and if we hit our self-determined goals from session to session we’d get a visit to the Prize Box.

The Prize Box, as far as I recall, was just…a cardboard box. But it was full of candy, novelty Japanese erasers, custom mix CDs, and Pilot Varsity fountain pens. Goofy shit. But it worked.

As I mentioned in my last Seacritters update post, I’ve been thinking a lot about motivation in this last quarter of the book. For many years I managed my freelance schedule by drawing these little “WHERE’S THE MONEY, BELLWOOD?” diagrams in my sketchbook.

Two diagrams of Lucy looking nervous with the words "Where's the money, Bellwood?" around her head.

They amused me, and helped me track down money when it was due. But there’s something telling in the facial expressions I always chose. Juggling this many jobs was draining. In my heart of hearts, I wanted to be moving from a place of joy rather than reacting in fear. Even now, when my workload is less scattered and my financial situation less precarious, I still find myself reacting more to the threat of the stick than the promise of the carrot. How do I orient toward joy?

I’ve struggled with setting (and actually implementing) rewards. When I made a NO Punchcard at a moment when I was trying to be more protective of my time, I successfully filled out all the squares, but totally stalled out when it was time to pick a prize. The accomplishment was (kind of) its own reward. Or I just couldn’t think of anything to celebrate with.

A punch card full of the word no with a star in the corner labelled prize.

Celebration is a crucial part of motivation! It helps my animal brain acknowledge that I’ve overcome an obstacle, accomplished a goal, or moved in the direction of my values. WHY IS IT SO HARD TO THINK OF REWARDS?

This seems obvious, but I only recently thought of making myself a slightly different mind map in the ol’ sketchbook.

A diagram of Lucy looking excited that says "What's the prize, Bellwood?" She's surrounded by suggested reward activities like going to the zoo or getting ice cream.

Okay, so some of these feel a bit too close to “satisfying chores” rather than “decadent indulgences” (that handlebar tape is REALLY GROSS, THO), and picking a prize also means grappling with the ways we’re pressured to use consumption as a reward. BUT IT’S A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.

Having a closing party for the 100 Demon Dialogues Kickstarter was such a lovely and life-affirming thing. We crammed a bunch of people into the patio of a Portland bar and had a joint countdown for the final few seconds of the campaign. I’m pretty sure I live-streamed it on Kickstarter. There was cake. There were balloons. When I think about the memory of that night in my body, I feel joy.

Lucy with a joyous crowd at her Kickstarter wrap party

The Prize Box worked because it was full of good pens and rad mix CDs, but it was also something that existed within a community. My peers would cheer when I got to visit the box. I think that was actually more important than any novelty eraser. So in the interest of involving my community a bit more in choosing a reward, I’m putting this to a vote over on Patreon.

WHAT SHOULD I REWARD MYSELF WITH WHEN I FINISH PENCILING THE BOOK?

Blogs on Blogs

I got to have an extensive chat with Manu Moreale a couple months ago for his People & Blogs series, which is a lovely project showcasing folks writing online and maintaining their own sites. It was a fun opportunity to examine my own blogging practice as a historical artifact (oh god, my first travel blog from 2007 is still online), financial expenditure (writing here costs me $35 a month?), and philosophical calling card (“From a branding perspective, it sometimes feels like a disaster. But I think that’s okay! A blog isn’t a billboard, it’s a garden. It can be a space for everything.”).

I’m also reproducing the following section in full because I do think everyone should know about these quality humans:

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

  • I have a huge creative peer crush on fellow cartoonist-with-blog Reimena Yee (Especially this sprawling portrait of her work and influences.)
  • Mandy Brown’s blog, A Working Library, makes me add books to my to-read list faster than anything else—and it’s lovely to look at
  • Reading Rob Wychert’s ongoing log of his site redesign makes me wish I knew more about building websites
  • Anna Iltnere is an absolute icon who’s been stewarding a growing library of sea-related books out of her home in Latvia for years
  • Sumana Harihareswara’s clarity and pragmatism are bracing, but also deeply human
  • Brendan Jerich is a good egg

Comics! In! Spaaaaace!

I love reading cartoonist and astronomy buff Coni Yovaniniz‘s blog posts, and this recent short comic on Pluto’s fall from planetary status was a real treat. Such charming characterizations of celestial bodies. Bonus: it’s in Spanish (Coni lives in Chile) and I actually understood it!! The whole experience made me want to grab some Spanish language graphic novels from the library and see if I can improve my reading skills while also enjoying comics.

A sample panel of Coni Yovaniniz's comic about the former planet Pluto.

AND: Coni has actually made a bunch of downloadable zines for Planetario Chile! You can find them all here. There’s zines about Asteroids, How to Fight Climate Change, and How to Watch an Eclipse. MORE CARTOONISTS IN THE WORKFORCE! MORE COMICS FOR THE PEOPLE!