Ramble #25
Lucy Bellwood: Hey everybody. I'm trying a  Ramble on the go for a change, a return to our roots. I know the mask doesn't really make for an ideal recording situation here, but I'm going to give it a shot. And it's not too windy. It's just glorious outside. I'm wearing sandals and like not a ton of scarves, which I think also makes it easier to ramble.
[00:00:24] It's not a lot of buffeting up against various layers and it's, ah, it's just beautiful out and I thought I would take a walk. I know I'm kind of due for one of these and my hunch these days is that if I don't take advantage when the opportunity presents itself and I leave the ramble to be something that crops up on my to-do list, it feels like an obligation, but if I'm out and about, and I'm just thinking about things, I think to myself, why couldn't I be thinking about things in the company of my Patreon community?
[00:00:56] So we're giving that a go. I was writing this morning on my blog about being online and how it has changed for me over the last year, particularly, but I think this has been a broader shift over the last few years. And my friend, Evan, after I posted the thing on Twitter was saying that he would really love to hear more about how I went about doing that.
[00:01:26] And so I thought I would give it a shot and try to talk about some of the things that have shifted. The other things that are loud for me are all to do with moving down to Ojai which I'm still, I don't know. Everyone who asks when they find out the first thing they ask is, is it permanent? And I, I kind of laugh because it's like, I think we've all, surely by this point, we've all given up on that question. Like, is there anything permanent in this life, in this pandemic year in? You know, it just, it just seems like such a silly question. Like I don't, I don't know. I don't know anything really. But I think so far the way that it's structuring itself, I'm thinking about it as a six month kind of trial run.
[00:02:13] And then I'll come back up to Portland and, and sort of see what's happening. Up here. And something that I had to do this week was that I had gotten it into my head that it would be a really good idea to print up the hundred day project before I left town. And then I was kind of staring down the barrel of leaving and it was like, Lucy, what are you doing?
[00:02:31] You are putting yourself under colossal amounts of pressure in an attempt to produce something that you would like to take your time on in order to have it done before you leave. You know, I just like, I fall prey to this false economy. Of like, I use impending travel as a deadline when I don't have other deadlines to utilize in my life, I guess.
[00:03:00] And so oftentimes, but stop me if any of you do this as well, I'll have a trip coming up and suddenly I'll be like, you know, what's really important for me to do right now is take all of the used batteries that have been sitting by the front door to the electronics recycling center. Like I have to do that right now, if I don't do it before I leave for California boy, howdy, there's going to be hell to pay. And I don't know why I get struck by this particular urge. It's probably some form of procrastination, but I noticed myself doing it with this project. And I've been collaborating with  my friends, Tara and Stephan recently.
[00:03:38] And I have noticed in those conversations that there is this real trend towards deliberation and slowness, which I appreciate a great deal. And I'm starting to echo that into my own life. And I think it kind of dovetails with the my word for the year being flow. I can't remember if I had picked that the last time I spoke to you all, but my word of the year is going to be flow.
[00:04:02] I like it because it has a sort of intuitive fluid component to it. But also it's modeled after Starling murmurations. And in this particular moment, when I was thinking, you know, what can I do to bring more ease to this project? The answer was just like, Oh, it's very easy. I can choose not to print this until July, nothing bad will happen.
[00:04:28] And you know, that's true of so many projects in my life right now. It's like, nothing bad is going to happen. If you don't do this, if you don't post this, if you don't finish this, like it's just, it's good to remember what the actual  stakes are. Because that can be hard for me sometimes.
[00:04:44] Anyway I'm thinking about moving and thinking about what to bring with me. I'm thinking about what I will want to have on hand.  My housemate cycles through a lot of books very frequently and She was saying to me the other day, well, it's harder for you to get rid of stuff because you know, you're a writer and you reference things, you go back to them and I hadn't quite thought of it that way before, but it's true.
[00:05:06] I do refer back to things that I have read more often and it's weird to consider, like, what do I preemptively want to have on hand for this project for starting to draw Seacritters. Like, I don't really know what is going to be inspirational or useful beyond any graphic novel that I have that involves a boat.
[00:05:25] So I'm just going to bring all of those and see what happens. But  back to the being online thing. So I had written this piece a while ago about Phillip Hoare, the author of rising tide falling star and how every night he tweets about going swimming in the ocean, which I love. And I was thinking about how for a long time, when I found out about somebody new and I still do this to a certain extent, but I think I'm breaking myself of the habit, that I used to automatically think, Oh, you know, you see somebody speak at a conference and your first thought is.
[00:06:00] I hope they are on Twitter. You know, I hope I hope I can follow them on a platform of my choosing. And what I realized recently is that usually following people on those platforms, like it doesn't always lead you to more of the thing that drew you to them in the first place. Like sometimes I'm sure this has happened to all of you.
[00:06:20] You, you meet somebody in person. And they're dimensional and interesting and curious and funny, and then you encounter their social media self, and it's like a weird flattened simulacrum, like somehow on the internet, they're the same as anyone else. This happens on dating platforms, right? If you've ever been on  OkCupid and you find somebody you know, and suddenly you realize that a dating profile is  so inadequate for conveying the richness of another human being. And it can make you despair because it's like, well, every profile that we flip past is a whole ass person and, you know, they may be incredibly funny and incredibly interesting. And I'm sorry, I have to stop this thought because I walked down this road on the way over and there was a very good cat.
[00:07:14] And I'm walking home now and the very good cat is still here. Hey sweetie.
[00:07:22] Good squeaks. Good squeaks out of this cat. Very soft. Very into headbutts. Oh yeah. And contact. Okay, great. I've now pet exactly one cat on this ramble, I think that means we can call this a success. Anyway, point I'm making is that there are spaces online where people are more themselves. And I think there are spaces online where people are less themselves.
[00:07:49] And that's not to say that those spaces are false, just that I think everyone has their native element. I guess maybe that's what I'm driving at. And I want to figure out where everyone's native element is and follow them there. And Twitter, isn't always it, you know? And so one of the things that I was thinking of, if I was going to say to Evan, like, Oh, this is what I did to change my experience of being on social media or being, you know, having the internet be a more delightful  place, I think  now when I find somebody whose work I like, and I'm interested in them, I try to go to their website I guess, and see what they're up to. And if that seems like the place where they're talking about their work, the most great I'll follow them there.
[00:08:38] If it is not, then I might do some digging and you know, not everybody shares themselves online this way. And that's kind of a tricky, tricky part of it is that there are certain people who like, when I first started using my RSS reader and I was like, Oh everyone, I'm following. Is predominantly male and white.
[00:08:57] And I've talked to several friends about this, many of whom who are like in the sort of blogging world. And a lot of them have pointed out that the draw of newsletters is that they are more private and the, I guess, the, the barriers to entry, make it a little bit harder for drive by trolling. But then again, like my website is not talking about anything, particularly inflammatory.
[00:09:22] So I can kind of get away with just posting and not having stats and not having comments and letting it be what it will be and, you know, being comfortable with that. But I struggle to know whether,
[00:09:42] Hmm, what am I trying to say here?
[00:09:48] I guess. I struggle to know how to keep up with people in all of the spaces where they are and to try and find the space where they are most who they are. If that makes sense. While maintaining a relatively sane level of input. Like for example, I'm standing back and recognizing that it's pretty nuts to expect that I should be able to keep up with 1700 people on Twitter and expect to have any kind of meaningful connection with them. It's not to say that I don't have meaningful connections with people on Twitter, but it's kind of a fire hose. And in my RSS reader, I follow a fair number of people, but it's certainly less than a hundred. And all of those people are not blogging every day.
[00:10:37] In fact, many of those blogs are kind of defunct, but I sort of keep them on there because I like the idea of a reader as a space where I can keep an eye on the, the constellations of people whose thinking I admire. And even if they're not actively sharing something, seeing their names there kind of serves as a reminder of these people whose work and thinking resonates with me and these people who I want to kind of keep tabs on or keep in mind as I am designing new projects, new ways of thinking, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:11:12] So. This is not an ordered list. I feel like if I make a blog post in response to Evan's request, it's going to be more of a, like, there are five things I did that, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's also not that linear. Like the more people I pay attention to. I mean, all the cool stuff I've found this year has come through people.
[00:11:32] I don't think any of it's been like Instagram targeted advertising. It's been, you know, folks I've identified who act as nodes, I suppose, like Robin's a node for weird bloggy, internet newslettery stuff. And Kat is a node for thoughtful community connected events. And Anis is a node for poetry. You know, there's just like, there's some variety at play there.
[00:12:00] And I think, Ugh, I'm home. I'm going to take my mask off. Give me, give me a minute here to reorient.
[00:12:10] Okay. Okay. My actual voice whoops, and my headphone falling on the ground. So yeah, the node people, the node people, it sounds like the known people the node people are really important because I feel like they do a good job of bringing stuff to my attention. And it's, it's funny how much, like the people we discover things through influence our sense of how cool those people are, which I don't know. That always feels strange to me. If I'm bringing things into the comics ecosystem that come from the design world and are old hat over there, but maybe to comics people, they're like, wow, this is really interesting. I'd never thought of, you know, using an online design tool to like collaborate on storytelling with a bunch of other people at the same time.
[00:12:55] And it's like, well, designers are using Figma all the time. It's not that strange for them, but maybe for us, it's it's novel and interesting. I don't know, feeling like I've run out of steam and maybe I should scrap this ramble, but also maybe in the interest of imperfection, I will just post it. Depends on whether I listen back to it and the audio quality is absolutely atrocious. Either way. I'm home. This has only been 13, 14 minutes, but I think that's fine. I think this can be short. I'm I'm trying to focus on pushing them out even when they're not perfect. So thinking about moving, thinking about other, other things to do with how we make social spaces, I'm tired now.
[00:13:40] Can't words anymore. I hope you're all hanging in there. It's a kind of a doozy of a time, but I'm hopeful that the next couple of weeks are going to bring some calm and some clarity. And we'll just keep going. All right, hang in there. Talk soon.