wow Tara, I was reading these words - and even though we’re in such different stages of life and geographical locations - I felt like you were speaking words from my own mind. Like a resonance across this weird inter web. Articulating thoughts about less less less. Lately I can extract so much from such little stimulus. And the big stimulus just makes static in my brain that goes clanking on and takes a while to process. I’m feeling more and more sensitive in the world as it’s speeding up. And just wanting less but feeling more. Knowing less and being comfortable in the nuance and mystery. And how every ‘convenience’ or ‘entertainment’ feels like a ‘free exchange’ but really it costs me in what I miss in the present moment and subtleties. I love coming to your page and reading about your inner world, your ability to notice the beauty and nuance, and feeling that sense of community, like I’m not alone in my feelings and thoughts
It’s reassuring for me when I get to have these conversations or hear from people like you who are noticing and feeling these things as well. I really don’t believe that any of us can be experiencing something in isolation. And maybe that’s the key in writing, is having the courage to say these things, knowing there are others sharing in these collective awarenesses.
Things are faster and fuller, but when I just sit outside with my toes in the grass I realize it’s the same it’s always been. So what’s happened to me then? What pulls me out of that resonance? I’m always trying to realign and adjust and here I am doing that again and still and forever.
Last night Troy and I sat on the porch listening to 60s country music, sipping on rhubarb cocktails and chatting until the fireflies came to join us. It is such good medicine to just be immersed in the world of rustling leaves and bumblebees. Even just watching clouds is balm enough sometimes.
I love this essay so much and the comments! I resonate so much with what you wrote. Listening to you this morning was a breath of fresh air. I was driving to the Farmers Marker after I listened to you read the essay and said to myself, “Tara speaks to my soul.” I feel stuck in the City I grew up in and I know my soul wants a slower pace of life. But my mom and stepdad are here and they are aging, and being able to be by my dad’s side when he died was so important for me. So I am choosing to be close to them. But if I’m also honest, so much is new for me now that I am not clear on where I would go, and trusting that will reveal itself to me when I’m ready. But one day, I know I’ll move. I dream to sit on the porch listening to 60s music with a new man and enjoy ourselves until the fireflies greet us in all their wisdom and light. I also loved this: “ And maybe that’s the key in writing, is having the courage to say these things, knowing there are others sharing in these collective awarenesses.” You speak truths I’m still leaning into the courage to say. Thank you. Xo Dina
Thank you for your beautiful, thoughtful comment. Sometimes I think being able to hear from people like you, sharing stories amongst us, is just as enjoyable as the writing itself for me. Your parents are so blessed to have you be there in this time and I agree, things will unfold for you as they will. No point in trying to figure it out when it's not the time for that part just yet.
Like Amber, I too created something and was encouraged to market and sell it, and had a business school friend of mine tell me what steps I needed to take. During the meeting, I just kept thinking, I don't want to do all that, I don't want to get big enough to sell it to someone else - I just want to gift it to people, can I get paid to do that? Yes! But the payment will not be made in money. It's not to disparage those who have built businesses from the ground up and made a living otherwise unattainable to them, just a recognition of the fact that that's not for me.
My dad is a wonderful singer. I was always proud to stand next to him in church because he sang the hymns in tune, confidently, resonantly. He was asked constantly to join the choir with comments like "we need a voice like yours in the choir!" Younger me always encouraged him. He always politely declined, claiming that there is a need for strong voices in the congregation. Lately I've been reflecting, with similar sentiments as you articulate, Tara, that it doesn't matter whether he's singing from his seat or at the front of the church. He's still singing. Wearing the choir robe won't reward his singing with any more joy than he already has.
Because there's a performative aspect to it, isn't there? I read somewhere that, when it comes down to it, the only reason people post on social media is for attention - good, bad, and ugly. And these days, though I've been feeling pulled towards writing, that observation gives me pause every time I feel compelled to share something. What kind of attention do I want? (Mostly, none) Who is going to take my words and twist them or try to make an AI replication of my writing style, indistinguishable from my own, and rob me of my own voice? You could call it humility, but social media has already robbed me of my confidence that I have anything important to say. But when I write it on paper, in a letter to a friend or a sympathy card after a death, that writing is for me as much as it is for the recipient. It can't be (easily) quantified, analyzed, or transformed into a product that will "sell." It's a gift. And though you write for many, Tara, your writing has long felt like a gift to me. Like my dad, the older I get, the less compelled I feel to achieve something for the sake of it being the next step in the trajectory of performance/production/monetization. For me, remembering which kind of writing (or performing or creating or producing) feels most like a gift, is me singing joyfully from my seat in the congregation.
"... strong voices in the congregation". How beautiful, that is.
I think we need to share our talents and gifts with the world. It's a duty to Divinity. A recognition of what we have been given. Too many of us die with those talents wilted and eroded because we were too afraid or too unsure of how they would be received. It's a focus on the wrong thing. What happens after our expression is not ours to worry about. It's in the expression itself and how that is woven into the lives we want to live that matters.
Thank you for your wonderful comment. I'd vote to not be concerned with some AI monster gobbling up your words because they have and will and still, we are hungry for the connection of humanity, not machines and I think, I hope, that in living in resonance with ourselves, we are creating something no machine will understand or ever be able to emulate. It's when we start trying to match the machines that we lose.
I needed to read this today. I’m a multi passionate person who enjoys learning and establishing new skills and hobbies. The drive to generate income from them or teach them to the masses by creating e-books or guides or workshops comes at you from every angle.
My husband is active duty military. He’s climbed the ranks to the very top of his profession and lovingly and graciously provides more than enough for us. He is grateful for me to be home with our family. Yet this pressure I put on myself to be more, be bigger, do more, weighs on me. I’m sure it stems from social media.
I homeschool our two young kids, grow and raise food in our backyard, cook most all our meals, manage the home, volunteer as team mom to my son’s sport’s teams, but the “influence” among us convinces us that’s not enough.
Even the moms proselytizing the joys of a ‘simple life’ and ‘slow mornings staying home with their children’ are running the rat race monetizing their presence on social media and I know there is nothing simple about that. I don’t fault them. We need money to live in this world. Despite the incongruence jumping off the screen at me, it massages this message into my heart that I need to be doing more.
I’m turning 40 this year. I’ve read countless books and listened to many a podcast on the power of simplification and accepting less as enough. I believe it, truly. I plan to enter this next chapter of life taking action on those beliefs.
And as far as what and when you post here in Substack, I’ll be here. Your words and wisdom have been invaluable to me through the years and I’m grateful that you choose to share as much as you do with us. The knowledge I’ve gained just via the free content on IG and your podcast appearances is priceless. So going forward whether those waves of wisdom show up once a week or once a month, it’s more than worth it for me to stick around. 💛
I loved hearing from you and where you are, Sheena. I think there's so many people, evidenced by the voices and messaging around slowing down and extracting ourselves from the hyper-growth model of living, that share in this hunger to return to enough.
I read what you are doing in your own life and I thought about my grandmother and how, I am certain, she never thought her offerings in creating a home and raising children weren't enough. I wonder if she would be puzzled by that sentiment entirely. And yet she was revered and respected and deeply loved. She was a touchstone, solid and enduring. I wonder how many of us will leave that legacy when we live from a frazzled, divided, attention impoverished state? You are doing the greatest work of a lifetime and it's not really work - that seems too lowly a word for the dedication of motherhood. It speaks volumes that our culture makes us feel like that's not enough, doesn't it? What a time we've arrived at. No matter so many of us are rejecting what's on offer and heading out on our path to see what holds meaning for us.
I feel this so much, Tara. There have been many times in my life when I've been encouraged to monetize a hobby, and I've blithely followed that advice only to realize whatever business I've started totally crushes my desire to do whatever I loved to do, and the business fails because I don't enjoy that thing anymore.
It's gotten to the point for my sweet husband where the monetization brainstorm comes first before something can even be a hobby, while the first shaky steps of trying something new are happening. This is a stifling way to think for creative people.
I also want to do things just to do them, enjoy them, give them away. I would love to support my family "doing something I love" but not at the cost of crushing the joy of doing something well and giving it away to people I love. There has to be another way.
I wonder if the way is to just do it and to shape the monetary part in a way that fits a life built around “enough” rather than being carried along this stream of more. It’s like when something works well we want more of it in this sort of desperation that it’s going to end or there’s never enough. This overriding scarcity mindset that seems to pervade everything.
We have friends that are in their sixties that have lived off grid their whole lives. They live very simply but I don’t even know if they know that. It’s just their way of life and that’s that. They make maple syrup, just as much as they need to sell to get them through the rest of the year. They save seeds, have no debt, fix their old car themselves. And they spend a great deal of their time with their grandchildren, in their garden, and totally and completely away from the internet.
They have so many skills and experiences to share. They could fill books with their knowledge and have a whole host of online classes but they don’t want that. They have enough to live as they want to. I think there’s great freedom in that.
Your friends sound like good people. I think I could learn a lot from them.
I have a farmer friend who lives by a similar code. She sells eggs, milk, and meat, but she keeps her prices low where she can. She told me, "I'm not trying to make a lot of money. I just want to eat for free."
I don't know the economics behind the scenes, but her style and your friends' style seems like it's on the right track. More peaceful, more human.
Thanks for taking the time to respond so thoughtfully, Tara. ❤️
Tara, I truly appreciate your content, however frequent or not it may appear. I have been wanting to tell you how meaningful your essays have been in my life....your posts are sort of like a map for me, and I imagine many of us. Not a map to a particular destination or goal, more like a way of looking at life and the world that helps each us find our own destination.
Your essay Woven comes back to me a lot, and especially recently, as life has been quite turbulent here. I have been able to see how the mundane and, sometimes especially the heavy, burdens of life provide anchors and structure that support the beauty and whimsical blessings of life. How one cannot exist without the other, and many times life hands us things that are both structure and beauty...bittersweet. And how incredibly lucky we are to bear witness to it all.
You have a gift for distilling and communicating this wisdom, and it makes perfect sense that it cannot be forced on a schedule. I want to thank you for your vulnerability and willingness to lay out what you have, in the way that you have. I am excited to be a witness on your journey and see how it elvoves...and to continue in the community of this amazing little corner of the internet you have cultivated.
My heart is full to the brim from your kind words and beautiful sentiment. Thank you. I feel honoured that I might share things that bring little threads of comfort or maybe just assurance that even the darkest nights hold gifts. ❤️
Here you stand in your own integrity. Against the tide of the “you shoulds”, and it makes your offering that much more powerful because of it. I applaud you for it and am grateful to witness this kind of courage we are all hoping to lean into. It calls me to stand in my own integrity as well.
Thank you. That's such a beautifully generous comment. I'm going to carry your words with me today and appreciate their ripple every time they come up. ❤️
I feel this too. I enjoy many things, but the thought of doing them as a job for pay, or trying to make a business out of it...just turns me off. I would HATE the very things I enjoy! The only thing in my life that I did for pay and it didn't turn me off was working with horses, both as a groom at the track and later on doing some colt starting. Sure, some people had expectations of horses and trainers that didn't line up with me, but that's par for the course (I had a couple mares come in that were SCARY and the owners expected miracles).
As I am going through a terrible time with gluteal tendinopathy that makes every single thing a struggle, I still have zero inclination to move to town "for xyz to be easier". Because it would not only not be easier, it would also make me unhappy to say the least. At least here, on an acreage away from the noise (well, our road is busy...) I am happy. I have the garden, albeit a mess again this year; I have my cats. We can take the guns out and shoot them right in our yard. We can do whatever we want with nobody being bothered by it. And not many things to bother us, either.
So well said, Tina. The thing so few take into account is the cost of "easier". You would lose all of those things that bring you joy and simple pleasures and have to pay costs not easily monetized. There is so much built into the making of a life when it is done with consideration and a willingness to sacrifice in order to gain value in ways that feed our souls.
That the difference - feeding the soul, instead of having it sucked out of you. A trip to the city for us is exhausting and really gets us worked up. At least we can get lost in Princess Auto for hours...LOL
I’ve been around your camp fire for a couple years now, and enjoyed watching you drift down a slow lazy river without it being perfectly mapped out, giving me a glimpse into so many parts of your life. I too have been feeling a sense to “draw near” or “draw in”. Solitude? I’ve not landed on it, but feel like it’s driven by being spread too thin. And bearing the weight of things I have no business carrying (Substack scrolling drives immense dread about this world - that disappears when I shut it down for a few days).
I’ll wait for your emails (and I would pay dear money for a paper 📄 version of your words btw… the book will suffice, but a monthly/quarterly snap shot would let me close my Substack since I’m only here for your words) and not peruse the chats, and comments as I used to - in an effort to draw in! Maybe it’s turning 40 in a few weeks that has me evaluating all things ❤️ I’m grateful for you Tara!
Heather, thank you. Thanks for sticking it out and hanging around. Yeah, I just don't know what it is - that drawing in or near or tighter maybe? I keep telling Troy I'm only a few minutes away from going full hermit and he says, "Not yet, good woman". Well, when then? 😉
I think I was early to Substack and it felt a little cozier initially. Now, with notes and chat and the constant emails from marketing about tips and tricks on how to grow and everyone opening up Substack accounts, I'm worried things might be moving into a territory I don't really want to hang out it. Thank you for the willingness to stick around. I am honoured.
This is by far the most relatable post you have ever written--and I always feel like I resonate with everything you write. This line hit me like a ton of bricks: "The things that are important to me cannot grow." This captures the agony of my soul exactly. I do Engrosser's Script, a very slow, old-world form of calligraphy done painstakingly by hand--and everyone always tells me to monetize it, find ways to make it faster, marketable, et cetera. I don't want to make it faster. I don't even think I want to market myself. Would I like a little moneymaking business sometimes? Sure... but at what cost? I am unwilling to sell my soul to the Algorithm, to focus on making content rather than making quality. I am unwilling to cheapen my craft, the materials I use, so I can "crank it out". And I adamantly refuse to go digital. My craft is not flashy, it is slow. Laborious. It is Love. When people pay me, they pay me for hours of time spent immortalizing the most important words their souls have, or someone they love or have loved had in theirs. I want to put my heart into that work, for their sake. For mine! I don't want the rat race. Supposedly that dooms me to obscurity. Yet what I want is the slow. How can you have both? I have agonized here, to the point of conceptualizing of some wild schemes for spreading my business in an analog way. Eventually the thought of even that disgusts me. I think the answer is, you can't have both; you have to choose what gives way. You can hold to your convictions, and abandon the world's values; or you can believe the propaganda and lose your person. I have for now decided to choose the road less traveled by. I hope it will make all the difference.
A true labour of love. This sounds so beautiful. Sometimes, just hearing about considered and methodical practices like what you just shared about Engrosser's Script, makes me feel calm. I went and looked it up because I wanted to see what it was all about. It's just beautiful. And, you know, I don't want you to sell it. I want you to keep it all to yourself, for it to fill you, to saturate you. Why don't we want these things for others? I'm going to practice that more in my interactions with people.
I just had a friend tell me they loved a preserve I shared with them. She said, "You should sell that stuff!" Troy gave me a side-eye look and we laughed and I said, "No, my darling, I would never sell it. It's too precious for dollars." I think that will be my go-to comeback for now on. "It's too precious for dollars." :)
I love my craft. I have focused on writing verses for those in bereavement, actually, and nothing gives me more joy than pouring myself into a long-form project to immortalize the words people choose to remember someone by. It feels so sacred, and right. I'm okay with taking pay for projects like these, because I believe it is part of the sensemaking or grieving process, and it feels like it adds the weight of thoughtful investment to the work somehow. But beyond that, I'm just not really interested enough in making a buck to sell my soul for it.
People tell me to get on Etsy, and I'm like, this craft... it literally can't. It doesn't belong there, next to the scads of digital cutesy catchphrases and instant downloads. What work I do is usually word of mouth, or just for myself. "Too precious for dollars" seems exactly right.
If you're ever curious to see the process, I'm "on" Instagram as @rebekahscalligraphy and I have a few highlights showing the process. It's therapeutic. 😊
Beautiful. And I think you should make money for it. Absolutely, you should. It's wonderful that people like you are giving such a profound gift to others at such a time in their lives. Profound, important offerings with meaning, using one's talents is what "work" should be.
Hello dear Tara, your thoughts on monetizing your hobbies made me remember that when children were rewarded for their love of reading, they read less. Interesting research that I totally understand. I love painting, but I don’t know if I would monetize it. We shall see when I retire from teaching, which will be in a few years. I would hate to lose my passion for art!
Your words today really struck a chord in me, and I’ll be mulling them over with my sister. Xx
Thank you so much, Petra. I actually think it's good to monetize a hobby if it's done in a way that feels alright to somebody. I just think we're so driven to expand and do things a certain way to gain maximum leverage that it can strip us of our joy in something. I don't know. I think the stuff that's on offer in order to let us make money on something we love doing is limited and funnels us into these narrow confines of commerce. I think even the commerce part can be done creatively and in ways that bow down to our lives instead of the other way around.
There has been many a time I wish this world would burn so we are forced by necessity into the simpler life. Not that I want anyone to come to harm but this modern life and what life with be like for my children cause me to panic. We add the slow and simple to our life much more than most but it is not enough for my heart! I want to hear the bumblebees and crickets and not the cars and airplanes. This resonates so wholly with me right now!
I remember feeling this way for so long and then I either heard or read something about the "in between" that would have to be endured before the new world and its way of being could unfurl. How long would that in between last? Decades? Generations? Centuries? What would happen then in that place of collapse but not yet rebirth?
And still there seems no hope for the systems and powers in place. Like we're on this runaway train and there's no brakes. Some days I feel like the best I can do is look at the scenery out the window and hold my lover's hand. Other days I'm in the back car with my wrench, disconnecting that last car from the rest of the machine. Other times I feel like I jumped a long time ago and I don't even know if I'm still on that train or on terra firma.
But yes to the bumblebess and crickets! That we can find and feed and revel in. There are things in every one of us that cannot be touched. ❤️
Hi Tara, I’m feeling a big shift as well personally and seeing it in many people. I’ve always loved how reading your work FEELS like we’re sitting around a fire talking, your ability to articulate the unspoken is beautiful. Happy to be here on this journey beside you too
Well thank you, Kristen. And I would sure like to have a conversation about just this thing as we sat around that fire. I have few people around me that feel these things as well, but many online, and in places just like this one, where I hear and feel this resonance. It's reassuring and affirming and feels like a hardy tether in a time when the digital vies for what's real. ❤️
I have followed you for years, first on Instagram and then substack. I will keep on following you to paper, even more enthusiastically, because I long for the tangible. I am going further away from my phone and the internet these days, but people like you, full of wisdom and wonder, keep pulling me back in since there's no other way. I can't wait for your book! 💗
Thank you so much, Jenna. It almost seems trite to say I feel honoured, but it's true. A full-up, overflowing sense of honour. It's the only way to say it.
See, that's the thing. I don't want to be part of what pulls people back into this screen universe. Things are changing and new paths are being laid even if I don't know what they are. I still have faith that even more creative, imaginative things can bloom from a time in the world like this.
I understand about social media. At one point I was thinking I wanted to post all my stuff there. Keep it as a diary or things of done or places I’ve been. But that soon died off because I am a private person and it’s no one else’s business what I do. All of friends have been made offline, as it should be. As for the northern dream, we are the wild, feral and adventurous girlies who don’t wear makeup and just want to live in the mountains, hunt our meat, bathe in lakes, and just be there by the campfire in our holey wool blankets that have seen better days. In some ways I like my house. It is cute and clean and white. I like my trees, and lilacs and my wood floor. But I have always wondered what it would be like to ditch everything and live like a mountain man. You come to the rendezvous once a year to get tobacco and sugar and some association. and the rest of the year just live off the land. You got my imagination going. I’ve always liked that about your essays Tara:)
Oh boy... I like my house, too! What to do? What to do? I guess it's in the layering in, like you have so beautifully captured. A little feral, a little bit of holes and worn, and maybe, at least for me, a lot of time alone to be unencumbered by convention and structures that are not mine.
Still, I'm not closed to the idea of the once yearly resupply of tobacco and sugar. Maybe some flour for wood-fired biscuits. Maybe even a few books that I will read and reread because there won't be anymore until next year's run.
wow Tara, I was reading these words - and even though we’re in such different stages of life and geographical locations - I felt like you were speaking words from my own mind. Like a resonance across this weird inter web. Articulating thoughts about less less less. Lately I can extract so much from such little stimulus. And the big stimulus just makes static in my brain that goes clanking on and takes a while to process. I’m feeling more and more sensitive in the world as it’s speeding up. And just wanting less but feeling more. Knowing less and being comfortable in the nuance and mystery. And how every ‘convenience’ or ‘entertainment’ feels like a ‘free exchange’ but really it costs me in what I miss in the present moment and subtleties. I love coming to your page and reading about your inner world, your ability to notice the beauty and nuance, and feeling that sense of community, like I’m not alone in my feelings and thoughts
It’s reassuring for me when I get to have these conversations or hear from people like you who are noticing and feeling these things as well. I really don’t believe that any of us can be experiencing something in isolation. And maybe that’s the key in writing, is having the courage to say these things, knowing there are others sharing in these collective awarenesses.
Things are faster and fuller, but when I just sit outside with my toes in the grass I realize it’s the same it’s always been. So what’s happened to me then? What pulls me out of that resonance? I’m always trying to realign and adjust and here I am doing that again and still and forever.
Last night Troy and I sat on the porch listening to 60s country music, sipping on rhubarb cocktails and chatting until the fireflies came to join us. It is such good medicine to just be immersed in the world of rustling leaves and bumblebees. Even just watching clouds is balm enough sometimes.
I love this essay so much and the comments! I resonate so much with what you wrote. Listening to you this morning was a breath of fresh air. I was driving to the Farmers Marker after I listened to you read the essay and said to myself, “Tara speaks to my soul.” I feel stuck in the City I grew up in and I know my soul wants a slower pace of life. But my mom and stepdad are here and they are aging, and being able to be by my dad’s side when he died was so important for me. So I am choosing to be close to them. But if I’m also honest, so much is new for me now that I am not clear on where I would go, and trusting that will reveal itself to me when I’m ready. But one day, I know I’ll move. I dream to sit on the porch listening to 60s music with a new man and enjoy ourselves until the fireflies greet us in all their wisdom and light. I also loved this: “ And maybe that’s the key in writing, is having the courage to say these things, knowing there are others sharing in these collective awarenesses.” You speak truths I’m still leaning into the courage to say. Thank you. Xo Dina
Thank you for your beautiful, thoughtful comment. Sometimes I think being able to hear from people like you, sharing stories amongst us, is just as enjoyable as the writing itself for me. Your parents are so blessed to have you be there in this time and I agree, things will unfold for you as they will. No point in trying to figure it out when it's not the time for that part just yet.
Thank you for this, Dina. ❤️
Like Amber, I too created something and was encouraged to market and sell it, and had a business school friend of mine tell me what steps I needed to take. During the meeting, I just kept thinking, I don't want to do all that, I don't want to get big enough to sell it to someone else - I just want to gift it to people, can I get paid to do that? Yes! But the payment will not be made in money. It's not to disparage those who have built businesses from the ground up and made a living otherwise unattainable to them, just a recognition of the fact that that's not for me.
My dad is a wonderful singer. I was always proud to stand next to him in church because he sang the hymns in tune, confidently, resonantly. He was asked constantly to join the choir with comments like "we need a voice like yours in the choir!" Younger me always encouraged him. He always politely declined, claiming that there is a need for strong voices in the congregation. Lately I've been reflecting, with similar sentiments as you articulate, Tara, that it doesn't matter whether he's singing from his seat or at the front of the church. He's still singing. Wearing the choir robe won't reward his singing with any more joy than he already has.
Because there's a performative aspect to it, isn't there? I read somewhere that, when it comes down to it, the only reason people post on social media is for attention - good, bad, and ugly. And these days, though I've been feeling pulled towards writing, that observation gives me pause every time I feel compelled to share something. What kind of attention do I want? (Mostly, none) Who is going to take my words and twist them or try to make an AI replication of my writing style, indistinguishable from my own, and rob me of my own voice? You could call it humility, but social media has already robbed me of my confidence that I have anything important to say. But when I write it on paper, in a letter to a friend or a sympathy card after a death, that writing is for me as much as it is for the recipient. It can't be (easily) quantified, analyzed, or transformed into a product that will "sell." It's a gift. And though you write for many, Tara, your writing has long felt like a gift to me. Like my dad, the older I get, the less compelled I feel to achieve something for the sake of it being the next step in the trajectory of performance/production/monetization. For me, remembering which kind of writing (or performing or creating or producing) feels most like a gift, is me singing joyfully from my seat in the congregation.
"... strong voices in the congregation". How beautiful, that is.
I think we need to share our talents and gifts with the world. It's a duty to Divinity. A recognition of what we have been given. Too many of us die with those talents wilted and eroded because we were too afraid or too unsure of how they would be received. It's a focus on the wrong thing. What happens after our expression is not ours to worry about. It's in the expression itself and how that is woven into the lives we want to live that matters.
Thank you for your wonderful comment. I'd vote to not be concerned with some AI monster gobbling up your words because they have and will and still, we are hungry for the connection of humanity, not machines and I think, I hope, that in living in resonance with ourselves, we are creating something no machine will understand or ever be able to emulate. It's when we start trying to match the machines that we lose.
❤️
Thanks! Your perspective continues to nudge me in a positive direction :)
I needed to read this today. I’m a multi passionate person who enjoys learning and establishing new skills and hobbies. The drive to generate income from them or teach them to the masses by creating e-books or guides or workshops comes at you from every angle.
My husband is active duty military. He’s climbed the ranks to the very top of his profession and lovingly and graciously provides more than enough for us. He is grateful for me to be home with our family. Yet this pressure I put on myself to be more, be bigger, do more, weighs on me. I’m sure it stems from social media.
I homeschool our two young kids, grow and raise food in our backyard, cook most all our meals, manage the home, volunteer as team mom to my son’s sport’s teams, but the “influence” among us convinces us that’s not enough.
Even the moms proselytizing the joys of a ‘simple life’ and ‘slow mornings staying home with their children’ are running the rat race monetizing their presence on social media and I know there is nothing simple about that. I don’t fault them. We need money to live in this world. Despite the incongruence jumping off the screen at me, it massages this message into my heart that I need to be doing more.
I’m turning 40 this year. I’ve read countless books and listened to many a podcast on the power of simplification and accepting less as enough. I believe it, truly. I plan to enter this next chapter of life taking action on those beliefs.
And as far as what and when you post here in Substack, I’ll be here. Your words and wisdom have been invaluable to me through the years and I’m grateful that you choose to share as much as you do with us. The knowledge I’ve gained just via the free content on IG and your podcast appearances is priceless. So going forward whether those waves of wisdom show up once a week or once a month, it’s more than worth it for me to stick around. 💛
I loved hearing from you and where you are, Sheena. I think there's so many people, evidenced by the voices and messaging around slowing down and extracting ourselves from the hyper-growth model of living, that share in this hunger to return to enough.
I read what you are doing in your own life and I thought about my grandmother and how, I am certain, she never thought her offerings in creating a home and raising children weren't enough. I wonder if she would be puzzled by that sentiment entirely. And yet she was revered and respected and deeply loved. She was a touchstone, solid and enduring. I wonder how many of us will leave that legacy when we live from a frazzled, divided, attention impoverished state? You are doing the greatest work of a lifetime and it's not really work - that seems too lowly a word for the dedication of motherhood. It speaks volumes that our culture makes us feel like that's not enough, doesn't it? What a time we've arrived at. No matter so many of us are rejecting what's on offer and heading out on our path to see what holds meaning for us.
I feel this so much, Tara. There have been many times in my life when I've been encouraged to monetize a hobby, and I've blithely followed that advice only to realize whatever business I've started totally crushes my desire to do whatever I loved to do, and the business fails because I don't enjoy that thing anymore.
It's gotten to the point for my sweet husband where the monetization brainstorm comes first before something can even be a hobby, while the first shaky steps of trying something new are happening. This is a stifling way to think for creative people.
I also want to do things just to do them, enjoy them, give them away. I would love to support my family "doing something I love" but not at the cost of crushing the joy of doing something well and giving it away to people I love. There has to be another way.
I wonder if the way is to just do it and to shape the monetary part in a way that fits a life built around “enough” rather than being carried along this stream of more. It’s like when something works well we want more of it in this sort of desperation that it’s going to end or there’s never enough. This overriding scarcity mindset that seems to pervade everything.
We have friends that are in their sixties that have lived off grid their whole lives. They live very simply but I don’t even know if they know that. It’s just their way of life and that’s that. They make maple syrup, just as much as they need to sell to get them through the rest of the year. They save seeds, have no debt, fix their old car themselves. And they spend a great deal of their time with their grandchildren, in their garden, and totally and completely away from the internet.
They have so many skills and experiences to share. They could fill books with their knowledge and have a whole host of online classes but they don’t want that. They have enough to live as they want to. I think there’s great freedom in that.
Your friends sound like good people. I think I could learn a lot from them.
I have a farmer friend who lives by a similar code. She sells eggs, milk, and meat, but she keeps her prices low where she can. She told me, "I'm not trying to make a lot of money. I just want to eat for free."
I don't know the economics behind the scenes, but her style and your friends' style seems like it's on the right track. More peaceful, more human.
Thanks for taking the time to respond so thoughtfully, Tara. ❤️
Tara, I truly appreciate your content, however frequent or not it may appear. I have been wanting to tell you how meaningful your essays have been in my life....your posts are sort of like a map for me, and I imagine many of us. Not a map to a particular destination or goal, more like a way of looking at life and the world that helps each us find our own destination.
Your essay Woven comes back to me a lot, and especially recently, as life has been quite turbulent here. I have been able to see how the mundane and, sometimes especially the heavy, burdens of life provide anchors and structure that support the beauty and whimsical blessings of life. How one cannot exist without the other, and many times life hands us things that are both structure and beauty...bittersweet. And how incredibly lucky we are to bear witness to it all.
You have a gift for distilling and communicating this wisdom, and it makes perfect sense that it cannot be forced on a schedule. I want to thank you for your vulnerability and willingness to lay out what you have, in the way that you have. I am excited to be a witness on your journey and see how it elvoves...and to continue in the community of this amazing little corner of the internet you have cultivated.
My heart is full to the brim from your kind words and beautiful sentiment. Thank you. I feel honoured that I might share things that bring little threads of comfort or maybe just assurance that even the darkest nights hold gifts. ❤️
Wherever you take this talent and passion of yours, I will follow.
Save me a seat, and a mug.❤️
The mug is yours. I will guard it from all mug marauders with all I got. :)
me too!
Naturally!
Here you stand in your own integrity. Against the tide of the “you shoulds”, and it makes your offering that much more powerful because of it. I applaud you for it and am grateful to witness this kind of courage we are all hoping to lean into. It calls me to stand in my own integrity as well.
Thank you. That's such a beautifully generous comment. I'm going to carry your words with me today and appreciate their ripple every time they come up. ❤️
I feel this too. I enjoy many things, but the thought of doing them as a job for pay, or trying to make a business out of it...just turns me off. I would HATE the very things I enjoy! The only thing in my life that I did for pay and it didn't turn me off was working with horses, both as a groom at the track and later on doing some colt starting. Sure, some people had expectations of horses and trainers that didn't line up with me, but that's par for the course (I had a couple mares come in that were SCARY and the owners expected miracles).
As I am going through a terrible time with gluteal tendinopathy that makes every single thing a struggle, I still have zero inclination to move to town "for xyz to be easier". Because it would not only not be easier, it would also make me unhappy to say the least. At least here, on an acreage away from the noise (well, our road is busy...) I am happy. I have the garden, albeit a mess again this year; I have my cats. We can take the guns out and shoot them right in our yard. We can do whatever we want with nobody being bothered by it. And not many things to bother us, either.
So well said, Tina. The thing so few take into account is the cost of "easier". You would lose all of those things that bring you joy and simple pleasures and have to pay costs not easily monetized. There is so much built into the making of a life when it is done with consideration and a willingness to sacrifice in order to gain value in ways that feed our souls.
That the difference - feeding the soul, instead of having it sucked out of you. A trip to the city for us is exhausting and really gets us worked up. At least we can get lost in Princess Auto for hours...LOL
I’ve been around your camp fire for a couple years now, and enjoyed watching you drift down a slow lazy river without it being perfectly mapped out, giving me a glimpse into so many parts of your life. I too have been feeling a sense to “draw near” or “draw in”. Solitude? I’ve not landed on it, but feel like it’s driven by being spread too thin. And bearing the weight of things I have no business carrying (Substack scrolling drives immense dread about this world - that disappears when I shut it down for a few days).
I’ll wait for your emails (and I would pay dear money for a paper 📄 version of your words btw… the book will suffice, but a monthly/quarterly snap shot would let me close my Substack since I’m only here for your words) and not peruse the chats, and comments as I used to - in an effort to draw in! Maybe it’s turning 40 in a few weeks that has me evaluating all things ❤️ I’m grateful for you Tara!
Heather, thank you. Thanks for sticking it out and hanging around. Yeah, I just don't know what it is - that drawing in or near or tighter maybe? I keep telling Troy I'm only a few minutes away from going full hermit and he says, "Not yet, good woman". Well, when then? 😉
I think I was early to Substack and it felt a little cozier initially. Now, with notes and chat and the constant emails from marketing about tips and tricks on how to grow and everyone opening up Substack accounts, I'm worried things might be moving into a territory I don't really want to hang out it. Thank you for the willingness to stick around. I am honoured.
This is by far the most relatable post you have ever written--and I always feel like I resonate with everything you write. This line hit me like a ton of bricks: "The things that are important to me cannot grow." This captures the agony of my soul exactly. I do Engrosser's Script, a very slow, old-world form of calligraphy done painstakingly by hand--and everyone always tells me to monetize it, find ways to make it faster, marketable, et cetera. I don't want to make it faster. I don't even think I want to market myself. Would I like a little moneymaking business sometimes? Sure... but at what cost? I am unwilling to sell my soul to the Algorithm, to focus on making content rather than making quality. I am unwilling to cheapen my craft, the materials I use, so I can "crank it out". And I adamantly refuse to go digital. My craft is not flashy, it is slow. Laborious. It is Love. When people pay me, they pay me for hours of time spent immortalizing the most important words their souls have, or someone they love or have loved had in theirs. I want to put my heart into that work, for their sake. For mine! I don't want the rat race. Supposedly that dooms me to obscurity. Yet what I want is the slow. How can you have both? I have agonized here, to the point of conceptualizing of some wild schemes for spreading my business in an analog way. Eventually the thought of even that disgusts me. I think the answer is, you can't have both; you have to choose what gives way. You can hold to your convictions, and abandon the world's values; or you can believe the propaganda and lose your person. I have for now decided to choose the road less traveled by. I hope it will make all the difference.
A true labour of love. This sounds so beautiful. Sometimes, just hearing about considered and methodical practices like what you just shared about Engrosser's Script, makes me feel calm. I went and looked it up because I wanted to see what it was all about. It's just beautiful. And, you know, I don't want you to sell it. I want you to keep it all to yourself, for it to fill you, to saturate you. Why don't we want these things for others? I'm going to practice that more in my interactions with people.
I just had a friend tell me they loved a preserve I shared with them. She said, "You should sell that stuff!" Troy gave me a side-eye look and we laughed and I said, "No, my darling, I would never sell it. It's too precious for dollars." I think that will be my go-to comeback for now on. "It's too precious for dollars." :)
I love that. Too precious for dollars.
I love my craft. I have focused on writing verses for those in bereavement, actually, and nothing gives me more joy than pouring myself into a long-form project to immortalize the words people choose to remember someone by. It feels so sacred, and right. I'm okay with taking pay for projects like these, because I believe it is part of the sensemaking or grieving process, and it feels like it adds the weight of thoughtful investment to the work somehow. But beyond that, I'm just not really interested enough in making a buck to sell my soul for it.
People tell me to get on Etsy, and I'm like, this craft... it literally can't. It doesn't belong there, next to the scads of digital cutesy catchphrases and instant downloads. What work I do is usually word of mouth, or just for myself. "Too precious for dollars" seems exactly right.
If you're ever curious to see the process, I'm "on" Instagram as @rebekahscalligraphy and I have a few highlights showing the process. It's therapeutic. 😊
Beautiful. And I think you should make money for it. Absolutely, you should. It's wonderful that people like you are giving such a profound gift to others at such a time in their lives. Profound, important offerings with meaning, using one's talents is what "work" should be.
“I want to get back to building the fire and whoever comes to sit around with us will come.” Yes! Beautifully stated! ❤️
Thank you, Teresa.
Hello dear Tara, your thoughts on monetizing your hobbies made me remember that when children were rewarded for their love of reading, they read less. Interesting research that I totally understand. I love painting, but I don’t know if I would monetize it. We shall see when I retire from teaching, which will be in a few years. I would hate to lose my passion for art!
Your words today really struck a chord in me, and I’ll be mulling them over with my sister. Xx
Thank you so much, Petra. I actually think it's good to monetize a hobby if it's done in a way that feels alright to somebody. I just think we're so driven to expand and do things a certain way to gain maximum leverage that it can strip us of our joy in something. I don't know. I think the stuff that's on offer in order to let us make money on something we love doing is limited and funnels us into these narrow confines of commerce. I think even the commerce part can be done creatively and in ways that bow down to our lives instead of the other way around.
There has been many a time I wish this world would burn so we are forced by necessity into the simpler life. Not that I want anyone to come to harm but this modern life and what life with be like for my children cause me to panic. We add the slow and simple to our life much more than most but it is not enough for my heart! I want to hear the bumblebees and crickets and not the cars and airplanes. This resonates so wholly with me right now!
I remember feeling this way for so long and then I either heard or read something about the "in between" that would have to be endured before the new world and its way of being could unfurl. How long would that in between last? Decades? Generations? Centuries? What would happen then in that place of collapse but not yet rebirth?
And still there seems no hope for the systems and powers in place. Like we're on this runaway train and there's no brakes. Some days I feel like the best I can do is look at the scenery out the window and hold my lover's hand. Other days I'm in the back car with my wrench, disconnecting that last car from the rest of the machine. Other times I feel like I jumped a long time ago and I don't even know if I'm still on that train or on terra firma.
But yes to the bumblebess and crickets! That we can find and feed and revel in. There are things in every one of us that cannot be touched. ❤️
Hi Tara, I’m feeling a big shift as well personally and seeing it in many people. I’ve always loved how reading your work FEELS like we’re sitting around a fire talking, your ability to articulate the unspoken is beautiful. Happy to be here on this journey beside you too
Well thank you, Kristen. And I would sure like to have a conversation about just this thing as we sat around that fire. I have few people around me that feel these things as well, but many online, and in places just like this one, where I hear and feel this resonance. It's reassuring and affirming and feels like a hardy tether in a time when the digital vies for what's real. ❤️
I have followed you for years, first on Instagram and then substack. I will keep on following you to paper, even more enthusiastically, because I long for the tangible. I am going further away from my phone and the internet these days, but people like you, full of wisdom and wonder, keep pulling me back in since there's no other way. I can't wait for your book! 💗
Thank you so much, Jenna. It almost seems trite to say I feel honoured, but it's true. A full-up, overflowing sense of honour. It's the only way to say it.
See, that's the thing. I don't want to be part of what pulls people back into this screen universe. Things are changing and new paths are being laid even if I don't know what they are. I still have faith that even more creative, imaginative things can bloom from a time in the world like this.
I understand about social media. At one point I was thinking I wanted to post all my stuff there. Keep it as a diary or things of done or places I’ve been. But that soon died off because I am a private person and it’s no one else’s business what I do. All of friends have been made offline, as it should be. As for the northern dream, we are the wild, feral and adventurous girlies who don’t wear makeup and just want to live in the mountains, hunt our meat, bathe in lakes, and just be there by the campfire in our holey wool blankets that have seen better days. In some ways I like my house. It is cute and clean and white. I like my trees, and lilacs and my wood floor. But I have always wondered what it would be like to ditch everything and live like a mountain man. You come to the rendezvous once a year to get tobacco and sugar and some association. and the rest of the year just live off the land. You got my imagination going. I’ve always liked that about your essays Tara:)
Oh boy... I like my house, too! What to do? What to do? I guess it's in the layering in, like you have so beautifully captured. A little feral, a little bit of holes and worn, and maybe, at least for me, a lot of time alone to be unencumbered by convention and structures that are not mine.
Still, I'm not closed to the idea of the once yearly resupply of tobacco and sugar. Maybe some flour for wood-fired biscuits. Maybe even a few books that I will read and reread because there won't be anymore until next year's run.
Maybe I'll see you there on the path someday. :)