• Ways to Support + Work Toward Goals

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey friends, I think this month’s theme is goals because I’ve already made a couple videos about it and I’m going to keep going. So I wanted to talk about ways that we can support ourself through reaching our goals. And this is not just advice to you, but it’s also advice to myself because I need to remember these things too. So usually when I’m making videos, it’s for you and it’s also for me.

    So I have learned a lot about goals from Leonie Dawson, who is an entrepreneur mom, autistic person, artist, awesome human being who lives in Australia. (All her courses are here! All her freebies are here!) I’ve taken a couple of her online courses, which are really awesome and I super love them. And I have a couple that I’m signed up for that I haven’t completed yet. But some of the things that I learned from her about goals are, if you don’t have goals, of course, you’re not going to meet them because you don’t have them. But if you do have goals, it’s easier to meet them if you have like a larger overall goal, and then you can break it down into smaller actionable steps.

    So like, for instance, as an example, one of my goals is to monetize my YouTube. So in order to do that YouTube says that I have to have at least 1000 subscribers and at least 4,000 watch hours over a course of 12 months in order to monetize. So right there, that’s a lot of information that I need in order to meet that goal. So if I want to get more subscribers and if I want to get more watch hours, that means I need to make more content and share it on YouTube because if I don’t make any content and I don’t share anything on YouTube, then, of course, nothing is going to grow. So I’ve broken it down to: I want to do at least one longer video a month and at least one short every week. So having more consistent content going on my YouTube will help me meet the goal of having more subscribers and more watch hours. 

    So, to kind of further break that down, if I want to do at least one longer video a month and one short video a week, it might be a good idea to just like write down a whole list of ideas of what my videos could be about because then I can like slowly go through and be like, okay I have…. so if I’m going to do one longer video a month, that’s 12 longer videos for a year. And one short a week is 52 short videos for a year. So if I go through and just like list 15 or 20 ideas for longer videos and like 60 or 70 ideas for shorter videos, then I have enough information that I can just like, look through my list and be like, I wanna make a video about this this week and go from there.

    So right now I don’t have that list, so that would be my next step towards working towards the goal of monetizing my YouTube, is planning out what I would want to share. Yeah, so breaking down goals is really helpful in order to meet them. It’s not like I want to climb this whole mountain in one day. I kind of have to like, let me practice walking X amount of miles a day and then practice climbing smaller mountains and then practice climbing slightly larger mountains and then, you know, so yeah, everything is one step at a time. You can’t just like go from A to Z. You have to go through ABCDEFG, blah blah. So breaking things down into smaller pieces also makes it feel more doable. 

    Also, another way that I can work towards like meeting my goals is to have some form of reminder of what I’m working towards and also a way to like track what I’m doing and help myself continue to do it. So like I have… in my journal, the way that I have these like self-care habits that I do every day. I support myself and doing them by having…. Let me grab it, I’ll show you. This chart of… Let’s see, will it focus? Of like all the things that I want to do, and then the dates and then I color in if I’ve met those things. So, this is not really this like image example is not really goals, but it’s like these are things that I do to support myself every day, but having something visual like this and having it in a place that’s easy to see and I see it every day, it helps remind me. Oh, I haven’t done X today. So let me maybe do that. It’ll only take me five minutes or oh, It’s been a few days since I’ve done Y, so, maybe I want to do that today, but it’s helped me to have something visual that I see and is like, in my space that I’m there on a regular basis to remind me like, oh, there’s this thing that I can do because I kind of tend to float off into space like I turn into just like a floating brain and forget that I have a body and like all these things I need to do.

    So when I have that visual cue of like these are some things that you can work on, that helps me a lot. So maybe you can have like a big poster in your room or like me, you have a journal that you like… I leave this journal on my bed, and I’m just like in my room a lot. So I see it and I’ll just like cross stuff off on it while I’m doing it, so having something physical and visual that’s in a place where going to be a lot, would be really helpful to help you work towards your goals or at least remind you of the things that you can work on. If you’re if you have time to do them. 

    Another way to help meet goals is to create habits around them. So for instance, one of my goals is to journal every day. I started journaling every day, January 20th of 2020 and I have journaled every day since then. I’ve already filled up…. this is my fifth notebook and it’s almost full like this is… the this is all that’s left. Actually already wrote all this. Let’s get there. This is what’s left. 

    So, the way that I have actually managed to journal every day is one, I have my notebook on my bed. Like I said, it’s like it’s available to me all the time. It’s right here. Two, I’ve built it into my routine throughout the day. So like every morning, as soon as I wake up, I journal what my dreams were the night before. And then every night, before I go to bed, I journal about my day. So I’ve turned that thing that I want to do into a part of my everyday life and it’s become a part of my like daily rituals and habits.

    So if say like one of my business goals is to monetize YouTube, which means I need to make videos maybe instead of or maybe I can just have a goal of recording something every day, and whether it’s good or not. I’ll have something every day because if I want to post once a week, then if I record something every day, then I’ll have seven things to choose from by the end of the week. And then I can just post the best thing. For me, building those into habits and rituals has to do with like, including it in the things that I already do every day. So, like my journal, I wake up in the morning every day and I just I grab my journal because I have it at the top of my bed. So I don’t have to get out of bed. I can wake up, grab my journal, journal about my dreams and then I’ve already journaled and it’s the first thing in the morning. So like, maybe if doing a video, if I want to turn that into part of my like daily ritual, maybe I’ll have breakfast and then right after doing having breakfast, I’ll make a video and do that every day. So that way, it becomes like… I make a video every morning after breakfast. This is part of my routine. I don’t know if I’ll actually do that like after breakfast because my breakfast was like fluctuating. Sometimes I want it early and sometimes I am not hungry until like 1:00. So something that’s consistent for you that you do all the time, maybe you can like add another thing to it. So it’s like when I do this thing, then this thing also happens. Yeah, so creating habits around your rituals… or creating habits and rituals around your goals can be really helpful. Yeah. 

    And I can’t think of anything else right now. I probably will, as soon as I turn this off, but I also don’t want to make this video way too long. So I’m gonna sign off for now, but I hope this helped you, and I hope that you’re able to create some goals for yourself that are doable, and that support you and that become a part of your everyday. So, that way you are working towards your goals everyday, and growing and learning and changing. Yeah, because it’s nice to have goals. It’s nice to have things to work towards and it I feel like for me it kind of gives me a sense of purpose because otherwise I’m just kind of a sack of potatoes on the couch and that doesn’t feel super great to me. So yeah, I like having goals and I like working towards them and it feels good to have them because then it feels like I’m working towards something. I have something to look forward to.

    And maybe, maybe you can like reward yourself for meeting your goals in some way or like. Say, if my goal to make a YouTube video every week, maybe if I do that for X amount of weeks, then I’ll take myself out on a date or something. You know, like building in rewards and treats for myself for meeting goals. Even if it’s just like, not the full overall, huge goal. If it’s like, here’s the first section of a goal. Once I get that done then I can celebrate and then that’ll help me continue and do more. Yeah. Okay.

    I love you so much! Thank you for being here! I’ll talk to you soon. Thank you! I love you! I can’t do this without you! Let’s meet our goals together!

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  • My Personal + Business Goals for 2022

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey friends! Last week I talked about making goals and this week I want to share with you what goals I’ve come up with for myself. These will probably change over time and I will probably add to them and change them and things like that. So this is like a working list and it doesn’t include everything but it’s a start. So I wanted to share with you and it’s okay if I don’t have everything figured out because it’s only January and we have a whole year and things change and that’s like a part of life and that’s okay and there’s nothing wrong with that. So I feel like it’s better to have some goals than to not have any at all and even if they change that’s okay because like everyone changes and learns and grows over time, so starting off with some goals whether or not they’re like permanent forever goals, at least there’s a start and that’s something to work off of.

    So, here are some of the goals that I came up with for myself. So, some personal goals that I have. I already talked to y’all about some of these, but I’m just going to go over all of them. So, personal goals. I want to journal every day. I want to do energy every day. I want to take a walk outside once a week or more. I really want to complete my tattoo or get closer to finishing it. I don’t know if that will be completed this year in 2022 just because of how much we have left. But at least continue that process to get closer to completing it. I want to connect more with friends. I want to like text my friends more, see them in person more, hang out with friends. Make more friends. I feel kind of lonely, so friend things, please yes.

    I have several online courses that I’ve signed up for that I want to complete. So those are some more personal goals when I complete those e-courses and I want to read at least 10 books. I think last year I read eight or nine books. I think I actually read more, but the ones that I wrote down were eight or nine. And I don’t know if I wrote all of the books down that I read. So. Yeah, I’m going to actually keep track of that this year. What books I’ve read. So I want to read more books. And those are the start of my personal goals list, at least.

    Business goals. So I like I said, I’ve kind of talked about some of this in the last video, but I’m going to review it a little bit. So business goals. I want to monetize my YouTube which means I need at least a thousand subscribers and at least 4,000 watch hours. So I’m going to plan to create one longer video a month. And at least one short every week in order to hopefully get closer to being able to monetize my YouTube channel.

    Click here to check out my YouTube channel!

    I want to continue doing these Vlogs every week for my website, for y’all because I love you. So a goal is to do a vlog every week. I would like to increase my total income. So I have a like a dollar amount goal to work towards. Right now I’m just like, I want to have a fifteen hundred dollar a month because most months I’m like hovering around a thousand bucks, so my goal is to increase that.

    I want to come up with one free thing to give to people every month. So whether that’s like a worksheet, a checklist, a video, like an online event, something just like one free thing for people every month because I feel like I don’t want to have everything behind a paywall. I want to be able to help people and I’m more able to help people if they have access to it for free. So, I want to make more free content.

    I have been dreaming about making a self-portrait online course, for probably three or four years now and I still haven’t done it. So that’s a goal, is to like work towards that this year, is launching an online course. I want to teach and facilitate more workshops, so that’s another goal is to do at least one or two or three workshops, whether online or in person, this year. I would really like to do that.

    I want to be on some people’s podcasts. I want to get my name out there that can be part of my, like, marketing strategy. Also podcasts are another way to get myself in front of more people. And also, a way to help more people if because, you know, hopefully the podcast that I’m on will be free. So another way to support people through what I know and the things that I can share. So I want to be on some podcasts. 

    Last year, I applied for I think two different residencies and I didn’t get either one, but I want to apply for more residencies because I would actually like to do a residency, an artist residency at some point. So I can only do that if I apply for them. So I have a goal of applying for residencies. And then I think I would really like to Mentor a queer artist like somebody who is just starting in the realm of art, photography, creativity. Since I’ve been doing this for over 10 years I have a lot of knowledge that I can share, so I would like to mentor a queer artist, so that will be another goal of mine.

    Yeah, okay. So those are some of my goals for 2022. I probably am going to update and change these overtime but that’s at least a start. And so, now that I have this list, I know what I can work towards and what things that I need to do on a more regular basis in order to meet those goals. 

    Yeah, goals are kind of hard and also awesome at the same time. I am the kind of person, I’m kind of a perfectionist and I… a lot of the time I struggle with not starting something because I want to do it perfectly, so I just don’t start it at all because I’m scared of failing. So I just don’t do it. And if I think about it, if I don’t start at all, that’s immediately a failure. So I’m like… I’m failing myself before I even start, so I want to not do that.

    And I want to actually, I want to fail. I want to fail some. I want to get some nos. I want to like… I want to apply for things and have people reject me because that’s the only way that I’m going to get over this, is if I actually do it and get rejected and be like, okay, I’ve learned something. Now I can work on something else and continue to get better. So yeah, maybe another goal is to fail some because I need practice with that, because it’s better to fail and learn something than to not try at all. 

    And I’m still learning this for myself, but I wanted to share with you a lot of these things that I share that are like, inspirational and helpful and things like that. It’s also for me because I need help too. And sometimes I need to just listen to my own videos so that I can help myself. So yeah, okay.

    Yeah, so thank you for listening to my goals and I hope that you can set some awesome goals for yourself. And, yeah, I love you so much! Thank you for being here! If you have anything you’d like to share with me, like, goals that you have set or questions that you have about my goals, you can comment below. I’m also going to put the link to my survey below. If there’s anything in particular you want to hear from me. That way I can make the content that you want to see! So link to the survey is down there. Okay. I love you so much! Thank you for being here! *mwah*

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  • Goals vs Resolutions: Brainstorming Personal + Business Goals

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hello friends! Today I wanted to talk about goals and I feel like that’s probably something that a lot of people talk about at the beginning of the year because a lot of people have resolutions and things like that, but I want to talk about why I do goals instead of resolutions. So let’s dive in.

    I feel like… I feel like resolutions are maybe not super supportive to people sometimes because there’s this expectation of like I’m a set a resolution and I’m going to do this thing every X amount of time. And if I don’t follow through this resolution, for the whole year then I’m a failure or, you know, like, it doesn’t mean anything, if I didn’t do it the whole year, or if I didn’t meet, whatever that resolution was.

    To me goals feel a little different because they feel like this larger thing at the end of a certain amount of time that you kind of break down into smaller pieces and work towards throughout time like throughout days weeks, months years. And that feels less, it feels like less pressure and it feels like a more consistent like way to meet that goal. Because for me, if it’s a resolution, it’s like I’m going to do X thing every day, or I’m gonna I don’t know. What are some resolutions? And goals, feel more like, oh, there’s this thing that I want to achieve. So, how can I break that into a lot of smaller pieces so I can work on it a little by little throughout time like throughout whatever the time frame is.

    Goals, just feel more achievable than resolutions to me. Also, I feel like… I feel like I have, maybe… How do I say this? I have had goals in the past and I have met them or mostly met them. And I’m at a point right now that I don’t know what my next goals are. So I feel kind of lost. Because the goals that I had, I’ve like, I’ve met the goals, like, my largest goal that I’ve had recently is to, like, get a van and go on a road trip, and I did that. I got a van in 2018, and I went on my cross-country road trip in 2019. And if you’ve been here any amount of time, you’ll know a lot of things happened in 2019 for me and my life kind of like broke apart and then came back together in a different way, and I feel like right now, I don’t know what goals I have and that is kind of frustrating and scary and I kind of feel like I’m floating. You know, I’m just like a blob floating in space with no purpose. So, it’s weird when I’ve met my goals and then I’m not sure where to go next. 

    So I feel like, maybe if I made goals, they would either be too big or too small, but I also feel like Is this my perfectionism getting in my own way? Like I feel like I’m getting in my own way. So I wanted to talk about…. I’m kind of just going to brainstorm here in this vlog right now, about my goals for 2022. For this year. Because, I feel like I’ll feel better if I have goals to work towards. So I’m not just like aimlessly like what am I going to do? Let me just figure it out for today. And then tomorrow have to be like, what am I going to do? Let me figure it out for today. Like I feel aimless. So I’m going to brainstorm some goals right now, and I’m going to grab some paper so I can joy some stuff down also because I need some goals. So if you want to also come up with some goals, grab some paper and pen and let’s do this together. So, I’m gonna…. I’ve kind of brainstormed about goals a little bit already. So, I’m going to kind of separate it into personal goals and business goals. And I feel like the personal goals might be the easier ones, but that’s just me. Okay, so personal goals. Oh, my pen is running out of ink.

    Personal goals and business goals. 

    All right, I already had some stuff written up here. So ignore this but I’m just doing like personal and business and I’m just going to make a list because I love lists and lists help me a lot. So yeah list, I’m gonna start with personal because that feels easier.

    So personal goal. I also am going to set myself up for success because I know that if there’s something on there that I know, for sure that I 100% can do, then I’ll feel better because like I’ll have a goal that I know that I can meet. So I’m going to like start off with something that I know I can do to kind of like get the ball rolling. So I’ve already been journaling every day since January of 2020. So I’m going to continue to do that. So my goal is to journal every day in 2022 because I know that I can meet that because I already met it last year and most of 2020. So I’m going to do that, journal every day. 

    Still on personal goals. I’m gonna also continue to set myself up for success and do a couple more things that I know that I can do everyday or consistently, at least if not every day, just so that I know that I have goals that I can meet, and that way at the end of the year, if I look through my goals and I’m like, wow, there’s something I didn’t meet, but I’ll at least have some that I did meet that way. It doesn’t feel like you know, I’m a failure… because I know that I’m not. It’s okay to not meet your goals, that’s just like more things you can work towards.

    So another goal that I’m going to do for 2022 is to do Energy Medicine, energy healing on myself every day. Which I’ve already been doing almost every day for probably at least a year. So, I know that I can do that. Another personal goal that I’ve been thinking about is walking outside on a regular basis. So I’m going to say once a week, just because I know that like sometimes weather and responsibilities and other things can keep me from being outside, but I really want to be outside. So I’m going to say, take a walk outside every week. Walk outside every week and then if I do it more than once a week, that’s even better, but I least I’m going to do at least once a week. 

    Okay, so that’s just that’s like three personal goals. I’m going to start on a couple of business goals. I really would like to monetize my YouTube channel. So that requires at least 1000 subscribers and 4,000 plus watching hours over a period of 12 months. So that itself, like to monetize my YouTube channel, can be a business goal is to get at least 1000 subscribers and over 4,000 watching hours. 

    So monetize YouTube, which means 1000 subs and 4000 watch hours. So, If I want to do that, that also means I need to make more videos and share more videos on YouTube. So, maybe I will do… Maybe my goal can be like one video. A week. Or month, see I don’t want to, I don’t want to make it too frequent if it’s not something that I can do. I do want to challenge myself, but I also don’t want to put like huge amounts of pressure on myself to do things if I can’t do them. So let’s say I’m going to do I want to try to do at least one longer video a month and one short every week. So that way I at least have some content going up every week. Even if it’s not a long video and I think shorts have been really popular on YouTube. So yeah, I want to do more of those because I posted a short and then like two days later I had 800 views and I was my second most viewed video ever, so I’m going to keep doing that. Okay, so that’s like the main business goal is monetize YouTube. And then there’s some smaller goals underneath that in order to work towards monetizing, the YouTube.

    I want to continue doing Vlogs for y’all every week, so that can be another goal as a member like, website vlog every week. I already have like a list of potential topics to talk about, so I’m going to continue using that but also I’m going to put a survey below, so if there’s anything in particular you want to hear from me, let me know and I’ll try to make it. So survey will be below. Put the link in the caption down there.

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    This video is getting a little long and I want to spend some more time brainstorming goals, so I’m going to sign off of this video and continue thinking about goals and maybe in the next video I’ll go through the whole list of goals with you. So, you know what I’m doing. Thank you so much for being here. I love you so much. I hope that you can make some goals for yourself. Goals that are achievable, but are also, at least slightly challenging so you feel accomplished but not too challenging that you don’t do them because it just feels bad to make a goal then not succeed. 

    So yeah, I hope you get to do some achievable goals that are also slightly a challenge but not too much of a challenge. Yeah, I’m still learning. We’re all learning, we’re figuring shit out. None of us know what we’re doing. We just pretend. Okay. I love you! Thank you for being here! Goodbye!

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  • I am self employed on the internet. Here’s how.

     

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey friends! Welcome to 2022. This is weird. I feel like time has flown but also crawled at the same time, and it’s really weird to think about time in general. So yeah, it feels weird that we’re already in 2022, but I wanted to start this year off by saying, hello and thank you for being here and I love you so much! And I literally couldn’t be doing any of this without you and I feel like I say that a lot, but it’s true.

    So I thought… I’ve had, I’ve actually had a couple people ask me like are you for real? Like are you making all this up? Or are you actually like a real person who is doing these things that you’re saying you’re doing? And are you actually like self-employed and all of these things? So I wanted to give you a little insight in my life and how you make it possible. So, here we go.

    Okay, if you’re new here, I’m Bunny, my pronouns are they/them. I’m… a lot of things but for the sake of this video and not making it take like 20 minutes. I’m an artist, I’m a queer person, I am an educator, I care about a lot of things and I have a lot of interests. So if I were to like list all my interests, it would take a very long time and be a very long video. So I’m just going to say I’m into creativity, queerness, nature, ecosexuality, healing, those kinds of things. Yes, I’m a real person.

    Hi, I’m Bunny, I do exist. And I know that some of you might be confused as to like what my business is, and to be honest. I’m kind of confused about it, too. I’m still figuring it out. I became self-employed in 2019, like full-time self-employed. I had been part-time self-employed since like 2010 maybe, and I took a long time to build up to being full-time self-employed, and also a lot of things changed in my life that kind of brought the self-employment to the forefront.

    So, I am self-employed because I don’t want to work for someone else. I’ve done that for a lot of time and I kind of suffered for it as a neurodivergent person. I don’t do well in a lot of “normal” work environments. So, in order for me to like, have a somewhat healthy experience of working, I definitely needed to be self-employed and like make my own schedule. And the reason I’m able to be self employed is because of members of my website. People like you who pay me an amount that feels good to you on a monthly basis to access all of my content and my blogs and all that.

    I’m going to get real with you. I don’t make very much money. I usually make less than a thousand dollars a month… or around 1000 ish a month. So the only reason I’m able to sustain this is because I live with my parents, like my parents… this is their house. This is my room, but it’s my parents house and my parents let me have really cheap rent, so that helps a lot. I don’t have a lot of expenses because my like, all utilities and internet and stuff are included in my rent. And my rent is also lowered because I do things around the house in exchange for cheaper rent. So it works out a lot for me. And I, I would like to make more money, but I also don’t want to burn myself out, which I kind of already have done. So I’m trying to not repeat that. I, I’m still figuring out how to do this self-employment / online working world stuff. Yeah, it’s hard for me to describe this because I feel like I still am figuring it out for myself. But in order to be transparent, I don’t make a lot of money. I don’t have a lot of bills and that’s why I’m able to do this and I recognize my immense privilege as a person who’s able to do this.

    One: I’m white. Two: I’m mostly able-bodied. Three: I have the support of my parents. Four: I’m skinny. Five: I’m like “conventionally attractive” whatever the fuck that means. And yeah, but I mean my whiteness and my family help are probably some of the biggest reasons I’m able to do this and I definitely recognize that a lot of people have to work a lot harder in order to just survive and I’m extremely fortunate and extremely privileged that I’m able to work 10-ish hours a week and get by. I’m not rolling in money, but I’m comfortable, and that’s mostly because of my privileges and the support of my parents.

    I’m 32. Wow, that’s weird to say, I’m 32. I live with my parents and it’s actually a really great situation, for the financial reasons I’ve already stated but also because my parents are fucking awesome. Like, even before I moved out, when I was like a teenager, my parents were really awesome. I mean, I didn’t move out when I was a teenager. I moved out when I was in my early 20s, I lived out of the house for eight or nine years before I moved back in. But yeah, I have a very fortunate life and I’m able to do the things that I do because of my privileges and the support of my parents, and the support of y’all. Like, literally my primary income is from my website. So if you are here and you pay me any amount of money, you are the reason that I’m able to pay any bills and like have food on the table and get tattoos and stuff like that. 

    The tattoo is my largest expense and it’s like… it’s definitely a big investment, in my opinion. But it definitely. I would have a lot more money if I was not getting tattooed about every month ish because tattoos are expensive and this is a giant one. It’s like half of my body. So yeah, I feel like I’m starting to ramble, but I wanted to say, yes, I’m a real person. Yes, I am actually self-employed with the caveat of I have a whole lot of privileges that make it so that I am able to be self-employed and able to, like, sustain myself on not a lot of money because like I said, I don’t actually make all that much money. 

    And I’m still learning how to do this in general. I would like to scale my business. I would like to make more money and support more people and offer more ways that I can be of support to people. And I’m still figuring that out and I feel like I kind of maybe pressure myself to do things like super consistently. Maybe before I know that those things are what I want to do. Like I really have enjoyed doing nude gatherings and I did them for I think it was eight months in 2021 and those are super fun. But I also was like pressuring myself to do them consistently every month and I did enjoy that and I also was like, yeah, but I do need a break. I definitely need a break. I can’t consistently do this every month without any breaks. So it’s a balancing act for me and I feel like I go between like, I want to do something on a consistent basis, and then, oh, I don’t want to put too many things on my plate because I’m already juggling a lot. 

    At the same time like am I challenging myself? Now this just kind of feels like a diary entry. So that’s what this is right now. I’m going to stop this video before it takes the whole day and yeah, I just wanted to share with you a little bit of behind-the-scenes of, like how my business exists and who I am and what I do and why you are the reason that I’m able to do anything at all. So thank you. It means a lot. I love you so much. I’ll talk to you soon. *mwah* Bye!

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  • 5 Ways to Support Your Creativity

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hi friends! I’m here to talk some more about creativity because I know that that’s something that a lot of you are really interested in and I obviously am also very interested, since that’s like, I’ve turned that into my life. So yeah, I wanted to share with you. I created this like, short list of five ways to support your creativity. I’m just going to dive right in.

    So, I feel like a lot of us think that creativity just like comes to us and we’re just like hit or struck by the like lightning bolt of creativity and it’s something that we don’t really have to like work toward. It’s just something that like happens to us, but from my experience, if I wait for that then it kind of never comes. And you kind of have to like hold space for and create the, like, conditions for creativity to be able to thrive. So this five ways to support your creativity list is something I just came up with this morning because I was thinking about it and I was like, yeah, let me share this with you.

    So the first way that you can support your creativity is by creating a routine, or a ritual, or a habit around it. So whether that’s every morning when you wake up, writing 5 words in your Journal, whether that’s every afternoon after you have lunch you doodle for 5 minutes, whether that’s once a week, you have a day set aside to walk around the park and take pictures. Whatever that works best for you is something that is a repeatable like consistent time that you set aside to do something creative, whether it’s five minutes, an hour, a day. And whether that’s every day, once a week, once a month, just like something that’s consistent that you can be like, oh that’s my day to be creative, and that really helps a lot. Because I feel like if I don’t make time for being creative then it kind of like goes to the wayside and other things become more important than it. So that’s a way that I’m able to make space for and ensure that I have like creative time is what I actually put it on my calendar and turn it into something that’s a regular thing. That’s helped a lot.

    And also I want to say I’m not perfect at any of these. I know that these things work for me, but that doesn’t mean that I always like stick to them because I’m human and things happen and like, same for you. If you miss a week or a day or whatever, like it’s not the end of the world. You can always pick it back up. Don’t beat yourself up because beating yourself up really doesn’t help anything, it just makes you feel worse. So that’s the first one is creating a ritual or habit or routine around your creativity.

    Tip number two is create a space for your creativity. So that kind of goes along with the creating a routine around your creativity. So the routine is kind of like a time a time space, right. So this space that I’m talking about is like a physical space. So whether that’s like I’m going to have a corner of my room, be just for my like notepad and pencil and pens and like all the things that I want like to draw with. I have this like little desk and that’s, that’s my creative desk or it might be you have a whole room. If you have the privilege of having that kind of space, like having like a studio space, and be like, this is my photography studio space. And that’s the only thing that it’s there for, and that is like the dedicated space for my creative photography stuff. If that’s possible, if that’s available to you.

     

    If you don’t have the kind of like physical space like a desk or room, you could also like create temporary physical spaces for your art. So like maybe if you’re a writer, but you don’t have a desk, like maybe you share a desk with another person or you just like have to randomly find a spot in your house to do writing whenever you have time. Maybe to set that space and like turn it into that dedicated space like physical space, you could add some kind of ritual to it, like maybe like get a cup of tea and light a candle and like when you do that your brain is like, “oh I know what we’re about to do. We’re going to be creative because this is what you do every time you’re creative you like get a cup of tea and light a candle”. Like that’s the physical space that’s kind of created through that like repetitive like ritual of like creating like this isn’t my only, you know, I have to share this desk with someone, but when I do these things together, that means that like the space is for creativity.

    Yeah, that’s the second tip or way you can support your creativity and that’s the having a dedicated space for it. Whether that’s like physical or whether that’s something that you set up temporarily.

    The third way to support your creativity is to set a timer and do something, anything. So if I’m like, I don’t know what I want to do. Maybe I’ll just set like a five or ten minute or fifteen, however long timer you want on your phone and just like Doodle Draw Journal, take random photos, experiment like whatever your creative thing you want to work on is, do like five minutes of that. Even if you’re like, I have no idea what I’m doing. Just be like, it’s okay I don’t have any idea. I’m just going to experiment and play and I’m just gonna do it for five minutes. I’m just going to do it for 10 minutes. Whatever that time is that you’re able to alot. So within that ritual and routine of the first like time ritual, the first tip or way that you can support your creativity, that time ritual can be once a week. I’m going to at least five minutes. Every day, I’m gonna do three minutes of doodling, whatever.

    And then you have also that dedicated physical space, that’s either permanent or temporary where you set a timer and do the thing. Just be like, I’m just gonna do it, whether you like it or not like is maybe not as important because you doing the thing is going to help your brain and your body remember like, this is a thing that I like to do and I do it repetitively and… no one is perfect 100% of the time. Like that just doesn’t exist. Sometimes we just need to give ourselves the space to like make a bunch of shitty art and that makes the space for us to have like the art that we super love. The time that you know, everything comes together perfectly. So as long as you’re just doing it, whatever it is and it doesn’t have to be perfect. Let the perfection go out the window, because that’s not important. It’s the act of doing it. When you do it, it’s more likely that you’re going to get something that you like because you’re doing instead of not doing it.

    The fourth way you can support your creativity is through having, whatever your creative supplies are… so like if your’re a writer, your pens or pencils. If you’re like a sculptor, then your sculpting supplies. If you’re an animator or something, then your computer or your like markers or, as a photographer like me your camera, your maybe your tripod, whatever, whatever the tools are that you use for your creativity, put those in a space that you see often, and that it’s easy to reach and like “Oh my camera’s right there, I’m just going to grab it and take a few photos because I like I’m inspired!” If the tools that you use for your creativity are like hidden away, then it’s going to be harder for you to like see them and be like, “oh I have an idea” or it’s also going to be like a barrier to getting you to doing the thing. It’s like, oh, everything’s packed away. I don’t really feel like unpacking all that stuff right now. I’m just not going to do it. 

    Like make it really easy on yourself. Have it somewhere that’s like in plain view, easy to reach, easy to get to. So that as soon as you feel the like creative urge then you can just be like, I got it. Let’s go. Let’s do it! So that’s the fourth way that you can support your creativity, is having your supplies in an easy to see and easy to reach place. Having it just being easy on yourself.

    The fifth and final way to support your creativity is to have an accountability buddy, like have a friend that you say I’m gonna do art every Friday at 4:00 for five minutes or however long. But at least five minutes, every Friday 4:00. Tell your friend, be like is a thing that I really want to do and actually like think it’s going to be good for me and I’m telling you because I don’t want to just hold myself accountable. I’m hoping that you might also hold me accountable to doing this thing every Friday. And you don’t have to do with me. I just maybe… can you check in on me and see if I was able to do it every Friday, like maybe in the evenings like 5:00 or 6:00, see if I was able to do the creative thing at 4. Just having a friend that you can talk to about it and like to remind you or support you or encourage you through doing this thing. It’s really helpful.

    And even if it’s not just like a single person. Maybe you’re going to post, maybe go post on social media be like “hey, this is my day and time to do this thing. Just telling everybody, I’d love to hear what your like art routine is.” Just if you are able to put it out into the world in a way that’s not just like it’s just something you’re doing for yourself, it’s some you’re doing that other people know about you’re more likely to do it and like hold yourself accountable whether other people that are also holding you accountable to doing it.

    You also kind of in that same accountability vein, you could do like a co-working or body doubling session with someone or a group of people. Coworking and body doubling to me, I kindof use them interchangeably, but it’s basically like having a set day of time where you and one or more people get together, virtually, or in person, to do your own work individually, but like in the same space either in person or virtually.

    So like for instance, maybe on Zoom every Friday at 4:00 is the time that I meet up with like two of my friends and we all like, we’re all in the same place, we might like chat in the chat box. But what we’re really doing is, like, focusing on doing whatever projects are working on. We’re going through photos, we’re writing up letters or, you know, but if it’s… it’s not necessarily like these are the things that I’m doing here. Will you make sure I do them? And also this is all the stuff that I’m doing, like, while I’m doing it. It’s more of like, you can do that. You don’t even have to really talk about what you’re doing. You can just be like, hey I’m going to do this thing. Thanks for being here with me. Let’s do it. Okay, bye.

     

    And then you’re like, sitting all on the computer and doing your own individual work. You’re just together in a space. That’s another way for like accountability. Because like whether or not you actually discuss what it is you’re doing, which you can, or you don’t have to, just having another person working alongside you on their own stuff is like a lot of encouragement and accountability for you to also do whatever your stuff is. So yay, that’s the five ways to support your creativity! And I’m going to go through those again really quickly just because I feel like I rambled.

    So here’s the list, five ways to support your creativity: create a ritual routine or habit around it. Have a dedicated space for your creative project or idea or thing. Set a timer and do something, anything, even if it’s like five minutes. Get accountability buddy or co-worker or body double. And store your supplies and a place that’s easy to reach and see so that you can use them in a pinch really quickly. 

    Yay! Creative things! If you liked this, please let me know. I might do more videos like this if you’re interested, I’ll put the link to my survey below and you can let me know what kinds of things you want to hear from me if you haven’t yet. And if there’s something that you want to like you want me to talk about that I haven’t yet. I’d be happy to hear your feedback. 

    Survey link is below and yeah, I want to make the things that you’re excited about receiving from me. So yeah, hope you have a wonderful day. I hope these tips to support your creativity are helpful to you, and I hope that you have an awesome day, weekend, whatever time it is where you are, okay. Have fun being creative! Support your art dreams! I love you so much! Thank you for being here!

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  • 5 Steps to Produce Ideas / 5 Steps for Being Creative

     

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hello, good morning, or afternoon, or evening… whatever time it is where you are! I’m glad you’re here. I think this month I’m going to talk about creativity. I’ve already talked about creativity a bunch, but I feel like there’s a lot of things to say about it. So I’m gonna keep talking about it because so far in the survey that y’all have answered. Some of you have answered.

    Most people have said that they’re interested in…

    How to be more creative? How do I get inspiration? How do I love myself more? How do I…. Ah what were the other things that yall have said? How do I be more confident in myself? How do I embody my true self? How do I… How do I make friends? How do I… be happy?

    So I feel like a lot of the answers to a lot of these questions are kind of similar or along the same vein, or like have threads that go through a lot of them. And I think most of us struggle with the same things. Like I want to be creative. I want to be inspired. I want to be myself. I want to make friends. I want to be happy. And I imagine most of you also do. 

    So I recently shared to my my email newsletter that y’all may or may not be on. Hopefully you are. If you’re not I’ll put a link below if you want to sign up for it is free and I share stuff, occasionally. I try to do something at least once a month, but I recently shared on there a really quick blurb about this article that I found a couple months ago, that was kind of like a mini overview of a book that was written by James Webb Young in 1939, and it’s his like technique for producing ideas, which to me is kind of the same as like, how to be creative. It’s a five step technique, five. And I wanted to share some of that with you today because I think it’s really helpful, and I think a lot of us don’t really think about it in this way. So, yeah, I want to share that with you.

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    So, if you already saw my email with this little thing in it, you might be like, oh okay, I know what you’re talking about but if you haven’t, I wanted to make a video about it.

    So the five steps to produce ideas / 5 steps for being creative.

    Step number one is gather your materials and resources, like gather your inspiration, gather stuff. So like if you’re like working on a project that has to do with trees, of course, you know, I’m thinking about trees all the time, then maybe you’ll gather books about trees. Maybe you’ll listen to a podcast about trees. Maybe you’ll take a walk in the forest to be among the trees. Maybe you’ll sketch trees, Maybe you’ll find some books about trees. Maybe you’ll see if there’s like some movies or documentaries about trees just like, gather all the information about whatever it is that you’re wanting to do or work on or like be inspired by. So just  gather all those materials that step one is gather.

    Step two is digest the materials. So that means read the book, walk in the woods, listen to that podcast, sketch those trees. You know, I’m just going to keep with this tree theme. That’s step two is like actually digest the material like absorb it and play with it and do some stuff with it. And I think number three is the most important part, most important step.

    So the third step is to have unconscious processing, which in other words, is set it down and forget about it and do something else. And I think this is, Both amazing and also really difficult to do sometimes because if we’re like really excited about something we really want to like I want to figure this out and do it. Like I don’t know how to draw this branch perfectly, so I’m just going to try it 5,000 times. Sometimes, the best thing to do instead of like hyper focusing and like forcing and like doing doing doing making it go, go go, sometimes really, the best thing to do is just be like, okay. I’ve like done a bunch of this. I feel like I’m getting frustrated, I feel like I’m getting kinda stuck, so I’m going to set it down. 

    And do something else for a little bit, and that little bit can be a few minutes, a few hours, a few days, a few months. Only you know what a little bit is for you and what that works best for you. So, unconscious processing, let your like rational conscious mind, let go of it for a little bit and let your like, subconscious like instinctual primal mind mull it over in the background while you’re doing other things. So like not consciously thinking about it. This is unconscious, this is most important but also the hardest! Do all those things and then just let it go, and don’t do it. Just do nothing about it or just like set it aside for an amount of time. That’s step 3.

    Step 4 is actually the aha moment, because while you’re in that do nothing step three, step four will naturally come. The, aha moment is when, like things like somehow like click together while you’re not thinking about it and you’re like, *gasp* I know exactly what to do now, or like, I just had the best idea!!! Your mind, and your brain, your body, like, everything’s always doing stuff behind the scenes even when you’re not really thinking about it. So sometimes, once you give it the space to like, not be stressed about it and just, like, doing something else. That’s when that aha moment comes and you’re like, Ohhhh I have this realization. Oh, now I know what to do. Oh, that tree, it just told me it’s story, The aha moment will come if you’re able to release that like force and do. So that’s step, four. Is that aha moment.

    And then step five is when your idea meets reality. So once you have that aha moment, step five is like, okay, now that I know what to do, I’m going to do it, Now that the tree has spoken to me, I’m going to write it’s story. Now that the image of this perfect branch just appeared in my mind, I could now sketch it. When this idea just appeared out of nowhere after mulling over for a while, now I’m going to do something about it. That step five is doing something about it, like, whatever that aha moment was, allows you to get to the space where you could do the thing. 

    Yeah, I think in this society was like capitalistic white supremacist colonialist imperialist, like, all of the shitty systems of oppression that like most humans have on them. It kind of makes us think, in this society kind of makes us think that like, we have to force things in order for them to happen. We have to constantly be going doing in order to be like, worthy of making stuff or anything like, this society makes us feel like we’re not good enough and we have to be constantly producing in order to be worth anything and that is not true. 

    It in a material way, sometimes feels like it might be true because we live in capitalism, like it…. How do I say this? We live in these systems of oppression, and they make us think that we’re not good enough, and that we have to constantly be forcing and doing and going. But in reality, when we allow ourselves to slow down, and to do what really feels best in our hearts and our bodies and our minds, our souls, but really feels best to us, and what really actually works for us, which includes rest and doing nothing that unconscious processing. Then that’s when we can be our most creative.

    When we’re not stressed, when we’re not freaking out, then we can be more of our true selves, which, in my opinion, out true selves are like infinitely creative. That’s like, a part of being a human, is the ability to be creative. So next time you’re feeling stuck and like you really want to do something creative, maybe you just doodle. Just like get a piece of paper and a pen and just do a lot of this and don’t think about it and just be like, what is, what feels good? Let me just scribble a whole bunch and just get some energy out. Like, it doesn’t have to be anything and lets your brain kind of turn off and just be like this feels fun to make shapes.

    And see what comes from that. And if it’s nothing, that’s totally cool. You just like rested your brain for a little bit, awesome. And if you have some epiphany that that’s also cool. And you can do something about it if you want, but it’s not necessary for us to be constantly doing stuff all the time. And sometimes the rest and the doing nothing is just as important. So, if you want to be creative, there’s your five steps for how to be creative and produce ideas from James Webb Young from 1939.

    CLICK HERE FOR THE ARTICLE ABOUT THIS 5 STEP TECHNIQUE FOR PRODUCING IDEAS

    Okay. Yeah, I think that’s all I have to share today. Thank you for being here. I’m going to add the link to the survey below if you want to tell me what kinds of things you want to hear from me. Yeah, I love you so much. Thank you for being here. It means the world and I couldn’t do any of this without you. So thank you so much. I love you. I hope you get some down time and doing nothing time sometime soon or today or tomorrow also.

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  • Holding Space for Difficult Emotions with Self Portraiture

     

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Good morning! Well, it might not be morning for you, but it’s morning for me, so I’m saying good morning. Today I wanted to just say hi and thank you for being here and I’m kind of struggling to figure out what I want to say. I think it’s because I put a lot of pressure on myself to do things in a way that makes sense, and I don’t always make sense, so the things I do don’t always make sense, and it’s okay. I’m a human. I don’t want to repeat myself on here, but I do also want to share cool things with you.

    So, I thought that I would just share a little bit of information… I think I already did. But about these photos that I’m about to share with you, that are down below. I already said some of it when I was talking about self portraits, was it last month, maybe October? Recently, I was talking about self portraits and on November, I think it was the 18th. I did a kind of like a co-working session, sort of like a, it was a sneak-peek preview of the self portraits that I had taken that I haven’t shared anywhere yet, which are these photos that are about to be shared with y’all!! Thank you. For those of you who came and joined me on Zoom live to go through the photos. That was really fun. I’ll probably do that again.

    So, the backstory for these photos, if you missed the blog previously, whatever that was. I don’t have dates in my brain.

    CLICK HERE FOR THE VLOG ABOUT WHY SELF PORTRAITS ARE IMPORTANT TO ME

    If you missed the vlog these photos, I took, I believe it was in May of 2020…. 2021? No, 2021 for sure it was this year? Maybe this year? I’m pretty sure. It was in May, I think it was this year. I took them in my sister’s house, she had just sold her house. So I think that was this year. She had just sold her house and we had already like moved everything out of the house so it was empty.

    I used to live with her in that house for maybe a year and a half or two years and I had some pretty tough times when I was living there… for several reasons. Gemini is awesome, she’s a great sister. I love like, she’s easy to live with honestly. But yeah, like so the tough times didn’t necessarily have to do with her, it was just like circumstances. I had some tough times when I was living in the house, and since it was empty and I was there by myself, I took self-portraits. 

    I had a lot of feelings. A lot of feelings!!! and I just allowed myself to feel the feelings, because feelings are not always easy to feel. And sometimes I need like, to hold that space for myself. And sometimes the easiest way to do that is with photos, by taking self portraits and whether or not I ever share them with anyone. Like, it doesn’t matter as much, because to me what matters is the way that I feel and like allowing myself to have those feelings and like holding space for that. 

    Usually I’m able to like kind of focus and get in that zone when I’m taking self portraits, so I did that. I released a lot of the feelings, like, frustrations and sadness and upsets that I experienced in the house, in that house while I was taking the self-portraits before I could no longer go in the house. Like it’s already sold to someone. So that was actually the last time I was ever in that house. And as you can see in the photos, I was quite emotional. 

    And then after I like cried and released all my feelings, I just like danced around and got sweaty and was silly. And that also felt really good. Like it’s nice to kind of swing from one thing to another sometimes instead of like “oh I have to be really sad this whole day and let my feelings take over me for the entire day and focus on those.”

    I don’t have to do that. I enjoy like, “okay, let me feel it to my feelings and like release them and see how long that feels. And then after that, if I feel up to it, the maybe I’ll do something else that feels better. That can bring me back to my more normal okay self.” So I cried, was really upset and let myself feel all that and like, hold space for that. And then after that, I was like, all right, let’s put some music on and then I danced and felt more and was able to have a range of emotions in the house. 

    So, yeah, that’s that’s the story behind these photos. The ones where really emotional and like crying and stuff are in what used to be my bedroom. Empty, of course, and I actually I took a bunch that were really like dark and moody and then I also took some that were lighter and I really actually like the dark ones the best. I haven’t fully decided if I’m going to edit these photos yet, so whether or not I edit them, you’ll see whatever I did.  Because I haven’t decided, I’m probably going to decide about editing before I share this. And I haven’t decided yet as of making this video, so we’ll see. They’re all digital. I usually don’t edit film but sometimes I do edit video er digital because film just looks better and doesn’t need an edit. The digital like looks like digital and usually need a little bit of more like punchiness. So yeah, I haven’t decided about editing yet. We’ll see.

    These are the photos… after I took the photos in the bedroom, I moved to the living room, which is the purple room that you see. Gemini’s house is so colorful, I loved it. Her living room was purple, and her kitchen was like bright green color, and the bathroom was like, teal kind of turquoise-y kinda blue. Yeah, she had a really colorful house and I loved it. I don’t know if the people who bought it kept the colors or not, but I thought it was fun to live in a very colorful house.

    So yeah, that’s the story behind these photos, I hope you like them. I do have some more photos to go through that I have taken in the last year that I haven’t done anything with yet. So I might do another one of those like let’s look at them together live things. Yeah, so keep an eye out for that. I’ll probably do that again. Just not sure when I don’t have any dates yet, but I’ll of course let you know when that’s going to happen.

    Yeah that’s all I have to say. Thank you! I love you so much! I appreciate so much that you’re here. I’m going to put my survey below. If you haven’t answered my survey, please, I would love to hear your feedback on what kind of content you would like to receive from me, because I want to make things that you’re interested in and that will benefit you. 

    I hope you liked my non-monogamy stuff for November. I had fun talking about it and I probably could talk more about it. So, yeah, reply to the survey below if you haven’t yet and let me know what kinds of things you’re interested in, and I will do my best to do more of that! Okay. Byeee!

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  • Non monogamous stereotypes + assumptions

     

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEOS ABOVE:

    Hi, I think this month is just going to be mostly about non-monogamy because it’s kind of a really big topic and I know that a lot of you are really interested in learning about it, and it’s definitely a big part of my life, so let’s go! So there’s a lot of really shitty stereotypes about non-monogamy that I would like to talk about and debunk them because it’s not true.

    So obviously, I am one person and I can’t speak for the entire community of non-monogamous people. Like, I can’t, it’s just like, one black person can’t speak for all black people. One, non monogamous person can’t speak for all non monogamous people. So this is all from my perspective and from the reading and communication and like, discussions that I’ve had about non-monogamy. So yeah, I’m not the expert on everything, but I’m talking to you from my own perspective and from the things that I’ve learned over time.

    So, one thing that people assume about non-monogamous people is that they are just in it for the sex and obviously that’s not true. I mean, for some people they might be in it just for sex. You know, if that’s what they want and that’s what all the people that they’re with want, like that’s totally cool, power to them. But also, there’s like a lot of asexual people that are non monogamous, you don’t have to have sex in order to be non monogamous. Like, non monogamy doesn’t have to do with sex, it has to do with the relationships that you have and how you structure them.

    So, you could be asexual and be non monogamous, you could be straight or queer or bi or gay and be non monogamous. You can be cis or trans and be non-monogamous. Like it’s the way that you structure relationships and not necessarily about the people that are in them, if that makes sense. So non monogamy is not always about sex. Though, sometimes it could be, you know, power to the people. Whoever, like, that’s the beautiful thing about non monogamy is people get to build the relationships the way that they need them to be built, you know, like based on people that are in them. I guess that’s kind of really specifically for relationship anarchy, which is what I consider myself, but….

    Another thing is people think about like kind of along this like sex line, a lot of people think about non monogamy, as people that are like getting a lot of STIs. But… or like it’s more likely that you’ll get an STI, if you’re non monogamous because you’re having sex with more people, but really monogamous people get more STIs because non-monogamous people are like super good well, most of them, are super good at communication about STIs and getting tested more frequently. A lot of monogamous people assume that they don’t need to get tested because they’re only having sex with one person, but you can still get an STI. Like a lot of STIs don’t really like… a lot of STIs are asymptomatic and you don’t even know you have it and you could be spreading it and not even know it. So. If you’re non monogamous, it’s actually not very likely to get an STI. I mean STIs… okay. I’m kind of gonna go off topic a little bit. There’s this person. I don’t remember her name, but she did a TED Talk and the Ted talk, you can find it on YouTube. It’s called STIs are not a consequence, they’re an inevitability. I’ll link that video below because it’s really good.

    But like STIs are very common in humans. And if you’re having sex, there’s a big chance that you’ll get an STI. So, the fact that non-monogamous people are more willing to get tested and get tested on a regular basis and have all the conversations about safe sex. Like, If you do even get an STI as a non monogamous person, it’s likely that you’re going to catch it sooner and be able to treat us sooner than if you were a monogamous person that doesn’t get tested. 

    Another assumption about non-monogamy or like stereotype… 

    Part 2

    So I have to do a video part 2 because my alarm went off and it stopped the last video. So non monogamy video for this part two! Sorry. Another assumption about non-monogamy or like stereotype about non-monogamy is Triads, which a Triad is like three people that are in relationship with each other and a lot of them that are like the stereotype one is like a man and two women. And the man is straight and the like the women are bi, and this is like a huge like, I mean, obviously there’s probably a lot of men who like would dream of this because oh, yeah, I get to have sex with two women and maybe at the same time, but like Triads are actually not that common in non-monogamy and they’re actually like expert-level non monogamy, especially a closed triad, which so when I say a closed Triad, when I say a closed triad, like the relationship is closed to anyone other than the people that are in it. So like there’s three people and their relationship and they’re all dating each other and like, that’s it. They’re not dating anyone outside of that. And that’s actually really not common. But it’s probably the most common relationship in non-monogamy that’s like known in like popular culture, which is frustrating because I don’t know anyone that’s in a Triad. And there’s such a huge problem with the Unicorn Hunters. So I’m going to go into what that is to put like. Yeah, like the assumption that all known monogamous relationships are like three people that are dating rach other exclusively is not real, like, those do exist, but they’re more rare and way more fucking like difficult because they have.

    So, if there’s three people, there’s person a person, B, and person C. person A has relationship with person B person. A also has a relationship with person C. Person B has a relationship with person A person B has relationship with person C. like you get it right? Person C has a relationship with person A, person C as also as a relationship with person B. And then they have the relationship that’s between all three of them, A B and C. So there’s like several relationships that are within that structure and like you can’t have one person. Like if you’re in a Triad like this, that’s expected. Like, you can’t really, it’s not… They’re rare. Like it’s not how fucking like so we know that it’s hard to find a person that you want to date. Right? How much fucking harder is it to find a person that you want to date that also wants to date your partner? All three of you have to be compatible with each other, like as a Triad and as individual like couples between the three people in the Triad. Expert level about monogamy not easy, very hard and then like most people that are in that kind of structure might also, it might not be a close, tria. They might have like person A might be in a relationship with B and C, but they might also have like a separate person like person Z over here, that they’re also in a relationship with but that’s not a part of the Triad, you know, like so there’s yeah. Triads are like, expert level. They’re not easy. And that’s not the main way that people are in relationships that are non monogamous. That’s an incorrect assumption.

    Unicorn Hunters. This is not a cool thing!! Okay. So unicorn Hunters are basically if you’re on Tinder or like dating apps at all, you probably have seen a whole bunch of unicorn hunters. It’s like the couple that’s usually a straight couple that the woman wants to like experiment with another woman and it’s you know, they’re trying to find a bi woman to date the two of them or to like not maybe not even date. Maybe just have sex with them. 

    That’s unicorn hunter! So you’re like yeah, but how do people become Triads if the Unicorn Hunters are bad? So the reason unicorn Hunters are bad and that’s like a whole specific category on its own is because it’s like a couple that has couples privilege like they’re already together. The privilege that they have is like the assumption is that if something happens with this like unicorn over here that if the Unicorn causes trouble, the unicorns going to get kicked out and like kicked to the curb because the couple comes first to both of the couple. Another huge problem with it is because a lot of times unicorn Hunters don’t have any experience in non monogamy and they’re really like treating this third person as like a sex toy. Basically. I like a sentient sex toy. Like they don’t treat them as a human. They probably have ultimatums the the couple probably has veto power which okay, you know, power you probably can guess. If say one person of the couple is like I don’t want you to date that person, I’ma veto that you can’t date them. You can see why this could be a problem, especially for the person who’s like, the potential third, because they just get discarded by the couple really easily by the couple because the couple already has the couples privilege and is like “yeah we’re going to put each other over anybody else and you inherently are less important to us because you’re just like this new person that we’re bringing on to like spice up our sex life.”

    Yeah, unicorn Hunters are bad news. If you’re new to non-monogamy, it’s kind of easy to accidentally become a unicorn Hunter especially if you’re already partnered. So yeah, don’t do that, please. I think there’s a website unicorn Hunters are us that you can look at but like if you’re new to non monogamy and you do have a relationship already and you want to open it and add another person to it. Please do a lot of research.

    There are some people who want to be the unicorn and like want to be the third in a relationship and like are okay with not being primary like they’re okay with being like a secondary like person and they don’t want the commitment and stuff like that does exist. But most of the time unicorn Hunters are basically treating people like glorified sex dolls, and that’s really shitty. So please if you want to like open your relationship and add someone to it, please do a lot of research. Please make sure that like the third person is in a relationship with the individuals and not just the couple. So, like person A like the these, it’s so, this is the couple say, person A has an individual relationship with the third person. Person B also has an individual relationship with the third person and then there’s the relationship of all of them together. Like, if you have to a hundred percent of the time as the third person be with the couple a hundred percent of the time, you can’t deepen your relationship to either of them like individually. That’s bad news. Like that. No, that’s not cool at all. I feel like I’m ranting about unicorn hunters and I haven’t even had personal experience with them. But like I can just… can you imagine though? as a person who’s like, yeah I want to date a couple. That would be fun and then you like try to date a couple and then they treat you like shit. Like Please don’t become that. Unicorn Hunters are not cool. I’m sure there’s a lot of information online about unicorn Hunters, but I’ll see if I can link that unicorn Hunters R Us website in the caption below if you want to, like, look at that. 

    (CLICK HERE FOR UNICORN HUNTERS R US WEBSITE)

    What other non monogamy things that are assumptions or stereotypes should I talk about? Oh, there’s an assumption that non-monogamous people are not jealous

    Non monogamous people are humans too and everyone feels jealousy sometimes. Some people feel jealousy in more like in more extreme or less extreme circumstances, or feelings. Like some people don’t really feel very jealous. And that’s just like an individual person thing. But like just because you’re non monogamous doesn’t mean you’re immune to jealousy. I’m non monogamous and I definitely feel jealous a lot and like insecure a lot and I think it’s because I still have a lot of compulsory monogamy bullshit still in my self. But like, yeah, you’re going to feel jealous. Like, the person that you care about, also cares about other people and it can be uncomfortable sometimes, especially if you’re insecure like, I definitely have felt.

    I like I keep having recurring dreams of like a person that I care about connecting with other people and leaving me out and me feeling jealous and insecure. Like this is a reccurring thing for me and I have to like deal with it. It’s not as bad in real life because I don’t tend to like spend time with people when they’re also seeing other people. Like I like to spend one-on-one time together and I don’t put myself in those situations on purpose because I know I would feel really  so I don’t do that to myself.

    On the other side of that, here’s another term that you may or may not have heard of. There’s something called compersion which is where you feel happy when you see someone that you care about feeling happy. So some people kind of the opposite. I don’t want to say opposite but it’s like the other side of jealousy. So when you’re jealous, you’re like man I wish I could do that. I feel like maybe you know, I’m being left out, that kind of thing compersion is like, oh I see my partner feeling super happy and loved by this other person and I feel really great for them for that. Like it’s yeah, it’s like you’re happy for your partner’s happiness or partner may or might not be the right word, but you’re happy for the person that’s in your life because they’re happy. Not necessarily because you have anything to do with it, but just because like, oh, they’re happy so I’m happy for them. Like the feels good. I personally haven’t experienced much compersion, and that’s not something that is a requirement to be non-monogamous. Like not everyone experiences compersion and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re like a bad non monogamous person it just means that you haven’t felt that before.

    Yeah, I think this is already 10 minutes. So a whole bunch of more rambling about non monogamy. We did it. If you have any questions or yeah, if you like me talking about non-monogamy, let me know and I can maybe make more videos like this. Yeah, if you have questions, comment below, I might either reply to the comment or I might make another video to answer your question. 

    I love you, thank you for being here and I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

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  • Some non monogamy styles + terms

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hello, I thought I would do installment umber two on non-monogamy and talk about some of the like terms and like words that are used in non monogamy commonly that you may or may not know about. So, here we go. So non-monogamy os like, obviously is like not monogamy. So let’s start off by saying, what monogamy is… monogamy, is what most of society expects of relationships that are romantic and/or sexual. So, monogamy is like, two people get together and they’re together and they don’t see anybody else, and it’s just them basically, in the relationship. This is like a very watered-down like, basic bones version. So, there’s, a term for the expectation of what monogamous relationships should be in terms of like the trajectory of the relationship. So, there’s this thing called the relationship escalator, which is… you’re probably familiar with it, you should know there’s a term, which is when two people maybe they have a crush on each other, and then they start dating, and then they move in together and get married and have babies and buy a house and live together, forever, and die together forever, you know, so it’s like that’s the relationship escalator. That’s like the Milestone goal post. The things that you’re expected to do in a traditional monogamous relationship, that’s called the relationship escalator. 

    I took the escalator all the way to the top minus the kids and buying a house and I realized, I don’t like this shit actually at all. So I stepped off of it. So non-monogamy is where your relationships are not necessarily following that script. Non-monogamy has many different ways that people can have relationships. And I’m not going to go over every single one because I have a limited experience with all of them. Like not, I don’t have experience being like in a Triad or something, so I’m not going to… but how do I go over this? Non monogamy is like the broad overall thing. If you think of it as an umbrella, non monogamy is like the top big broad umbrella and then underneath that there’s a lot of different kinds of non monogamy. There’s like swinging which you’ve probably heard of, I don’t have experience with that. There’s polyamory which you’ve probably heard of, which is poly means many and amory is love like amore. So polyamory is Many Loves, so you’re in multiple committed relationships. There’s solo polyamory, which is more along the lines of what I would consider myself which is where your primary, like, your main relationship is with yourself and then you also have relationships with other people, but you don’t put other people above yourself. Obviously, there’s like… if an emergency situations, I’m going to go help somebody but I don’t like prioritize any single person in my life other than myself and the Earth because I’m ecosexual. If you don’t know what that is and you’re like new here. I have a whole series of videos on ecosexuality in my YouTube I’ll put the link below if you’re curious, but that doesn’t really… ecosexuality is not really a part of this video conversation right now. So I’m just going to link to it if you’re curious and want to like dive into that.

    (CLICK HERE FOR MY ECOSEXUALITY VIDEO PLAYLIST)

    There’s also under the big non-monogamy umbrella, is relationship anarchy, which is the best way to describe the way that I do relationships, which relationship anarchy is where, basically, you tailor all of your relationships to people that are in them. So… and you also don’t like there’s no real hierarchy in terms of like… romantic and sexual relationships are more important than like platonic friendships and that kind of stuff, like there’s no… I don’t I don’t prioritize any relationship over another. They’re all equally important to me, whether I’m having sex or like, romantic with someone or it’s just platonic friends and we hang out like everybody’s equally important. And you just like… you build relationships based on what works for the people that are in them and to me, that’s, that’s perfect!

    So relationship anarchy has this beautiful, wonderful, awesome thing called the relationship anarchy smorgasbord. And it’s basically there’s like a little chart thing. I’ll see if I can find it and put it in this caption below because it’s like, you pretend you’re at a buffet and there is like a whole bunch of different dishes that you can like, put on your plate and the plate is like your relationship with the whatever person you’re building the plate with… the relationship and you get to choose. Like, do I want romance? Do I want physical intimacy? Do I want sex? Do I want friendship? Do I want a collaborator? Do I want somebody that’s going to be kinky with me? Do I want to have somebody that I live with? Do I want somebody that I want to help like with caretaking? Like there’s all these different ways we can be in relationships with each other and we get to choose which pieces of the pie we want to put on our plate. So I super love that. I share the smorgasbord with a lot of people to see, like, are we compatible? Do you want the same things that I do? Like, what of these things are you looking for? and let’s build this relationship together.

    What other kinds of non-monogamy are there? Those, I would say those are the main ones that I want to talk about because there’s a lot of like you can get into like detail things with a lot of this but I personally have only really have experience with relationship anarchy, solo polyamory and just like general non-monogamy.

    If you’re curious, I will get personal with you, my current relationships… I have two people that I see on a regular or semi-regular basis and then I have three… three people that I see, like, occasionally, I would call those comets. This is another non monogamy term. A comet person or partner is, you know, how, like a comet you can see it only every once in a while, like it goes past us occasionally. a comet partner or comment like person in your life, a comet relationship is basically like when you see each other you’re together, and it’s… you connect and it’s great, but when you’re not near each other when you’re not together, it’s not necessarily like you’re keeping in touch all the time and all of that.

    So it’s like when it’s possible then that’s great, but also there’s no expectation of like texting you everyday or seeing each other every week or things like that. Like I have there’s a comet in Illinois. Like I have a comet in Illinois. I have a comet in another part of North Carolina. Like I don’t really call them that, to them. It’s just the easiest way to describe it in polyamory terms because it’s not like a person that’s regularly in my life. It’s just a person that’s in my life when circumstances allow us to be in each other’s lives if that makes sense.

    So, yeah, I have several people that are important to me. And then I have like a whole ton of friends that I super love a whole lot. And yeah, I so I guess, okay, here I am kind of sort of like putting a hierarchy in relationships, but I don’t think it’s hierarchy. I think it’s me trying to describe things to you in a way that you would understand. So the way that I’m talking, saying I have two people that I see on a regular semi-regular basis, and then I have like 3ish people that I see occasionally. I’m talking about like romantically romantically sexually like intimately and I’m not counting like the very many number of friends that I have that are platonic friends and that can be seen as like I’m prioritizing my like sexual romantic relationships, but I don’t see it that way.

    I just see it as like, I feel like y’all would be curious about… I imagine most of you are monogamous or like mostly monogamous. So I imagine you would be curious about like the in terms of the depth of relationships that I have. And that’s the way that I can describe it to you because if I was going to like, count all of my friends, it would take a long time and be like. I’m forgetting people and I have like this huge list. So it’s just me the easiest way for me to be like, I have a few people in my life that I see intimately that are more than just friends. And I do also have a whole lot of friends that are like, equally important to me as the people that I see in a more intimate way. But friendships can be so intimate and like, not even require physical anything, or even like being in the same place. I don’t… relationships are hard to describe and name and I am not sure it’s really important to even have a label for everything because some things are just fine to be what they are without needing to label it, if that makes sense. That’s how I feel.

    Relationships are great, people are great. I love making new friends, and I love not being monogamous because monogamy, feels like oppressive to me. It feels like as trying to shove me in this tiny box that I don’t fit in and trying to shove my relationships in a tiny box and I don’t fit in like, there’s no way that one singular person can fulfill all of my needs, and I don’t want to put that kind of pressure on another person to be that person. And I also don’t want that pressure to be put on me because I have done that before… putting that pressure on another person and had that pressure put on me when I was married, and it doesn’t work for me. It’s too much pressure and it’s like, yeah to me it’s no, that’s not how my relationships work. When they work for me they’re not like that. 

    Okay, I think I think that’s good enough. Like that’s that’s a, you know, we talked about photography and non-monogamy and comets and relationship anarchy and solo polyamory, and the relationship escalator. So you have like at least six different terms of things that we talked about today. So I want to make this video too long. 

    Yeah, non monogamy is great. If you have any questions, comment, and I will try to either reply in a comment, or maybe I’ll make a video to answer your question. Let me know! I love you!

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  • Non monogamy + why marriage doesn’t work for me

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    CAPTION FOR THE VIDEO ABOVE:

    Hey friends!! So I once again have a lot of things going on this month, so I want to get some of these videos done early. So here I am doing that because I love you and I want you to still get things from me. So I thought today I would talk about non-monogamy. Seems like it’s something that a lot of you are interested in. I’ve put the link to a survey out a few times. And most people are saying when they answer the survey that they’re interested in learning about non monogamy and like relationship anarchy, so, I thought I’d talk a little bit about that today. I don’t have time to do you like a whole, like, class on it, but I thought I would tell you about my personal experience with it and like what it means to me and why it’s best for me in terms of my relationship structure, so here we go! 

    So as many of you know, I used to be married to a person who has been in a lot of photos that are on this website. You probably know him as AD or antisocialdisposition, which is like his Instagram name. So I don’t want to talk to you badly about him because we’re still really close, and our relationship has changed a lot over the years, but we’re still both like important people in each other’s lives. So I’m going to tell you the story of how I became non monogamous and he could have done things a lot better and I could have done things a lot better, but that’s just that’s just this is my story.

    So, we were already married for a few years. We got married in 2013 and I think it was maybe 2016 or 2017? Probably wither late 2016, early  2017 when he first brought up non monogamy/ polyamory and I was deep into compulsory monogamy at that point which, compulsory monogamy is like society and everyone expects everyone to be monogamous. So like most people don’t even know that there’s options other than monogamy. So I was like deep into that shit and I didn’t even know that there was such a thing as… things that were not the relationship structure that I had seen throughout my whole life. Like, my parents, my family, like every fucking TV show ever, all of the songs and movies and stories, everything is monogamous. I didn’t even know that there was a way to have relationships that was not monogamous and when he first brought it up I was really freaked out and scared and I was like, wow, so, you know, like do you not love me anymore? Am I not important to you anymore? Like am I not enough for you? Am I not good enough? That kind of shit was a big part of that beginning stages of learning about non-monogamy is like all the insecurities and like jealous kind of things. So I definitely went through that for a while.

    I felt like… the way that he told me about how he needed to be non-monogamous it made me feel like I either had to become non-monogamous or like, let him have that relationship style, or I was going to lose him. Ideally that’s not the situation that people would be in when they’re starting non-monogamy, because that’s a really shitty way to do it. But neither of us knew any better about how to do things at the time, like, we were still learning and still non monogamy babies basically.

    So, like, he didn’t know what he was doing, I didn’t know what I was doing and we were stumbling our way through it, and I loved him. I still love him. And I didn’t want to lose him and I still don’t want to lose him. So we I was like, okay, I guess we can do this, but let’s kind of start slow and figure it out and it was a lot of struggle. He started dating a friend of ours who lived across the country, so that was long distance for them. That was really rough because I was very insecure and still like shaking off all of the monogamous bullshit. I still have a lot of that, even though I’ve been non monogamous for several years now, but I like I feel really glad that we did this because now I know that non-monogamy is actually the relationship style that works best for me.

    It was a rocky shitty start because it could have been done much better from the beginning, but I’m here where I am now and I’m really happy with the way that my relationships are structured. So it works… like it worked out, but I know it might not for everybody like some people might try non-monogamy and learn that it really doesn’t work for them. Like there’s no way to structure relationships that’s better than another like, monogamy is not inherently better than non monogamy. And the same in Reverse. Like, non-monogamy is not inherently better than monogamy. They’re just different people need different relationship structures. And that’s cool. And finding out what works for you is what’s important. 

    So, I guess long story short, it took awhile and lots of feelings and after several years… So we were married from 2013 to 2019. We started the divorce conversation in early 2019. That was a rough year, our divorce became official in 2020. We didn’t have much contact for about two and a half years. We had like minimal contact for two and a half years. and just in the last like six months actually less than six months. We started to reconnect and it’s been a really good actually.

    It wasn’t non-monogamy that made us end our marriage. It was the fact that we were codependent and didn’t have any boundaries with each other and we’re like enmeshed in an unhealthy way. And we both needed the space to be able to figure out our own shit and like, become our own individual people before we could be in a healthy relationship with each other. So, I’m very glad that we’re not married anymore. I’ve learned that marriage is not for me! No way. It’s not for me.

    We lived together for several years before we even got married. And it’s funny because like, I didn’t think that getting married would really change any thing because we already lived together and like, it would just be a piece of paper that says we’re married. But things did change when we got married, I think both internally and externally. For example, I felt like we had to spend all of our time together. I felt like we had to do everything together, like I also felt like the marriage made it feel like we owned each other. Like, we were the property of each other and like, we had this weird control over each other’s lives.

    And I know that this doesn’t apply to all marriages, but that’s what happened for me personally is like, I felt like I had I don’t know, some weird like ownership control over him and he had over me. It was like, that’s the way it felt to me. Not into that. Yeah, and I also had a bunch of like, internalized bullshit that I put on myself. Like I felt like I had to cook and clean all the time and he had to go work like the whole like bullshit like, expectation of what a marriage is supposed to be between a man and a “woman”, and I’m not even a fucking woman, so like I didn’t know that at the time. Honestly, I needed… so I don’t think I would have been able to realize that I was non-binary unless we separated and got divorced and I had time to be by myself because I don’t think I would have realized it if I had stayed with him in the way that our relationship was structured. because it was like a man and a woman, and they get married and I lived together and are happy forever. And like, in that structure, there is no space for me to like, explore things that were not what was expected of me.

    So yeah, that’s my story. I hope I told it well enough that you understand. There’s a lot of nuance and a lot of detail in there that like, I didn’t go through, obviously, because I don’t want to make this video like super long but yeah, I think I think non monogamy is wonderful. I’m glad that I had those experiences even though they were really fucking rough. And I still feel jealous and insecure a lot, but I have people in my life that are really important to me that I wouldn’t be able to be connected with all of them in the ways that I am if I was still monogamous. Yeah, I think non monogamy has enriched my life in a major way, and I’m thankful for it, even though it was rough road getting here. And we could have done things way better than we did. But I guess everyone has their like origin story and it’s not always pretty.

    So yeah, it is possible to stay friends with and be in a relationship with an ex partner because that’s my life. Yeah, AD and I are reconnecting and it’s really great and we have way more boundaries now and we live in different states and that probably helps us have boundaries. And yeah, we’re able to have a much more healthy relationship now because we’re like intentionally… We’re doing things intentionally. We’re not just like assuming all of these things because we’re “married”. We’re like going step by step. How do you feel about this thing? How do you feel about that thing? How do you feel about this? What about this other thing? And we’re like building our relationship from the ground up in a way that works for both of us. So, yeah.

    Okay, this is long enough. I hope that’s enough story for you to have a little bit of an understanding of non-monogamy from my perspective. Comment if you have questions. Yeah, I love you!

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